I’m experiencing a critical issue with my WD My Cloud EX2 Ultra and I would really appreciate any help or guidance.
Background
Device: WD My Cloud EX2 Ultra
Configuration: 2 × 4TB WD Red drives
RAID mode: JBOD (Linear)
Firmware: Recently updated (I received an email on March 27 confirming an update, likely OS 5 – version 5.33.102)
Important note
I have NEVER enabled encryption manually at any point.
What happened
The NAS was working perfectly after the firmware update
During a house move, the device was powered off and transported carefully (no physical damage or shocks)
After reconnecting and powering it on:
The system boots normally
Both drives are detected and show healthy SMART status
However, the volume is not mounted
The dashboard shows 0KB free space
The system is now asking for an encryption password, which I never set
Current situation
Disks are physically fine (SMART OK, full capacity detected)
RAID (JBOD linear) appears intact at a low level
Data should still be present, but inaccessible
The issue seems related to the volume not mounting and unexpected encryption
Key concerns
I never configured encryption, so I don’t have any password to unlock the volume
It appears the system may have enabled encryption automatically or lost access to a key
I want to avoid any action (reset, format, rebuild) that could destroy the data
Questions
Is it possible that WD OS 5 enabled encryption automatically without user interaction?
Where is the encryption key stored in this model, and can it be recovered?
Is there any official method to remount the volume without data loss?
Has anyone experienced a similar issue after a firmware update or power loss?
Final note
At this point, I am trying to recover access to the data without formatting or resetting the device, since the disks themselves appear to be in perfect condition.
The NAS is “working” properly; all three blue lights are on, and the SMART status for the two internal hard drives indicates that they are in good condition.
The volume is shown as “not mounted” because there are two hard drives in a JBOD configuration with a total of 7.8 TB in a single volume.
I’m not sure if this answers your questions, but thank you for taking the time to help.
If the two drives are configured as JBOD for the NAS, then the NAS should have shown them as at least two separate physical volumes to the operating system. The operating system can then be used to combine the physical volumes into only one logical volume. This means, that the OS is declared to be responsible for cutting each file to be stored in the logical volume into appropriate peaces and distribute this peaces over some storage locations within the physical volumes.
Of course: the OS needs to store some meta data within the physical volumes to be able to rebuild the stored file from the distributed peaces. If this metadata is partially lost or temporarily disturbed the whole logical volume is endangered, because every newly written file can override peaces of a previously written file. Nearly the same holds for reading a previously written file: the OS cannot guarantee to rebuild that file from the peaces in the physical volumes, because the meta data is unreliable.
Your OS seams to inform you over this condition by declaring the logical volume as not mounted, without any free space and needing a password. So it seams that the data has to be rebuild from the last backup.
Maybe the drives will have to be replaced too, because they lost some meta data. Probably by at least doubling their capacity and using RAID1 instead of JBOD.
Yeah, the problem is that the last backup is way too old, and the “lost” data—which is super important—is recent.
Obviously, it was my mistake for not having a separate backup or using RAID 1, but I’ve had that NAS for years, and with the rush of the move, I didn’t think something like this could happen.
Ultimately, what I need to know is if there’s a way to fix this or, at least, recover the most vital data that might still be inside, but the “door is locked” with LUKS security.
As already pointed out, the meta data is probably unreliable. Therefore even when some files can be recovered manually or by some tool, they have to be checked for validity, which is impossible for every tool and close to impossible manually.
In addition you stated, that the disks have been used “for years”, which means that they may become dead on trying to recover enough data stored. Therefore even a physical copy of the drives, using some linux command like dd, may be fatal for the drives.
Obviously someone has to evaluate
the monetary value of the data on those disks
the probability of losing some of that data on a try to recover it
the monetary value of the data probably recovered
Then define an upper bound for the monetary value for a recovery try and then find some professionals willing to execute that try for a salary not exceeding the defined upper bound.
Last remark: using a RAID-configuration is no replacement for a backup strategy.
