Terastation TS-RXL Encrypt/Decrypt

[microtek]

Hello Buffalo Team,

we are going to format the hard drives encrypting with the 128 bit AES built-in Terastation function.

Reading the user manual, it seems that the crypt key is hardware based, meaning the drive cannot be decrypted outside that unit.

So, how can we recover all data if Terastation (not the disks) is damaged?

Thanks.

[davo]

Have a backup!

[microtek]

Hi davo,

backup is always a choice, but doesn't seem TS-RXL encryption design a single point of failure?

Right now, we are using an unencrypted RAID 5 with 4 Hard Drives (XFS): if one of the drives fails, we can recover data on the array by replacing the damaged drive.
Even if the Terastation dies (not the disks), we are still enable to recover all the data.

With the same RAID configuration, but in encrypted mode, if TS-RXL dies we loose everything, because the AES key is not exportable.
Or am I missing something?

Thanks.

[davo]

You're correct, if you have encryption enabled and if the housing dies then the data is gone, so going, yet another reason why you should always have a backup.