WD My Cloud 4Tb - Lost full content of Share Folder and Safepoint

Hullo,

Yesterday I lost a whole content of my main custom share folder on My Cloud 3Tb and simultaneously all data on my Safepont backup drive (sic!) (3Tb).

Previously I have noticed that My Cloud frequently disconnected itself from my home network. Thus I had to reboot it by detaching power supply. There was also a problem with recognition of my USB external storage attached to My Cloud (Safepoint drive).

Finally I did a Safe Factory Restore and I switched my main share folder setting from public to private. While doing that my main custom share folder disappeared from share list (Windows Explorer and web UI). When I switched back to public it reappeared again.

I think in this moment I noticed in Windows Explorer that in my main custom folder share sub-folder (huge volume - about 2.7TB) content became disappeared - there were files and sub-folders there.

After certain time the share was emptied. There were only one folder (empty) and one sub-folder (empty).

I was struck dumb discovering that the Safepoint drive was also emptied. All folders remains in the root but they were completely empty!

As WD assures it was to be the safest protection for the My Cloud data!.
Thus I have lost almost 3Tb of precious data.

Today I contacted WD Support and they confirmed no data on the both drive. They, in the preliminary way proposed me an exchange (drive is on warranty) free of charge (after recovery attempt)! The final decision should be confirmed. They have advised me to contact recovery service company to retrieve the data. Of course they do not cover the fee.

They have not been able to explain why and how was it possible to loose the data from Safepoint drive.

I am extremely disappointed. In such case the whole WD idea of data security is totally untrustworthy. I will never be able to trust it and put on it any valuable data, any data.

I wonder whether if any of you have the similar problem.

I would be deeply thankful if you could furnish me with any potential cause of that disaster and if the lost data could be recoverable.

Thank you in advance and be careful, do not trust a Safepoint stability and security.

I wish I made a backup on a separate drive and not on attached to My Cloud one. Well, I wish I bought and used My Cloud at all.

Thank you in advance for any suggestion on the above.

 

This step probably wiped your data.

 

Thank you for your response.
No it did not. It is recommended restore without loosing data. I have done it several times.
I think the fact of switching between public-private share access caused files deletion.
But what is frustrating there was/is no warning prompt/pop-up informing of the danger of switching share access for share with content. I had 3 shares. Both of them switched that way were emptied. Not the Public one untouched.
That is why I think this could be the source of the disaster, wouldn't it?

I am not an expert, as you can see, perhaps I misunderstood functionality of changing share access...?

What is your opinion?
It is still important to me to find the culprit.

Regards

 

Can't offer you a reason for this disaster. But I can tell you the way forward.

Use a NAS. QNAP highly recommended. Synology the only other player in town.

As you've found out first hand, anything else (from NAS want to be's like the My Cloud to simple external enclosures) just doesn't compare when you have important data to protect.

 

All the data recovery possible can be done by yourself as long as the original drive hasn't completely failed. This is what to do. Buy two new 3TB or larger hard drives. Use Linux to do a clone of the MyCloud drive to one of the new drives. It will copy every one and zero from the MyCloud drive over to the new drive. Then run Recuva, an excellent and free data recovery program, on the cloned drive and use the second new hard drive to write the files to. The reason I recommend the two new drives and cloning the original is that the old drive showed some signs of possible failure and we want to be as gentle as possible. There are no guarantees but I think that most or all of your data is easily recoverable.

Next time, make sure that you have other backups of your data. Also watch out for problems or any sort of signs of failure in a hard drive. If you have only one place where you are storing things and that drive gives you any problem whatsoever, backing up that data is the number one priority, not playing with things like "Safe Factory Restore."

 

I 2nd that.. My new big project (over the summer when I'm hopefully in the US) is to get/build a NAS... Tiller any recommendations? The thing that turns me off from all these pre-built NAS's is that they have ARM processors and hardly look powerful enough when I need to for example stream 4k content from a NAS... Will I be better off building my own NAS system? Also, it's seems everyone recommends WD Red NAS drives.. Your opinions tiller?

 

I too recommend the WD RED Drives. In certain tests, the 3TB versions were faster than the 4TB versions. These are not benchmarks (you should know me by now), these are real world transfers of my notes, finished images and RAW files in 10 to 20 folders located under a master (client) folder.

As mentioned, QNAP is what I would recommend and I agree about underpowered anything (what a surprise, huh).

See:
https://www.qnap.com/i/useng/product/


I would recommend the TS-470 Pro and above. Along with maxing out the RAM, selecting an Intel i3 or above based platform and having at least two drives bays free in your projections for total Data capacity for the next 18months to 2years.

Yes, this gets pricey real fast. Computers are cheap. A good NAS unit can start at ~$3K (with RAM and Drives) and quickly move to the $10K level before you blink (I buy spare drives immediately for each NAS I build).

See:
https://www.qnap.com/i/useng/product/model.php?II=107&event=2

The 6 Bay QNAP TS-670 Pro is a very popular unit with my customers. Loaded with 16GB RAM, an i3 @3.3GHz with 2 cores and 4 threads, you can have multiple VM's running along with almost every single app QNAP offers and 12TB of DATA in a 4 Disk RAID5 array with 4TB RED's. Along with a couple of Hot Spare drives at the ready too.

Why does it get so expensive so fast? Because you either need to double the NAS setup you're buying to ensure you have a backup. Or, you need a dozen or so external USB drives to backup the NAS data to (and keep them rotated and at least some off-site).

The upfront costs of a proper NAS put off a lot of people. They even think that they can build one cheaper.

But make no mistake, QNAP (and Synology) have this market cornered (at least for the foreseeable future). This is all they do and they do it at an Excellent or above level.

To think that anything other than a real NAS company can offer you protection (and for the cheapest price over the long term) for your data is to put it mildly, a little foolhardy. I ran many 'nas-like' workstations over the years with the sleepless nights and the furrowed brows to prove it (trying to get data from them when they failed). QNAP has put an end to that continuing nightmare.

You know the story: either pay now or pay later. Just hope you don't pay with your data.


Hope this helps.

 

Thanks for the suggestion....My budget is not that extreme... I can do $300-350 tops.. It seems in that, only ARM processors are possible unless you do a build like @HTWingNut did... I'm actually tempted to do that...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...llet-and-bought-my-new-whs-2011-build.701517/

I think in my budget that's the best thing to do...

Otherwise, will the option of an external RAID enclosure work?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Icybox-External-4-Bay-RAID-Enclosure/dp/B009O73WA0

This is much cheaper... Tell you what, I'll make a thread about this.. I need to decide and budget accordingly now..

 

I thank you very much for your excellent suggestion and recommendation.

You have recommended recuva for the recovery. I have found 'the best 2015 recovery piece piece software (Top 10 Review) called Data Rescue PC3 - 99$.
Is it worth spending the many on the 'best' program, will it be more accurate on recovery?

Happy to be able to recover my data. Once more - huge thanks.

 

Thank you, I will.
You should have told me that before.

Best regards

 

The beauty of an exact clone of the old drive and using a third drive to write the recovered data to is that you can use as many different recovery programs as many different times as you want. Try Recuva first. If it doesn't do what you want, then pay for the other software.

 

Thank you for elucidation.