NAS / Cloud storage

[Mrhanky]

Upto this week we have been using a 3tb wd my cloud device to store all our back ups for my company without issue. However, this week it asked for a firmware update, this I did but since then its never come back online and does not show on our network.

I have tried all the tricks on the net and have spent stupid hours trying to resolve the issue. Needless to say WD have been useless and just repeat the same old steps that don't work.

So Im left with a bricked my cloud drive and two problems. Problem one, how do I retrieve the data from the drive. I have opened it up and removed the hard drive and put it into a dock to access. However, the format must be different as it shows six separate drives none of which can be accessed, I guess perhaps a security feature, but Im not expert.

The other problem is what to do going forward for storage. I have looked at some cloud providers namely, mega, google and dropbox. I was attracted to Mega as it encrypts data both on the up and download phase. However the system is a nightmare for reliability with transfers of files stopping uploading part way through.

So any advice or help from experts in these fields would be appreciated. Even a simple nudge in the general direction would be good and Im a little frustrated with the situation.

 

[moonloops]

I've had several people with same issues with WD devices.

I myself use a pair of QNAP NAS boxes and in two physical locations with replicate each other, I then backup data to Amazon for pennies. Can't help with data recovery unfortunately.

 

[bolide]

You should have backed up the NAS before updating the firmware

Can't you download the files from the Cloud part of the WD My Cloud?

My experience with all NAS devices has been uniformly awful. Most are slow, unreliable and have poor support

I recommend keeping backups on a hard drive and backing that up daily or weekly to another drive which is kept offsite. You could have two drives, and rotate them offsite alternately, but they don't last particularly long if you move them all the time

You could also setup a scripted backup to a Cloud provider, but bear in mind that recovering backups from the Cloud can be very slow. I did a disaster recovery analysis for a client who proposed a Cloud backup. The time to restore the files, even running their connection at 100% capacity, was more than three days. Many businesses can't survive that long

My advice is to establish the value of the data, set a budget to protect it and then put together a proper solution. If the value of the data is high (ie, the company will go out of business if the data not restored within 48 hours) then you will have to allocate funds appropriately. You may find this a struggle

Nick Froome

 

[MancMike]

Regarding getting the data off the drive, I think the 3TB version is 1 drive. If it is, you can take the drive out of the enclosure and connect it to a computer with a cheap SATA to USB device/cable. The filesystem will likely be EXT4 or BTRFS, but whatever it is, there's software to read and mount it.

If it's got more than one disk in it then it'll be some kind of RAID, hopefully spanning, but if raid 0 then it's much harder to get the data off.

 

[Ted]

Amazon AWS it has to be.
Simple upload to an S3 bucket. You can then set it to automatically move to Glacier after a time.
This leaves your data easily available and data transfer is cheap (free to upload iirc) then it gets automatically archived off after a period of time to super cheap to storage which may take a while to retrieve and cost more to access.
Be aware that if you are storing LOADS of data you will hog your bandwidth during transfers and data retrieval may take a while.

Cloud computing and storage is the future.

 

[Mrhanky]

You should have backed up the NAS before updating the firmware

Can't you download the files from the Cloud part of the WD My Cloud?

My experience with all NAS devices has been uniformly awful. Most are slow, unreliable and have poor support

I recommend keeping backups on a hard drive and backing that up daily or weekly to another drive which is kept offsite. You could have two drives, and rotate them offsite alternately, but they don't last particularly long if you move them all the time

You could also setup a scripted backup to a Cloud provider, but bear in mind that recovering backups from the Cloud can be very slow. I did a disaster recovery analysis for a client who proposed a Cloud backup. The time to restore the files, even running their connection at 100% capacity, was more than three days. Many businesses can't survive that long

My advice is to establish the value of the data, set a budget to protect it and then put together a proper solution. If the value of the data is high (ie, the company will go out of business if the data not restored within 48 hours) then you will have to allocate funds appropriately. You may find this a struggle

Nick Froome

Yes Nick I should have not relied on one source of storage and I hesitated before confirming the firmware update. Should have listened to gut and not done it.

Still I am where I am now, cant download from the cloud as my cloud is just a NAS system.

 

[Mrhanky]

Regarding getting the data off the drive, I think the 3TB version is 1 drive. If it is, you can take the drive out of the enclosure and connect it to a computer with a cheap SATA to USB device/cable. The filesystem will likely be EXT4 or BTRFS, but whatever it is, there's software to read and mount it.

If it's got more than one disk in it then it'll be some kind of RAID, hopefully spanning, but if raid 0 then it's much harder to get the data off.

Can you let me know the software that can do this. I had the thing apart and it has a single 3tb drive. When I connect it via a usb cable it shows several drives which I suspect my win 10 laptop cant access without software.

This is where my little knowledge drops off. If I can locate a software package to read the drive and do it all for me that would be great. I have an idea what mount means but not the technical specifics if that makes sense.

 

[Mrhanky]

Amazon AWS it has to be.
Simple upload to an S3 bucket. You can then set it to automatically move to Glacier after a time.
This leaves your data easily available and data transfer is cheap (free to upload iirc) then it gets automatically archived off after a period of time to super cheap to storage which may take a while to retrieve and cost more to access.
Be aware that if you are storing LOADS of data you will hog your bandwidth during transfers and data retrieval may take a while.

Cloud computing and storage is the future.

Im keen to set up some cloud storage, can you explain why Amazon aws is so good?

Ive looked and tried Mega, Google and dropbox but find them all a little clunky and backing up automatically seems an issue.

 

[Mrhanky]

I've had several people with same issues with WD devices.

I myself use a pair of QNAP NAS boxes and in two physical locations with replicate each other, I then backup data to Amazon for pennies. Can't help with data recovery unfortunately.

Well I have used the My Cloud for over two years without a glitch. I heard often the woes of people and was feeling very smug that my purchase was faultless.

Seems your at WD mercy with these units as you cant get access and their firmware updates are well posted about on the web.

 

[bolide]

Amazon AWS it has to be.
Simple upload to an S3 bucket. You can then set it to automatically move to Glacier after a time.
This leaves your data easily available and data transfer is cheap (free to upload iirc) then it gets automatically archived off after a period of time to super cheap to storage which may take a while to retrieve and cost more to access.

Sounds more like an archive system than a backup

There are lots of advantages to ordinary hard drives: they use a standard format, they are cheap, they are easily (and quickly) replaced and they are portable

The downsides are fragility, lack of security and / or encryption and relatively limited capacity

I think the key to backup is the software you use to run it. If you use proper software which runs to a schedule, and which notifies you of errors, it can be left to run unattended. If you backup by manual copying you lose all the benefits of multiple backup sets, data grooming, backup logs & etc which good software brings

On OSX I can recommend Carbon Copy Cloner - it has recently morphed into a very satisfactory backup solution

Nick Froome

 

[Mc1]

My wd duo live 6 terra tgingy is away at the moment having the data removed. I bought a 2 drive one set up mirrored so if one drive went down it would not be a problem, well that's how they sold it me but what a load of ****. All our pictures, DVDs and music is on it and it gets streamed around the house via another system but after this **** I am looking at changing the hole thing.
A quick grand wasted in 2 years
My advise, don't use a wd naz drive

 

[Ted]

As Bolide says it os more of a storage/archive system than pure backup.
Also the quality of the backup s/w you use is important.
Cloud solutions like google drive are useful as 'extra storage' that is you can keep photos docs, videos etc and simply access them to share, view or edit.
The aws services are more about traditional backup or archival. Much harder to view or edit, but great for storing lots of data for retrieval if necessary.
S3 is as fast as your internet connection will allow with fast access to your data. You can get high resilience multi location for security. You can set up a cess rules (iam) to restrict access.
Glacier is for huge amounts of cheap archival storage.
If you are just backing up documents and spreadsheets etc it may be worth looking at google drive and using google apps. I use this all the time - I've even got rid of office from my pooter. Drive gives you full versioning, and document recovery. Along with a product called Backupify, it will even protect you against malicious deletion.

 

[Mrhanky]

Thanks for your thoughts and ideas. It gave me the motivation to sit down and relook at the whole thing again with a fresh perspective. Im glad to say both my issues short term have been solved.

I dismantled the WD my cloud case and removed the single 3tb drive and docked it into our Winstars SATA docking station. After a lot of searching I realised that the file type for most NAS drives is Linux compatible not windows, hench why I could not read it before.

I found a free package called Diskinternals Linux, this has enabled me to convert the files to windows compatible and back them on to my hard drive. So great news I have not lost any data now

The short term storage issue has been resolved by recommisioning our old Seagate external hard drive until we establish a longer term solution.

Im sure some will say the above was all very simply, but not being a computer wiz, I must say Im fairly impressed with myself.

 

[moonloops]

Well I have used the My Cloud for over two years without a glitch. I heard often the woes of people and was feeling very smug that my purchase was faultless.

Seems your at WD mercy with these units as you cant get access and their firmware updates are well posted about on the web.

I had one that bricked itself after a firmware upgrade. Not sure if it is the same product as it was a WD MyBook thingy?

 

[Mrhanky]

I had one that bricked itself after a firmware upgrade. Not sure if it is the same product as it was a WD MyBook thingy?

Pretty much the same product. WD support and lack of concern with known issues is a shocker.

 

[John]

I've used and recommended Synology products for a while now - since I first tried one back in 2011.

Their support has been very good when I've had to use them. Not sure if they do a cloud-based product though.

 

[Mrhanky]

I've used and recommended Synology products for a while now - since I first tried one back in 2011.

Their support has been very good when I've had to use them. Not sure if they do a cloud-based product though.

Thanks John will have a look at their product range.

 

[markjay]

I've used and recommended Synology products for a while now - since I first tried one back in 2011.

Their support has been very good when I've had to use them. Not sure if they do a cloud-based product though.

Synology and QNAP are generally the recommended brands for home NAS.

QNAP also have a fanless model (2-bay only).

 

[Mrhanky]

Synology and QNAP are generally the recommended brands for home NAS.

QNAP also have a fanless model (2-bay only).

Qnap ones also look good, I can also reuse the 3tb red nas HD from the WD my cloud.

 

[bolide]

Synology was one of the brands I had real problems with.
1 - filesharing was extremely slow across the network
2 - setting up shares with the control panel was very hit & miss - sometimes it just didn't work
3 - remote file access was too slow to be of any use
4 - Poor support for Apple users with an outdated version of AFP
5 - extremely poor support for long file names and illegal characters
6 - copies to the NAS frequently failed and there was no log showing which files were not copied
7 - generally very slow operation, particularly via the control panel
8 - the external USB port can only be used for additional drives formatted for the Synology. It doesn't support other drives nor would it read them

In fairness to the operating system & control panel software, it did offer lots and lots of bells and whistles, but none of them worked satisfactorily

IMHO NAS drives are a fail in every respect. They're cheap, but slow. They're full-featured, but don't have the processing power to deliver what they promise. They are aimed squarely at home users and are not suitable for companies

Nick Froome