Where are backup files on WD My Cloud EX 2 Ultra?

I have a My cloud Ex 2 Ultra 4Tb device, and have configured in as RAID 1, which should mean that I have a hard Drive of 2Tb usable for my storage, and a second drive which backups all the documents in the first drive.
My questions are:

  1. In case I needed, how can I access the files in the second drive?
  2. How often does it backup files? Is it instantaneous, or does it have some kind of rate?

All it comes up after a file (xls) got corrupted and I couldn’t access it. I already solved it by redoing the work again (it wasn’t a very large file) but today, the Idea that maybe in the other drive I could find the file without that corruption, came to me.

Thanks in advance for any help.

See the dedicated EX2 series subforum …

https://community.wd.com/c/network-attached-storage/wd-my-cloud-ex2

The main thing you need to understand is that RAID is NOT a backup. RAID provides disk redundancy.

  1. If one of the drives fails, the system will still allow you to access the same files on the second drive automatically. You don’t need to do anything (other than replace the failed drive, of course)-- the system will still function.

  2. It’s not a backup. Files are written concurrently to both drives. The system doesn’t acknowledge the file being written and closed until both drives have the data recorded.

If you delete or corrupt a file, that deletion and/or corruption will be identical on both drives. You cannot recover from a mistake.

For this reason, if you want backups, you’ll need to use backup software to have the data recorded elsewhere for safe keeping or recovery.

Tony is right.

The NAS provides internal hardware redundancy only.

Long term “goober” protection (where you simply erase or corrupt files) is a real issue.
My data scheme looks like this:

  1. Work off an external drive that goes with me everywhere.
  2. Backup the external drive to the NAS regularly (so I never worry about losing the external drive). This is also my “goto” device when I occasionally inadvertently wreck an important file.
  3. I have an offsite backup of NAS critical files (i.e. tax records). I store the offsite drive in my office, which is miles from home. This protects against robbery, flood, fire etc.
  4. I retire the offsite drive every year or two, and get a fresh one. That way, if I mess up and corrupt files, or am a victim of Ransomware or whatever. . . I have files somewhere that are only a year or two old. I don’t lose everything.

Yes, I am paranoid.