Unfortunately for me, I couldn’t cancel my order from where I bought. Lucky for everyone else, I can share some real first hand user experience with the My Book duo.
Ok, here’s what I’ve found so far. Unfortunately WD does not allow posting the conversation I had with their support. And they have good reasons not to.
First things first.
If you expect to be able to take one of the disks out of the My Book duo plug it in a computer and read your data without any additional, time consuming recovery process, forget it !
This is assuming that you setup the My Book duo as RAID1(mirrored) and formatted in well known filesystem like NTFS, plug it directly into a standard computer and read your data. You will hit a roadblock. This is definitely not possible anymore.
The man from the support first said this was certainly possible, but he quickly had to admit, after letting me perform two different tests (one in a SATA enclosure, one directly internal in the computer), that it will not be possible to read my data, without using recovery software. The software is not provided by WD, and I would have to purchase it in addition to the drive.
Conclusion:
If you expect standard RAID1(mirrored) functionality, DON’T BUY the Western Digital My Book duo !
If you have already bought it: get rid of it, now ! If you don’t, you might deeply regret it later, when you find out for real that your, believed to be semi safe RAID1, was not safe at all from day one. (of course, archival and redundant backup strategies on other media should always prevent you from serious harm.)
(Please warn others about this. In online shops for example. It is dangerous how WD has implemented this functionality. I’m not even sure if their marketing would legally still hold up. I this still a RAID1 capable drive as advertised ? I highly doubt it)
This problem, does not necessarily need to be related to the encryption. It is just something the controller of the My Book duo does as the man from support stated.
So asking: “Does this drive always encrypt data ?”, will nowadays most likely lead to a “no” from WD. But that’s not the solution and definitive answer to this. The problem is, that the controller messes up standard drive access anyway, even without encryption.
For me there is no point right now in investigating further. I don’t want a RAID1(mirrored) drive, where my data needs to get processed by recovery software if the controller of the housing dies ! I’m not willing right now, to purchase recovery software in addition to the drive. Recovering data should be the very last step in preventing data loss. It can take ages for a 16TB (8TB in RAID1 mode) drive. And recovering data is not a 100% success in all cases, as far as my experience goes. Avoiding the need to perform data recovery is one of the main reasons to waste half of the space by switching to RAID1(mirrored).
According to the support, the manual which states “Unser manual (PDF)(unencrypted drives)” is there for Russia only. WD is not allowed to sell drives with encryption functionality, or the required software to Russia. They could make this much more clear on the homepage, or in the manuals for everyone to see.
Me too, I was quite happy with WD for many, many years. This changes things.
Unfortunately, the market for RAID1 capable drives isn’t huge. Or at least I haven’t found many alternatives right now. Most likely I will go with LaCie. It will be quite a bit more expensive, but anyway…knowing that my data is actually really safe and accessible on a RAID1 drive means more to me than money.
If someone has any suggestions, I’m looking forward to hear them. I need a drive with two internal disks which can be setup in RAID1. Connection wise it should have at least USB-3 or eSATA. Unfortunately I have no Thunderbolt on the box, where I want to plug this in.
Thank you !
