I just bought a 3T My Cloud device for my home network. I haven’t set it up yet, and have been checking the manual. It is important to me that the data on the NAS gets backed up automatically to another location. My concern is that the manual says the safe points can only be restored to a new, identical MyCloud.
If this unit proves reliable and works flawlessly for say, 4 years and then fails, and the product has been discontinued, will I be able to recover my data? Or will I have to go search eBay for a used one so I can get my data back, then still probably need to buy a new NAS?
On the other hand, if this turns out to be a **bleep** and dies in 3 months, it appears I will have to add insult to injury by being forced to buy a second **bleep** to get my data back, and then again still having to go out and buy another new (and hopefully more reliable) NAS.
Either way, the safe points sound completely useless to me. I’m debating taking this back to the store before I even plug it in.
Am I missing something? Is there a utility that allows you to recover data from a safepoint? Otherwise I can’t for the life of me figure out how this is a useful feature.
Thanks,
Bob
Safepoint is not actually a backup tool, it’s a Recovery tool that lets you restore your My Cloud in case of a crash.
Recovering Content with a Safepoint
In the unlikely event your WD My Cloud fails, you can restore all content and configuration settings from a previously created safepoint. To recover data and configuration settings, click Start Recovery.
There are other tools that you can use to create actual backups, just not from the UI.
I’m not completely sure I understand the distinction… typically people backup data so they can recover it if the original gets damaged. Nevertheless I stand by my opinion: if a “recovery” can only be accomplished with hardware that may not be available when you need it, that “recovery” can not be successful.
Thanks for the reply. I think I’ll be taking this back.
Hi
This is what I am doing which works perfectly for me. I have a My Book Live which I backup using Sync Toy. I have a Toshiba USB portable drive which is connected to my Netgear N900 router via USB. This makes my USB portable drive a NAS in my home network. I then use WD Smartware to create a safepoint which kind of replicates all data from My Book Live to this USB drive.
I have tested doing a full restore off this safepoint on the USB successfully.
Hope this helps !
Reading through this troubles me.
I just set up my 3TB My Cloud and also bought a 3TB My Book that I plugged into the My Cloud directly to use as a safepoint backup.
Are you guys saying that if my My Cloud dies and I buy a new one that I won’t be able to just plug my My Book into the new one and restore all of my content to the new one through a safepoint restore?
And is it possible to access the safepoint data through a windows machine or is it somehow encrypted when the backup is created?
Thanks.
