How to Recover Data from Western Digital My Book Live NAS Drive?
| Summary: Western Digital My Book Live NAS Drive is commonly used as backup storage media over a wireless network. Many WD My Book Live users have recently reported sudden data loss from the drive due to security incidents. In this post, we’ve discussed the process of successfully recovering the data from a WD My Book Live Drive infected with ransomware. |
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We received a WD My Book Live NAS drive for data recovery recently. This post describes the data recovery process from My Book Live hard drive.
Quick Navigation
- WD My Book Live NAS Drive – Data Loss Overview
- Case Overview – Data Loss from Western Digital My Book Live NAS Drive
- Steps to Recover Data from WD My Book Live Hard Drive – Personal Cloud Storage
- Data Recovery with the Help of Professional Data Recovery Software
- Conclusion
Western Digital My Book Live NAS Drive – Data Loss Overview
When users of My Book Live have reported sudden data loss, Western Digital advised the users to disconnect the drives from the internet. WD also offered data recovery services and drive replacement to affected users.
Affected users started reporting about data wiping in WD community forums. There were many users who tried different data recovery software to recover the data. Some of the users recovered data by using Stellar Data Recovery software.
Stellar has announced specialized in-lab services for users in India who lost their data due to security lapses on WD My Book Live® and My Book Live Duo® drives.
Case Overview – Data Loss from Western Digital My Book Live NAS Drive
One of the renowned architects, based out of Delhi, was using WD My Book Live NAS drive as backup media for his important work. The drive got infected with ransomware. Due to the virus, all files became inaccessible. The virus also deleted the file system of the drive and converted all files into a RAW format, with a .cag extension. Due to the file system deletion, the drive was not recognized by the system.
The customer was taking regular backups of his data on this NAS drive. When this drive was connected to the internet for taking backup from the local machine, it got infected with the ransomware. After reading this post, the customer contacted us for data recovery services.
Below, we will describe the steps we took to recover the data from the ransomware-infected My Book Live drive.
Steps to Recover Data from WD My Book Live Hard Drive – Personal Cloud Storage
WD My Book Live® NAS drive comes without a USB port, i.e., you can’t connect your personal NAS directly to your computer. This hard drive is placed inside a plastic chassis with Rj45 port, reset button, and power jack. You can only transfer data once this drive is connected via an Ethernet connection. Data recovery from My Book Live hard drive is done in two parts, which are given below.
Part 1: Disassemble WD My Book Live Hard Drive from Chassis
Our experts took the first step to remove the NAS drive from the plastic chassis that protects the drive. There are various other internal parts that are used to hold the hard drive, ports, hardware, and PCB board. This was done with the help of a set of specialized tools.
Refer to the following video to understand the complete disassembly process for “how to recover data from WD My Book Live NAS Drive”
| Note: Don’t disassemble the hard drive on your own. It may damage your hard drive and leads to permanent data loss. It is always recommended to take the help of experts to remove WD My Book Live® hard drive from the chassis. |
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Part 2: Data Recovery with the Help of Professional Data Recovery Software
After taking out the hard drive, it needs to be connected to the computer system to perform the data recovery. Connecting this hard drive to the computer is different from other traditional external hard drives. It requires multiple sets of cables as per the interface of the hard drive. Again, it requires professional data recovery experts to identify the hard drive interface to connect it to the system.
After connecting the hard drive with the system, our experts perform the recovery by using Stellar Data Recovery Toolkit software. This software is recommended to perform data recovery from hard drives, used in NAS, RAID, virtual machines, and personal clouds.
Stepwise Process to Recover Data from WD My Book Live® NAS Drive using Stellar Data Recovery Software
Step 1 – Download and install the software on the local machine.
Stellar Data Recovery Software – Toolkit Version can be downloaded from our official website. The installation process is simple and quick.
Step 2 – Attach WD My Book Live® NAS drive as external storage media.
Our data recovery experts connected the NAS drive as an external storage media by using proper connecting cables.
Note: Images used are only for reference purposes.
Step 3 – Scan the NAS drive by using Stellar Data Recovery Software.
Note: Images used are only for reference purposes.
Our experts scanned the complete hard drive by using Stellar Data Recovery – Toolkit Software. After the scanning, all the data files were listed in RAW format.
“RAW Format – In some cases when corruption level is high or data is corrupted due to ransomware, file names are changed. In those cases, the software recovers the data and list the recoverable data without the correct file name. This file format is called RAW format and the process is called RAW data recovery.”
Note: Images used are only for reference purposes.
You can still preview the content of files in RAW format, but you can’t identify the files via their respective file names.
Step 4 – Customer Verification of Data
Note: Images used are only for reference purposes.
After recovering the data, our data recovery service consultant assisted the customer in verifying the data via remote session. The customer verified the complete data through the remote session. Post his confirmation, the data recovery process was completed.
Conclusion
Data recovery from the Western Digital My Book Live® NAS drive can be extremely difficult due to its unique architecture and configuration. These complex storage drives require experts to examine the data loss problem. It is recommended that you should never try any hit and trial methods for data recovery, especially when you have sensitive data stored on the drives.
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About The Author
Girish
Girish is a blogger and writer. He has over 6 years of experience in Data Recovery and Data Eraser technology. In his free time, he writes about technical tips and tutorials.