I have an idea for the My Book Live firmware. WDTony, you taking notice of this.
When the firmware update is performed that the previous firmware is put to one side. If for any reason there is a problem with the Dashboard UI then there is some form of mechanism to revert to the previous firmware to debrick the MBL.
An idea could be pressing the reset button and waiting for the GREEN or RED led to show then within 1 minute pressing the reset button a second time initiates reversal of the firmware upgrade. If the reset button is pressed any time after one minute has passed then the normal reset of the networking parameters to DHCP, clearing the owner password and the resetting of the root password then reboot happens.
This is to mimic a functionality of the 500Gb LaCie NAS I have and which had a wonderful debricking procedure. With the LaCie NAS if the switch is turned off and on within three seconds of turning on the NAS reverts to it’s factory pre-installed firmware and then the firmware upgrades can be attempted again. LaCie’s method of debricking a seriously bricked NAS works perfecty.
The WD MBL URGENTLY needs some sort of debricking mechanism.
During power-up, if the reset button is held in then the boot process performs a firmware recovery as opposed to a normal boot-up sequence.
There should also be a way to enable (if disabled) SSH if the Dashboard UI dies.
Having SSH enabled has helped me recover my MBL’s Dashboard UI twice and not having to send it to Western Digital for a Warranty Swap.
Even my LinkSys has an EXCELLENT (yet un-documented) debricking procedure. During start-up it looks for a TFTP server on a particular IP address and when found it looks for a specifically named firmware file.
Why can’t the MBL have a user debricking procedure. Actually, was was a debricking procedure not designed into the MBL from the beginning? (The LaCie drive has a excellent debricking dunction.)
