WD My Book Live Duo: Hard drive failure

Greetings!

I have decided to buy WD MY BOOK LIVE DUO 4TB. I bought it because it contains a RAID 1.

My settings are on WD set to RAID 1.

I have a couple questions about this product?

  1. What should I do in case of breakdown of one of the hard disks? I need to buy the same hard disk, it is now built into the device? Now is built 2TB WD GREEN. Can I buy a 3TB? What I do in the future when the WD no longer manufactured 2TB drives?

  2. When I replace the defective hard drive with a working hard drive, WD operating system make alone a copy of data from an active to a new hard drive?

3)Can I the hard drive, which is built into WD MY BOOK LIVE DUO insert in to the PC and easily read the data form it? Or is the data on them encrypted?

Uros

  1.  The process is described both on the MBLD HELP screens as well as the user manual.   You should check that.

  2.  No.  It’s a RAID.   “Raid” isn’t the same thing as “Copy.”

  3.  No, it is not encrypted.   In order to connect to a PC and read the data, you must have working knowledge of Linux operating system and EXT3/EXT4 file systems.

http://community.wdc.com/t5/My-Book-Live-Duo/Frustration-place-dirty-word-here/td-p/517102

Check out this thread I started before you shell out the cash. I’m not sure you really want the headaches I’m having. I’m sure someone here will offer you opposing views but I suggest you take a look at competing products and consult their users at web forums.

Unfortunately this is not the product I could recommend.

Hi!

I found a solution for disk failure.


On the dashboard’s navigation panel, click Settings, then click the Storage tab. Review Drive A and Drive B to determine which drive is faulty.

If one of the drives has Failed or Storage Failed?, and note the letter of the drive (for example, Drive A).

In the event a fault occurs and you would like to service the device yourself, visit WD Technical Support at http://support.wdc.com and search the Knowledge Base Answer ID 8644 ( http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/8644/session/L3RpbWUvMTM1NDg2MTAxNy9zaWQvMmlsVGE3ZGw%3D) for detailed instructions on obtaining a replacement drive.

Then it is necessary the physical replace the hard drives.

Reconnect all of the cables for the device.

The drive starts the rebuild process automatically. The RAID rebuild may take up to 15 hours depending on drive capacity and activity, but typically will complete in 7 to 12 hours. Allow the RAID rebuild to complete.

Important: Do not attempt to use the device during the rebuild process.

Once the RAID rebuild is complete, the LEDs will glow steadily to indicate power-on state.


Important: Only WD large capacity hard drive assemblies can be inserted into the My Book Live Duo drive enclosure. Visit http://support.wdc.com and search the Knowledge Base Answer 8644 for detailed instructions on obtaining a replacement drive for this product. Use only WD hard drive assemblies or your warranty will be voided.

If the drive is not under warranty, or you wish to purchase a drive as a spare, be sure to get a drive that uses an identical model number to the drives included in your enclosure. This includes the information in the suffix of the model number (for example if the model number was WDM0D31NUM83R-0000 both the the WDM0D31NUM83R and 0000 numbers should be identical.)


MY E-mail to support office in WD.


Thank you for contacting Western Digital Customer Service and Support. My name is Patrik.

In response for your questions:

  1. You should always use the same model of drive as is the second drive in your device. Using different model of the drive, or the same model, but with the larger capacity may destroy all data on the drive. If one of the drive failed, and the same model is no longer available on the market, you should replace both drive with the same model. MyBook Live Duo supports only WD Green drives. But these drives are still quite new, they will be available on the market for couple of years.

  2. If you set the RAID1 configuration, you just need to replace the defective drive with the new unformatted drive and the MyBook will restore all data automatically.

  3. Data are not encrypted on the drive, so you can connect it directly to your computer, but you need to use some Linux distribution in order to access the data (drives are formatted to the Linux file system - ext3) or some third party ext3 viewer.   If you have any further questions, please reply to this email and we will be happy to assist you further.   Sincerely,

Patrik Western Digital Service and Support

I have another question? In case of failure of one of the hard drives. Can I access the data on the active hard drive? And I easy make a copy of data from MY BOOK LIVE DUO to MY COMPUTER?

I have another question? In case of failure of one of the hard drives. Can I access the data on the active hard drive? And I >>easy make a copy of data from MY BOOK LIVE DUO to MY COMPUTER?

You can not! If one of disc dont work, connect the good one in PC and use Linux or Windows 3rd party ext3 viewers for Windows! Copy all data from hard drive to PC.

--------------------------------------mission accomplished------------------------------------

If you’re going to answer your own questions, answer them correctly.  :)

  In case of failure of one of the hard drives. Can I access the data on the active hard drive?

In RAID1 mode (mirroring), yes, you can.  All you have to do is shut the box down, remove the bad drive, and power it back up.

Your data will continue to be available from the other disk, as if nothing were wrong.   That’s what RAID1 is supposed to do.

When you get the replacement drive, you shut the box down, install the new drive, and power it back up.   The RAID is then resynchronized to the new disk. 

In RAID0 (spanning) mode, NO.  If you lose a disk in RAID 0 mode, your data are irretrievably destroyed.

All the answers I received from WD e-mail support or. from WD books.

If you’re right, great! Then there is no need to insert HDD into my computer.

Just out of curiosity: is this really a RAID 0 configuration? Reading the descriptions in the dashboard, one could also assume that a simple spanning of disks is configured, which is NOT RAID 0. Can anyone confirm this one way or the other?

It is a spanning configuration, not RAID 0.

So, a complete disk failure would corrupt “only” half the data, leaving the other half intact?

And, in a spanning configuration, would it be possible to “mix” compatible WD drives (e.g. 2 TB in slot 1, 3 TB in slot 2)?

Yep, WDTony is, of course, correct and I was mistaken.

Spanning uses “Linear” mode in Linux ‘md’.

According to this:

http://nst.sourceforge.net/nst/docs/user/ch14.html

“There is no redundancy in this level. If one disk crashes you will most probably lose all your data. You can however be lucky to recover some data, since the filesystem will just be missing one large consecutive chunk of data.”

so basically any file that carries across from one md member to the other (due to fragmentation or whatever) will be toast.  But it may be possible to restore data if it’s all in the surviving disk.