WD's My Cloud outage harshly reiterates the 'backup rule of three'

You should have copies of mission-critical data in three different locations

- ALAINA YEE

Last week Western Digital experienced a hack of its systems, prompting the company to pull its services offline (fave.co/3MDOMC6)-including its My Cloud backup and file access service. First disclosed on April 3, the outage began on April 2, as reported on the WD My Cloud status page (fave.co/3L1S7bf). As of April 5, customers have still not received further clarification on when to expect restored access to their data.

If you've been hit by this service disruption, you're likely riding it out in one of two ways: frustratingly cut off from your files, or temporarily inconvenienced because your data isn't readily available in the cloud. The difference? In the first scenario, My Cloud's your only location for your data. In the second, you were following the rule of three.