Hi,
an update after interaction with WD support and further findings made in the meantime:
TEST WITH SECOND ENCLOSURE
Since I have a second WD enclosure of the same product line (My Book Duo), I tested the disks of unit#1 (the “faulty unit”) in unit#2.
Result: same noises, same issue.
Then I tested each drive individually, meaning letting only disk 1 in, and afterwards only disk 2 in. Since I generally did not configure the disks to be used in any RAID configuration, but just being used “individually”.
Result: disk 1 is working/healthy and disk 2 is the culprit.
It also turned out the enclosure of unit#1 is not broken, which could have been a possibility.
So it boils down to be disk 2 causing the issue, which is:
- noise,
- letting the whole unit not getting recognized by the operating system,
- making the whole WD unit stalling so that even(!) hard-reset doesn’t work at all. Which is pressing a button on the back of the enclosure for a certain amount of time. Even after powering down the PC, the WD unit won’t turn off and one is forced to pull the power cable from the WD unit.
HARDWARE ENCRYPTION NOW BLOCKS ANY DATA RECOVERY ATTEMPT
One of the main basic precondition in a next step of any data recovery consideration from a faulty disk is usually: to connect such a hard drive directly, internally to a SATA port. Since USB-connected hard drives are not offering the full access to certain features required, which are essential for any data recovery tools / procedures.
Very unfortunate though, here comes a major design flaw from WD into this situation, and this is the intransparent hardware encryption of the disks from this WD MyBook Duo products.
This encryption is
- implicitly working,
- it can’t be disabled on setup time of such a new unit by the user,
- there is even no clear hint from WD about it when buying, setting up and using this product.
There is a “WD Security” software, which allows users to put explicitly a password onto a drive, but this is optional to use. Not using this “WD security” may give a false impression to customers, since the hardware encryption is still active and applied by the “USB mainboard logic” so to say.
I tested the healthy disk 1 in another, non-WD USB case, and I was not able to access my data. The disk appears as not initialized to the operating system.
Since this healthy disk 1 experiment proves the hardware encryption is preventing the data access when being used outside of the WD enclosure, it is clear the same finding will apply to disk 2.
I tested another disk from another 3rd party USB enclosure (also a multiple disks unit; also used individually) with the same “USB test enclosure” as used for the experiment with the WD disk 1, and it was no problem to access this disk and get to my data. The disk was recognized as expected. Simply a hard drive as everyone expects it to be picked up by the operating system.
While the faulty drive itself creates already headache on its own, I’m now locked out of even thinking about being able to pursue any data recovery attempt, since the disk won’t be accessible outside of the WD USB enclosure by default. Because of the hardware encryption in the first place.
WD support provided infos about “data recovery service providers”. It seems therefore, that WD authorized service providers do have the possibilities to access those drives, whereas customers themselves don’t.
The design decision to put on such a hardware encryption, which can’t be disabled by the customer is not understandable. Especially since the presumed security layer is unclear how this is supposed to work in practice respectively for what is this supposed to be good for?:
the disks - assuming they are in healthy state for now - can be read by putting them into any WD enclosure of the same product line. So, this strange hardware encryption is “bypassed” by putting them into another WD enclosure, which only would have to be done if the original WD enclosure for example would be broken, or - for whatever reasons - the disks were stolen without the WD enclosure together (what are the bets). By the way, good luck for customers of this product when their enclosure fails at some point and the product might have been already sunset at some point, so that replacement enclosures won’t be available anymore.
So, where is the added security here? It’s all, but customer-friendly.
This design decision is a huge disadvantage for actual customers, and add no benefit at all (there is WD Security or other 3rd party solutions if a user opts in for data encryption / putting some access layer on top of it). Now, customers won’t be able to access even healthy drives outside of this enclosure, and in case of faulty drives they would have no chance in terms of data recovery, unless perhaps to pay expensive authorized service providers.
While WD disks themselves have a good reputation (why my disk in its prime time failed is a different question (an 8TB RED disk, which got to see maybe at max a total of 16TB written data throughout the whole “lifetime” - so like nothing)), the only recommendation can be made to stay away from specific WD USB products, which do have this intransparent, unable to get disabled hardware encryption put on.
