NAS Solution - My Book's Deid

[JW1949]

My Book Live no more !!

(Note to those not familiar with Scots language "deid" pronounced deed, is commonly used for dead. Scots can often be a quite descriptive language !).

The initial email, on 30th June, from Western Digital began as follows: "Immediately disconnect your My Book Live device from the Internet to protect your data from ongoing attacks. You can disconnect the device and continue to access your data locally by following these instructions on our Knowledge Base."

At first, I thought it was a scam and after a "chat" with the WD support desk I was still not convinced until a quick browse of the WD Community forums (or is it fora ?) demonstrated that quite a number of users were going ballistic. WD damped down the hysteria somewhat by announcing a Data Recovery Program for those affected by a loss of data and a Trade In Offer whereby those affected could gain a 40% discount on a newer model. Since I had had the MBL since around 2010 (I think), this offer appeared initially to be a fair compromise. WD stated in another email - "Western Digital is offering current registered My Book Live or My Book Live Duo customers a trade-in discount of 40% off a select new My Cloud™ Home personal cloud storage or My Cloud EX2 Ultra 2-bay network attached storage device."

WD support, perhaps unsurprisingly in the current circumstances, no longer answer on their support chat lines and despite some of their emails asking for a response from users by email expressing any concerns over the programs, they do not appear to respond to emails either.

Eventually I managed to log an incident requesting the discount code so that I could purchase a replacement device.

On the 15th July, I received the RMA authorisation from WD asking me to return the MBL within the month (- by 14th August) and stating that "Once received we will provide you with a coupon that you can use on our Western Digital Online Store for purchase of a My Cloud device as per the trade-In Program."

I responded on 16th July by email with the following:
"Many thanks for your email of 15th July in respect of the WD trade in programme.

"As you will know, I have been advised by WD to take the current device offline due to security considerations. I have a 2TB device and I cannot help thinking that it would have been more helpful of WD to allow the purchase of a replacement device BEFORE the current device has to be returned. This will impact me rather severely as I have, I think, about 300GB of personal data on the device which I will need to copy somewhere before I can trade it in. I do not currently have a spare device with that capacity.

"Could you please reconsider the offer and perhaps couch it in such a way that I could obtain a refund from the WD store on a replacement device, provided I return the original item within say 4-6 weeks ?"

Thus far I have had no response.

I have now installed Linux Mint on a 2009 model Apple iMac and I hope over the next few days to copy around 260GB of data files, photos and videos from the MBL onto my new Linux box.

Any tips, hints or suggestions on how best to proceed with my MBD problem would be most welcome.

Thanks for reading, Jack

[Lady Fitzgerald]

..."As you will know, I have been advised by WD to take the current device offline due to security considerations. I have a 2TB device and I cannot help thinking that it would have been more helpful of WD to allow the purchase of a replacement device BEFORE the current device has to be returned. This will impact me rather severely as I have, I think, about 300GB of personal data on the device which I will need to copy somewhere before I can trade it in. I do not currently have a spare device with that capacity.

"Could you please reconsider the offer and perhaps couch it in such a way that I could obtain a refund from the WD store on a replacement device, provided I return the original item within say 4-6 weeks ?"

Thus far I have had no response...

It's possible WD is being overwhelmed by the number of MBL (MyBookLive) users requesting their offer.

Now that I know more of what is going on in your case, it appears you were using your MBL as a sole storage location rather than a backup (or I could be wrong). If you want to continue to use a NAS for data storage (and there's nothing wrong with that), you need to have at least one backup drive for the NAS (two backup drives, one kept onsite and one kept offsite, would be much better). If you had already had your MBL backed up, then you wouldn't have had to come up with a way to stash the data on the MLB before shipping it back to WD (and you should wipe the data on the MBL before shipping it; btw, you lucked out in that you were able to isolate your MBM from the "interwebz" before you could lose data from it, as happened to many others).

HDD prices are not all that high anymore, even for a 2TB HDD, which is actually small by today's standards. Unless losing that data wouldn't be a catastrophe for you (some people don't consider losing certain data to be a great loss to them), the price you would pay for one or two external backup drives would be a pittance compared to the cost of professional data recovery (usually well north of $1000 USD), which comes with no guarantee of success.

[JW1949]

Thanks again Lady Fitz. Very good advice and a gentle telling off, methinks. I retired from an IT role some years ago (March 2006) and considered my self at least IT literate - I still have quite a way to go !!!

Yes, in a perfect world.

The MBL was ideal for Time Machine backups of MacBook laptops for me & my wife - ideal in that it was reliable and happened every day without intervention. The MBL also stores data, photos, music, family videos most of which also reside in cloud services - namely Dropbox + Google. We are now doing TM backups to a 500GB USB drive instead.

Data is retained on Google Drive & Dropbox with a copy on MBL by year.

As Dropbox has limited storage it retains only photos by year/month from 2012 to 2021 - all the earlier photos are on MBL. All the photos are also on Google Photos but I have never managed to reconcile the 3 storage locations and ensure all the photos are in all 3 places.

Family videos are only in Google Photos and on MBL, again I need to reconcile and ensure all are present & correct. I would really like to drop Google altogether but perhaps not right now.

Music files are on MBL & played from there, with copies in Google Drive and also on Amazon Prime Music.

I also used MBL to download movies & some TV programmes - really before the advent of streaming everything - these are not backed up at all.

It is a bit of hotch potch - I need to replace the MBL but also bring in at least one other USB drive to backup the NAS as you suggest.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

...a gentle telling off, methinks...

It was not my intention to be "telling you off", gently or otherwise, and I apologize for giving you that impression.

...I retired from an IT role some years ago (March 2006) and considered my self at least IT literate...

Don't feel bad; a lot of IT folks don't understand exactly what backups are and why they are needed (look at all the large corporations lately getting hit by ransomware and no backups to bail them out). I remember once talking to a friend who was an IT tech and supervisor about how I was trying to work out a backup scheme that would work best for me and he suggested I just run a mirror drive (RAID 1). Now this guy has forgotten more about computers than I will ever know a fraction of yet I had to point out that RAID 1, being just redundancy, while providing protection against one drive dying, wouldn't protect me if I accidentally deleted a file, my data got hit by malware, etc.

A basic test of any backup scheme is if it can be used to recover data lost to causes most likely to happen, such as user error (such as accidental deletion or drive reformatting; face it, we all have made mistakes like that), ransomware, data corruption, theft, damage from flood, fire, power surges, etc. If one has only one copy of data on a drive and that drive goes sideways for whatever reason, the chances are excellent that data has gone to computer Never, Never Land, never more to be seen, even after an expensive attempt by a professional data recovery firm.

The simplest backup scheme would be to have one copy of your data located somewhere other than the primary location of the data. A NAS can be used as a second location for data but only if it is air-gapped from the computer and kept powered down except while updating the backup, something not always practical if the NAS is a central repository of data for multiple computers (a valid use for a NAS). Otherwise, the NAS is just redundancy, subject to many of the same dangers that can kill data in drives in the computer.

Having data on a drive(s) in a computer and on an external drive(s) that is kept disconnected from the computer and powered down at all times, except while updating the backup, will protect data from loss except for various physical disasters--theft, flood, fire, etc. To protect from those disasters, another copy of data should also be kept off site as far away as practical.

For someone with one drive in their computer, a solid backup scheme would be one external backup drive kept onsite and another external backup drive kept offsite. The offsite location can be a locked drawer or locker at work or a safe deposit box at a bank or credit union. (I use the latter). I used to suggest a trusted friend's or relative's home until someone mention said home could get burgled or the friend or relative might not be as trusted as you thought. A good cloud storage site could be used but the only ones I could recommend would be high security ones that cater to businesses (aka expensive!). The inexpensive and free sites, especially the freebies, are prone to be unreliable, unsecure, and subject to disappearing with little to no adequate warning.

People with multiple drive just need to scale up the number of backup drives. For example I have four data drives/partitions in my laptop so I have four external backup drives, one for each drive/partition. Strictly speaking, I should have four more backup drives to keep offsite but the data on my laptop is identical to the data on my desktop drives, so I just depend on the desktop drives' offsite backup drives to serve as the offsite backups for my laptop. Also, since even backup drives can go south, I have multiple backups. I also keep a spare drive of each type on hand so I can quickly replace a dead drive and repopulate it instead of having to wait for one to be shipped to me, assuming anyone has one in stock (I live in a megalopolis and no one locally carrier the drives I use )

[AndyMH]

Have a look at synology. My DS216 has been running 24/7* since March 2017. Current equivalent is the DS220j (£150) plus a couple of drives, size your choice. I've got a couple of toshiba 2TB drives, their S300 drives are £60 each (rated for 24/7 operation), you can go cheaper.

Personally I can't see the point of a NAS with a single drive.

* I've got my CCTV cameras continuously recording to it

[JW1949]

Thanks for the updates LadyF + Andy.

Any offence taken was strictly tongue in cheek, and I will take advice from you both. Thank you.

I have purchased a 1TB portable external USB3 drive ( https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07 ... UTF8&psc=1) - to initially take the contents of the MBD and then become a backup for a new NAS. When funds allow, I will purchase another external backup disc, probably an enclosure with a 1 or 2TB insert so that the portable device can be kept off-site.

The new NAS will probably be Synology DS220j with a 2TB Toshiba L200 HDD, unless I relent, forgive WD and take their offer of a 40% discount on their MyCloud Home NAS. The first option will cost about £206 from Amazon; the WD option around £75 - so there are lots of pros & cons

Once again, thanks for your input. Any comments on my choices and potential choices will be welcome and, in return, I will update the thread as my adventure with the deid MBL continues.

Thanks, Jack

[AndyMH]

The toshiba L200 is a 2.5" drive, the synology takes 3.5" and you will be better off with the S300. It's only a few quid different. I did check and the DS220 will take 2.5" drives, but you would probably have to purchase an adapter.

[JW1949]

Thanks Andy, well spotted. Reading reviews (in Amazon) on both Seagate & Barracuda drives, I found that many were very negative about SMR (whatever that is) and gave very bad reviews on the S300 and others - I think that's why I was suggesting the L300. I guess I'll need to have another look.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Thanks Andy, well spotted. Reading reviews (in Amazon) on both Seagate & Barracuda drives, I found that many were very negative about SMR (whatever that is) and gave very bad reviews on the S300 and others - I think that's why I was suggesting the L300. I guess I'll need to have another look.

SMR is Shingled Magnetic Recording. It's a technique used to allow larger drive capacity on each platter of an HDD. Instead of the cylinders (think tracks) laying flat on a platter, they are turned sideways so they overlap each other like shingles. It works fine as long as you only write to the drive but when you start deleting and rewriting on sectors because the drive is filling up, the drive has to delete the data on the cylinder overlapping on top of the cylinder you are writing on, then rewrite that deleted data on the next cylinder, after having deleted that cylinder's data. This dramatically slows down write speeds.

SMR HDDs are best suited for static data that you write once to the drive, then read only afterwards without deleting or rewriting any data, such as archived data. An example would be people who keep music and movies on a drive and will rarely write anything to the drive once it has been filled. For the regular use most of us subject drives to, SMR will suck.

Since one can cram more data onto a platter with SMR, a drive that uses SMR can have fewer platters than one of the same capacity will have. Besides allowing for larger capacity drives, SMR also allows smaller capacity drives to be to be less expensive to make. Recently, some manufacturers started using SMR drives in place of regular drives while using the same part numbers without informing consumers of the change. This has resulted in SMR getting a bad reputation and souring consumers against the guilty manufacturers. It makes me glad I decided to go all SSD a few years ago.

Edit: Linus did a far better job of explaining things than I did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aztTf2gI55k

[AndyMH]

I've got two of these in my synology:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01 ... =UTF8&th=1
No idea if they are SMR or not, thinking back (Mar 2017), I probably bought them because they are 7200rpm drives and the price was right. SMR was something I picked up on long after I'd bought them.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I've got two of these in my synology:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01 ... =UTF8&th=1
No idea if they are SMR or not, thinking back (Mar 2017), I probably bought them because they are 7200rpm drives and the price was right. SMR was something I picked up on long after I'd bought them.

They are CMR ( couldn't think of the name of non-CMR drives earlier; I plead Old Timer's Disease). You would have noticed if the drives were SMR; SMR drives are horribly slow in a NAS, especially when rebuilding after a drive failure.

[AndyMH]

Based on what I read about SMR, I'm surprised toshiba are pushing these drives:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Toshiba-S300-S ... NrPXRydWU=
Okay they don't explicitly say NAS, but 24/7 operation and CCTV cameras? That's what my synology gets used for. When my NAS drives fail*, I would have been tempted by them if I couldn't get the same drive again.

* there is no IF here

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Based on what I read about SMR, I'm surprised toshiba are pushing these drives:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Toshiba-S300-S ... NrPXRydWU=
Okay they don't explicitly say NAS, but 24/7 operation and CCTV cameras? That's what my synology gets used for. When my NAS drives fail*, I would have been tempted by them if I couldn't get the same drive again.

* there is no IF here

Surveillance drives like yours need to be able keep taking a steady stream of data from video cameras, etc. without interruption. Most drives not intended for use in a NAS will attempt to recover data that gets corrupted during the data transfer. This normally isn't a problem and actually is a good thing. RAID and other redundancy schemes can tolerate only a small amount of interruption without causing a shut down so NAS rated drives have TLER (Time Limited Error Recovery) to avoid this problem. Surveillance systems cannot tolerate any interruption due to the continuous stream coming in so they will not have any error correction.

The drives you are using are the correct ones for your application. Most people should stay away from surveillance drives for use in computers and NASes even though they are tempting since they cost less.

[JW1949]

It’s very educational this forum. Great explanations Lady Fitz, thanks.

One of my issues on the backup disc, with both Music files and Photos is really duplicates. From your discussion about FreeFileSync, which I already use in its simplest form for backing up, I surmise that I could compare & synchronise the 3 music folders I seem to have & combine them into a single folder removing duplicates and making sure I don’t lose anything ?

Copying from MBD to an external USB3 disk is painful, but copying using grsync from the USB3 disk to my Linux box (2009 iMAC with USB2 only) is fast, simple & superb.

[JW1949]

An update on Western Digital.

They have relented & replied to my email on Friday 24/7/21, giving me a coupon code for 40% discount on a new MyCloudHome drive and asking me “ Once you have received your replacement and copied your data to your new device, please ship the My Book Live (Duo) using the provided RMA instructions.”

While I would love to try out the Synology, I cannot justify the extra spend. I hope to receive the new drive in about a week.

[AndyMH]

One of my issues on the backup disc, with both Music files and Photos is really duplicates.

For something like that you need a program like fslint. I say 'something like' because with mint dropping support for python2 in LM20 it takes a bit of work to install it. There are probably alternatives, but if you want to install fslint you need to pull the debs from bionic for:

fslint

Code: Select all

fslint_2.44-4ubuntu1_all.deb

and the dependencies

Code: Select all

python-gtk2_2.24.0-5.1ubuntu2_amd64.deb
python-glade2_2.24.0-5.1ubuntu2_amd64.deb

[JW1949]

Another update on WD:

I spent about a week wrestling with the My Cloud Home device, raising 4 or 5 support incidents along the way. Some of these were resolved and it is a clever little system, but it is not a NAS and not really what I wanted to replace the MBD so I returned it and have received a refund quite promptly. My opinion of WD has improved a bit - they do try to please.

I now have a Mint box up and running with all of my data on the 500Gb SSD. I have Timeshift running (haven't tried a restore yet) and I'm doing data backups using grsync at present to an external USB disk. We have 2 other external USB disks - for Apple Time Machine backups - and with online storage (120GB of Google Drive, 20GB of Dropbox and 50GB of Box - overkill or what), I am fairly comfortable with backups at the moment.

Next step is to invest in additional external USB disks to create a combined off site backup and to ensure that I can restore all the systems from their backups. Not a trivial task.

Thanks again for your inputs so far, Jack.

[AndyMH]

I'm sure there are proponents of grsync, but I use backintime - works the same way as timeshift, takes snapshots, but only /home. Worth a look.