Western Digital My Book Live/My Book Live Duo: 40% off RRP Trade in Offer @ WD Store / Authorised Re-Seller

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Western Digital My Book Live/My Book Live Duo: 40% off RRP Trade in Offer @ WD Store / Authorised Re-Seller

insertusernamehere on 07/07/2021 - 12:43 westerndigital.com (406 clicks)
Last edited 07/07/2021 - 18:16 by 2 other users

Might not be for everyone but for those that have one, might be worth an upgrade. This deal has come about as these models, when connected to the internet, were recently wiped by hackers.

They are also offering free data recovery to customers who experienced data loss due to a security incident. This offer expires 30 July 2021.

Western Digital is offering eligible customers a trade-in option to upgrade their qualifying MyBook Live or My Book Duo products to a select new My Cloud Home or My Cloud EX2 Ultra device.
Customer will receive a single use discount code to purchase one of the stated products through the online Western Digital Store or Western Digital selected authorised re-seller, subject to expiration date and offer restrictions.

Trade-In Offer
Registered customers can trade in any capacity of a Qualifying Product for one of the following products at 40% off the suggested retail price:

My Cloud Home 2TB (requires internet access)
My Cloud Home 4TB (requires internet access) - $299 at Officeworks = $179.40
My Cloud Home 6TB (requires internet access) - $375 at Officeworks = $225.00
My Cloud EX2 Ultra 2-bay NAS 4TB - $655 at Officeworks = $393.00
My Cloud EX2 Ultra 2-bay NAS 8TB - $799 at Officeworks = $479.40

Qualifying Products

The following models of My Book Live and My Book Live Duo devices from Western Digital:
My Book Live
WDBACG0030HCH
WDBACG0020HCH
WDBACG0010HCH

My Book Live Duo
WDBVHT0080JCH
WDBVHT0060JCH
WDBVHT0040JCH

Some products may not be available in every country. In such instances, Western Digital Support will identify an alternative for the customer.

Details on how to claim are in the provided link.

Computing 2TB 4TB 6TB 8TB Computer Component Computer Peripheral Data Recovery External Hard Drive Hard Drive NAS Western Digital

30 Sep 2021

Related Stores

Western Digital

closed Comments

dyziplen on 07/07/2021 - 12:50

+17

Lol, wipes all your data, and now offers a trade in.
- bpop99 on 07/07/2021 - 14:26
  
  WD - maybe not intentional, but, don't look a gift horse in the mouth!
mathew42 on 07/07/2021 - 12:50

+3

For those wondering about the hack, Hackers exploited 0-day, not 2018 bug, to mass-wipe My Book Live devices provides some helpful reading:

Last week’s mass-wiping of Western Digital My Book Live storage devices involved the exploitation of not just one vulnerability but also a second critical security bug that allowed hackers to remotely perform a factory reset without a password, an investigation shows.
- DaTa on 07/07/2021 - 12:55
  
  My thoughts exactly devices that never got updates and its time to trade them in….
- PainToad on 07/07/2021 - 13:05
  
  +6
  
  The exploit was known about for years. I stopped using way back then and switched to a NUC with external drives. Least I’m in control of security now.
Chandler on 07/07/2021 - 12:53

+2

Related PSA: for owners who did suffer data loss as a result of this hack, you have until July 31st to get a case number from Western Digital to get some free data recovery.

https://www.westerndigital.com/support/my-book-live/data-rec…
PainToad on 07/07/2021 - 13:07

+3

Do you have to actually send the old drive back? I’ve been considering shucking the thing because it’s been sitting in the cupboard for years.
slowmo on 07/07/2021 - 13:08

+4

i highly advise people looking at WD's solutions and give them a wide berth.

at the beginning they literally gave their own customers the middle finger and went 'not my problem' when those issues arose and people start getting their WD hdds wiped.

they should stick to making harddisks and not storage cloud solutions.
- bpop99 on 07/07/2021 - 14:36
  
  +3
  
  To add to this - it was a known vulnerability that they choose to not patch, in devices which they choose to stop supporting, despite there being numerous devices still perfectly valid and functioning.
  
  This was the result of a commercial decision, and one they have not stated they will change. Unless this policy changes, this will almost certainly happen again
- nuker on 07/07/2021 - 17:06
  
  WD Elements 12TB for $260 was quite nice solution, will get more any time :)
Miami Mall Alien on 07/07/2021 - 13:17

+7

And that's why we have offline backups, son.
Ausdave on 07/07/2021 - 13:26

Please let me know if I'm missing something here.

How would people use the free data-recovery service if they have to trade in their drives?
AuzzieGumtree on 07/07/2021 - 13:26

Asking for a 'friend' - if they have a WD Live that is covered under this scheme but was actually damaged by Lightning any chance of getting data recovery from it? my 'friend' has tried all the you tube solutions and nothing has worked - is it worth sending back…?
BillyG687 on 07/07/2021 - 14:42

+1

Haven't lost data, but part of the affected models. I like the idea of the trade in, but 40% off still doesn't feel like a good enough deal.
- czechboi on 07/07/2021 - 14:52
  
  +1
  
  Same here, it should be a free swap. You have already lost trust in your products and now they want us to get another one of their products for a cop out price.
  - ballistykx on 07/07/2021 - 15:47
    
    Exact same situation here, not sure I want to buy another one of their products even at 40% off.
- PainToad on 07/07/2021 - 16:33
  
  Counter argument, not that I completely agree with said argument, you can’t expect a company to support a device forever.
  
  It’s like blaming Microsoft for not providing you security updates on a Windows XP box.
  
  The vulnerability has been known for a long time. Unofficial DIY solutions have been posted on their forums if you’re willing to SSH in.
  - BillyG687 on 07/07/2021 - 16:45
    
    +1
    
    Yeah, but Windows XP was supported for 12 years. Not a great example.
    
    Thing is, these are back up devices and hard drives typically have a reasonable live expectancy.
    - PainToad on 07/07/2021 - 17:03
      
      Unfortunately I don’t think they provided any guarantees for how long they would provide support?
      - slowmo on 07/07/2021 - 17:21
        
        @PainToad: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/faq/windows
        
        PainToad on 07/07/2021 - 17:27
        
        +1
        
        @slowmo: I was referring to WD not promising any sort of support length.
        
        The lesson I learn is roll your own NAS solution.
        
        Miami Mall Alien on 07/07/2021 - 17:42
        
        @PainToad:
        
        The lesson I learn is roll your own NAS solution.
        
        At the end of the day, anything connected to the Internet could suffer from such vulnerabilities, even more expensive off-the-shelf NAS devices or custom NAS solutions.
        
        At least with a real NAS, they are infinitely more fault-tolerant, resilient, more thoroughly-supported (especially regarding security updates) and much easier to automate with regards to backups.
        
        Still, I would advise against personal cloud servers unless you absolutely cannot live without it (and I'd wager most people easily can). I would rather mirror my data onto some file hosting provider's cloud and then access it from there and have it synchronise to a NAS via a secure tunnel, then directly expose a personal NAS to the Internet.
    - Miami Mall Alien on 07/07/2021 - 17:08
      
      hard drives typically have a reasonable live expectancy.
      
      Define "reasonable"? Virtually all consumer-grade computing products (which these WD My Books are) have 12 month manufactory warranties as a general rule. They don't feature 5-year enterprise-grade warranties for a reason, so I'd argue any expectation of product longevity beyond 12 months for consumer HDDs is highly debatable. It's a different story if you're buying higher-end, datacentre/enterprise-grade HDDs.
      
      HDDs are disposable products with a finite lifespan and I would argue, far more disposable and shorter-lived than PC operating systems, as a general rule. Especially given they're a magnetic storage medium, hence their susceptibility to all kinds of physical failures is orders of magnitude higher than virtually any other storage medium.
      
      The problem is the average consumer just expects budget external HDDs to store all of their irreplaceable family photos and data forever and they do not realise that any HDD, including enterprise-grade models, can fail unexpectedly at any time, hence the only insurance policy you can have to mitigate that are backups.
      - slowmo on 07/07/2021 - 17:11
        
        @Miami Mall Alien: i'm going to disagree with that point about consumer expectations.
        
        sales/marketing feeds those expectations. the average consumers are not the ones at fault here. WD totally is.
      - BillyG687 on 07/07/2021 - 17:15
        
        +1
        
        @Miami Mall Alien: Virtually all consumer grade computing products? I disagree completely. These My Book products have a 3 year Warranty, countless consumer model hard drives have 5 year warranties, and consistently last longer than that.
        
        Then you have Apple products which are mostly 2 years, a lot of consumer PC power supplies are 5, 7 or 10 year warranties, Asus laptops like their ROG lines are typically 3 year warranties.
        
        So, the claim that the general rule for consumer-grade computing product warranties being 12-months is a bit bogus. Then that doesn't even factor in your ACCC rights which takes into account the reasonable life expectancy for the product and also the price you paid.
        
        A great article talking about the lifespan of Hard Drives and their expected life is here: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/how-long-do-disk-drives-last/
        
        Miami Mall Alien on 07/07/2021 - 17:33
        
        @BillyG687: Let me reiterate:
        
        Data is more valuable than hardware. What good is a hypothetical lifetime warranty guarantee with a HDD if hackers/hardware failures wipe out your data and you don't have backups? No OEM is going to give you a data recovery/replacement guarantee.
        
        Backups are the only way to guard against unexpected hardware failures and/or malicious attacks and everyone should be backing up their data.
        
        End of discussion. It's not the 1980s anymore; people need to get out of this ridiculously antiquated mindset.
        
        The only correct answer to literally every single story beginning with: "I lost all my data when my HDD ________" is: "Where are your backups?", because anything else is missing the point entirely.
        
        You don't ask someone whose house burnt down: "Did you sue the manufacturer of the wood/bricks/building materials it was constructed out of, for not warranting their products to withstand your particular fire?". You ask them if they have insurance, to which anyone who answers "no" would be regarded as insane, because that's basically the kind of logic that drives people who store their entire life's digital footprint on a disposable, magnetic storage medium that is incredibly prone to failure, without having any kind of self-insured way of recovering that data.
        
        There's no point huffing and puffing about "mUh rEaSoNaBLe eXpEcTAYsHuNZ!!1!" after the fact, because you cannot reasonably expect when zero-day vulnerabilities, hackers or hardware failures will strike. There's no magical way of calculating those probabilities.
        
        In principle, I agree that consumers are getting shafted by OEMs when it comes to warranty terms but that still doesn't change the fact that you need to have to backups if you're storing anything at all priceless and irreplaceable on your HDDs.
        
        These My Book products have a 3 year Warranty, countless consumer model hard drives have 5 year warranties, and consistently last longer than that.
        
        Then you have Apple products which are mostly 2 years, a lot of consumer PC power supplies are 5, 7 or 10 year warranties, Asus laptops like their ROG lines are typically 3 year warranties.
        
        Yes and then you have pretty much everything else that has a 12 month warranty at best and that includes most pre-built OEM PCs/laptops (without upgraded warranties), virtually all peripherals from monitors to keyboards/mice and most categories of PC components.
        
        Apple products, ASUS ROG, etc are not consumer-grade, those are pro-sumer/premium products that have longer-term warranties factored into their marked up costs (which are significantly higher than competing consumer-grade products).
        
        BillyG687 on 07/07/2021 - 19:26
        
        @Miami Mall Alien: Honestly, the building materials you use in your home aren’t guaranteeing that they will withstand fire (unless they explicitly state some sort of fire resistance, even then it’s usually around how it reacts to fire rather than surviving a fire). So, they have no need to warrant that. It’s a bit of a silly comparison.
        
        I do agree with your other point on back ups, I never disagreed with that. People don’t follow the 3, 2, 1 rule for back ups. Most don’t even attempt any back up.
        
        Also, I agree mostly with not having your own personal cloud. When I worked in the relevant area, I constantly saw failures in NAS systems causing data loss. Again, most didn’t have a fall back for their data.
        
        It’s not hard to have an appropriate back up solution, nor is it that expensive in the long run.
0 0 0 on 07/07/2021 - 18:26

I've applied. Anyone know which NAS out of the lot on offer is the best value?
- Xpaw on 08/07/2021 - 03:15
  
  Im in the same boat and am thinking that the larger the drive the better the saving. I will see what they offer the 8tb solution for
Chris McMahon on 08/07/2021 - 05:25

Trade-In Procedures

If the Customer is not participating in the Data Recovery Service Offer, then the Customer must return the original Qualifying Product to Western Digital within 30-days of opening a case with Western Digital Support.

Don't think you can keep you old drives or NAS. WD want them back.

Pretty shitty offer at compensation if you ask me.

Eg a My Cloud EX2 Ultra 2-bay NAS 8TB* for $479.40:

8TB external drives go for around $300, so you're spending an extra ~$180 + whatever it costs you to return your original NAS above that, for a mediocre (2.5/5) rated 2 slot NAS which may suffer than same fate when WD eventually abandons it too.

*You're actually getting 2x 4TB WD Red drives, which are around $150ea.
- czechboi on 08/07/2021 - 08:23
  
  If WD want them back then offer a replacement. I am not going to participate but that doesnt mean they can get my drive back. I bought it and it is mine now. If they want it back they can purchase it back off me.
- 0 0 0 on 08/07/2021 - 08:28
  
  Can you get a reasonable 2 bay diskless NAS for $180? Just want to see what my options are
  - Chris McMahon on 08/07/2021 - 16:20
    
    Can you get a reasonable 2 bay diskless NAS for $180?
    
    You can get a Synology DiskStation DS220j 2 Bay NAS for ~$230.
    
    It's a lot newer than a My Cloud EX2 Ultra (5 years old). You'd get a longer support life out of it. And a better ecosystem (IMO).
    - 0 0 0 on 08/07/2021 - 21:06
      
      Cool thanks - will have to investigate. Using cloud for backup at the moment and portable HDDs
- PainToad on 08/07/2021 - 14:15
  
  WD want them back.
  
  This is just petty. What are WD going to do with nearly 10 year old drives besides bin them. Revoking vote.
  - Chris McMahon on 08/07/2021 - 16:24
    
    This is just petty.
    
    It really is. As is the 40% off "list" price. Which is probably still above cost price. So they are giving away nothing.
whirlpool_guy on 08/07/2021 - 09:37

Fool me once, shame on you…