Coping with WD’s “My Cloud” Calamity
Remember that time your hard drive failed, and you lost all your precious family photos, work projects, and embarrassing karaoke videos? Oh, wait, that was last month! Well, if you’ve been following the latest saga with Western Digital’s “My Cloud” storage devices, you might be facing that scenario all over again.
It all started a few weeks ago when WD customers around the world suddenly found themselves locked out of their My Cloud Home and My Cloud Duo NAS systems. Turns out, WD’s cloud servers had been hit by a cyber attack, leaving users high and dry without access to their data. The horror! [1]
As if that wasn’t bad enough, WD then had the nerve to tell customers that they’d have to pay $89 for recovery software if they wanted to get their files back. Seriously, WD? I’m already paying you for “cloud storage,” and now you want me to fork over more cash just to access my own data? Talk about adding insult to injury!
Luckily, one industrious My Cloud Duo owner, Cody, wasn’t about to take that lying down. After “a lot of digging,” he managed to find a way to bypass WD’s locked-out servers and extract his data directly from the NAS drives. [1] And the best part? He documented the whole process in a YouTube video, so the rest of us could follow along and save our own digital bacon.
Hacking Your Way to Data Recovery
So, what’s the secret to Cody’s successful self-rescue mission? Well, it all comes down to good old-fashioned Linux know-how. See, the My Cloud Duo, like many NAS devices, runs on a Linux-based operating system. And if you know how to navigate that system, you can gain direct access to the data stored on the internal hard drives – no cloud connection required.
The key steps, according to Cody’s video, are:
- Disassemble the My Cloud Duo: First, you’ll need to physically open up the NAS device and remove the hard drives.
- Connect the drives to a Linux computer: Using a SATA-to-USB adapter, you can then plug the drives into a Linux system and mount them as regular storage volumes.
- Rebuild the RAID array: Since the My Cloud Duo uses a RAID configuration to store data across multiple drives, you’ll need to use the Linux “mdadm” command to reassemble the array.
- Access and extract your files: Once the RAID is rebuilt, you can browse the file system and copy your precious data to a safe location.
Cody’s video walks you through all of these steps in detail, and he even shows how to mount the Linux drives on a Windows machine using some extra software. [1] Sounds like a bit of a hassle, but hey, it’s way better than shelling out $89 for WD’s recovery tool, right?
A Broader Lesson in Disaster Preparedness
Now, while Cody’s “hack” might be a lifesaver for My Cloud Duo owners, the broader lesson here is that we all need to be prepared for the inevitable – cloud storage outages. After all, even the mightiest tech giants can fall victim to cyberattacks, natural disasters, or good old-fashioned human error. And when that happens, you don’t want to be left scrambling to recover your data.
That’s why it’s so important to have a robust disaster recovery plan in place, whether you’re using cloud storage or good ol’ fashioned on-premises storage. And the key to that plan is redundancy – making sure your data is stored in multiple locations, using a variety of different technologies.
For example, Google Cloud recommends using a combination of regional and multi-regional storage options to protect against both zonal and regional outages. [2] That way, even if one of your cloud storage regions goes down, you can still access your data from another location. And if you’re really serious about data protection, you might even consider keeping a local backup on a network-attached storage (NAS) device or external hard drive.
Sure, it might take a bit more time and effort to set up a multi-layered backup system. But when disaster strikes, you’ll be glad you did. Because the alternative – scrambling to recover your data, or worse, losing it forever – is the stuff of nightmares. And trust me, you don’t want to be the one explaining to your boss or your spouse why all your important files disappeared into the digital ether.
So, take a lesson from Cody and WD’s My Cloud debacle – don’t put all your eggs (or all your data) in one basket. Diversify your storage options, and make sure you have a solid plan in place for recovering from the inevitable cloud storage apocalypse. Your future self will thank you.
