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Disconnect it from any internet-side connections, including your computer, RIGHT NOW!
There is a bug, most likely a bad actor hack, that is WIPING ALL CONTENT FROM THESE DRIVES!
And if your drive is encrypted, this data loss is likely permanent! Lots of people have already lost years worth of data to whatever it is that's happening. Part of the problem is these drives are accessed via a cloud infrastructure, I'm guessing someone is figuring out how to map local IP addresses in this cloud system, found a weakness in their management software, but hasn't yet written a bot to wipe them en masse and is doing them pretty slowly - for now.
So eject the drive from your Windows Explorer or Mac Finder and and disconnect the ethernet cable to it, optionally just power it down until Western Digital figures out just what is going on and gets a fix released. These drives received their last update in 2015, which means they'd be long-past dead where I live, but probably working fine for lots of people at lower altitudes.
And PLEASE, copy this and post it publicly on your blog if you have a lot of computer people who are likely to have infrastructure like this on their systems! This needs to be spread far and wide, hopefully faster than people's external drives are getting wiped!
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/mass-data-wipe-in-my-book-devices-prompts-warning-from-western-digital/
There is a bug, most likely a bad actor hack, that is WIPING ALL CONTENT FROM THESE DRIVES!
And if your drive is encrypted, this data loss is likely permanent! Lots of people have already lost years worth of data to whatever it is that's happening. Part of the problem is these drives are accessed via a cloud infrastructure, I'm guessing someone is figuring out how to map local IP addresses in this cloud system, found a weakness in their management software, but hasn't yet written a bot to wipe them en masse and is doing them pretty slowly - for now.
So eject the drive from your Windows Explorer or Mac Finder and and disconnect the ethernet cable to it, optionally just power it down until Western Digital figures out just what is going on and gets a fix released. These drives received their last update in 2015, which means they'd be long-past dead where I live, but probably working fine for lots of people at lower altitudes.
And PLEASE, copy this and post it publicly on your blog if you have a lot of computer people who are likely to have infrastructure like this on their systems! This needs to be spread far and wide, hopefully faster than people's external drives are getting wiped!
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/mass-data-wipe-in-my-book-devices-prompts-warning-from-western-digital/
