WD Live is not fit for purpose

I’ve only had the sorry excuse for a NAS for 2 weeks and having copied all my data to it at the end of the first week, it packed up on me. Here’s my support ticket:-

The green light on my new My Book Live has been constantly flashing green and the drive is incredibly unresponsive. this has been going on for 24 hours now. If I unplug the network cable the light turns red but the HDD is still going crazy. If I plug the network cable back in the green light comes on starts flashing even though there is no other device on my network apart from the router itself and even if I unplug the WAN port of the router I still see the same thing. So a powered ethernet connection to the LAN port of my WD My Book Live causes the green light to start flashing and it to become almost totally unresponsive. Can you advise what I should do about this?   

And here’s the 4 days later pathetic response I received today:-

Please make sure that you have updated your data. Once you have done this i would advice to do a factory restore as it seems that the firmware on the unit is having an problem. This can be caused by many things that’s why the reset is needed.

I think the “many things” sums up this “can’t reliably store data for more than a week without needing to be factory restored” sorry excuse for a device.

So, in summary, the WD Smartware doesn’t work and hasn’t worked for over a year and a half and locks up any machine it is installed on, the latest firmware on the device is, in my experience, only reliable for a period of up to 7 days, and the chargeable WD2GO software doesn’t show you all your files. This disaster of a product really couldn’t get any worse unless it blew up.

What do you have to do to get a job in the coding department of WD? Know your backside from your elbow? It would seem that’s optional.

Check to make sure you are on the latest firmware 02.10.09-124.  If you are new to the drive - open the UI  at http://mybooklive (or on a Mac http://mybooklive.local - then click on settings, then in the system tab click on updates, and you should see your firmware version listed.  If it is not 02.10.09-124 - then click check for updates and update the firmware.  Before doing this - since you are having problems with the drive - I would suggest powering down the drive - and then pull the plug - let the drive sit with no power for 15 minutes - then plug it back it.  This should clear out anything that may be corrupt in the RAM disk.

Also - disable remote access, disable iTunes Server, disable FTP, and also disable the Media server.  If you are only using the drive as a backup device and NAS drive - then you don’t need all of these services running.  There are two different tabs in the settings pane of the UI where you will disable the various services.

Depending on what kind of files you may have “mass dumped” into the Public share - the various background services may be trying to crunch through the files and reformat pictures and update the Twonkey Media Server and WD2Go databases.  These processes can take a long time - especially the first time around.  Only put files in the Public share that you want to make available to the Media Server and WDPhotos - keep everything in a user created share other than public.  Do not copy your entire iTunes folder into the public share either - it may cause problems with the media crawler task.

Can you indicate whether you are using the MyBook Live in a Mac, PC or Mixed Environment?  Wireless/Wired/Mixed?

~Scott

I am on the latest firmware and it wasn’t the database rebuild that was the problem. I’ve since factory restored, put the same data back in the same Public folder (I want to be able to access all my files over the internet) and the drive is fine. It looks like it was purely a firmware glitch. The product is just unreliable.

Thanks for trying to help though.

I’m Win7 only and on 300mbps wifi.

enable ssh… if you dont you will be like the rest of us soon

mine has been down since Oct, only purpouse is to hold the door open.

Mine packed up a few days ago. Green light stays on and all you can hear is a faint rhythmic click noise from the unit. It’s nowhere to be found on the network and the UI obviously is non-existent. Left unplugged overnight and still same results. What a **bleep**.

Really, really dissapointing product and now that I have done a little research, not sure I should have purchased this unit as I am reading a lot of bad press about WD’s support and the failure rate of this product seems pretty high.

Anyone here have a positive experience with WD RMA process?

Navymd wrote:

enable ssh… if you dont you will be like the rest of us soon

Yes, having done a bit more reading I’m going to do this ASAP. Thanks for the tip.

Good idea indeed.  To make it more secure you can change root’s password using the passwd command once you’ve sucessfully logged on to the MyBook Live’s Linux console.

Love how the mods deleted my response to this message. Western Digital deleting my response and posting the same generic responses to the issues at hands tells me you don’t give a [deleted] about your customer base. Yes thats right,thats exactly what they did! You are acting like a slimy used car salesman. Countless threads on the same issues over and over and over and over… Newest firmware hasn’t fixed any issues…I read a suggestion disabling all of the features you advertise the drive as being able to do?..false advertising…yep…I will never recommend WD to anyone…The drive cycles continuously when it is not even being used. Even with all features off and unplugged from the network it still cycles. THIS DRIVE IS NOT WORKING PROPERLY PERIOD! It should not be this slow. This isn’t the first time I have had issues with your drives…Anyone with the same issues do your self and other customers a favor and report WD  to the [deleted]. Western Digital should step up, acknowledge the problems and fix them and if they cant give us a refund. If anyone is reading this…yes you should be mad…they are pulling a fast one over you…this is complete [deleted]…by the way if they delete this post…well just solidifies my point even more.

EM123 wrote:

by the way if they delete this post…well just solidifies my point even more.

No, it just means you’ve violated the terms of service you agreed to … again.

@ EM123 

We truly apologize for the issue you are having with your drive, is frustrating and I completely understand the situation because I been there too. 

However, there are several ways to make a statement and violation the WD community guidelines that you agree when you register into this forum is not one of them. As part of our job every time that you or any other user violates the guidelines we will remove the post. You clearly violate the NOT LEGAL VENUE guideline and for that reason your post was removed. 

Now, that been said. Did you contact Western Digital directly with this issue? Did you reach them by phone or by email? I will personally make sure to escalated this issue and solve the problem as soon as possible. 

But, we will have to follow the rules and regulation of this forum no matter what the problem is, there is always a way to solve the issue and we are in the best disposition of solving any problem.

Please pm me with the issue you are currently having in order to correct the case and provide you with a proper solution.

Guess what I didn’t do? Yep, it seemed to be working OK so I didn’t enable SSH.

Guess what happened? Yep, it started flashing the green light again, and yep, I now can’t access the web interface so I can’t reset it. All I’ve done is copy files to the Public folder!!! That’s it, just copy files to the Public folder.

I’m not being funny, but legally how can they keep selling this product when the firmware doesn’t work and the software doesn’t work. Surely this is illegal???

I’ve just found the recessed reset switch on the back of the MBL and I’ve held it in for 30 seconds but the green light is still flashing and the MBL is still not reachable on HTTP.

How can you have a product with a reset switch that doesn’t reset the product?

Is WD a joke company? Is Jeremy Beadle about to knock on my door and tell my I’ve been punked? Surely they are operating illegally knowingly selling a completely unusable product.

LOL this Caph is cracking me up. . . Should have enabled SSH…

Chaos311 wrote:

LOL this Caph is cracking me up. . . Should have enabled SSH…

That just about sums up this product though doesn’t it? You’re saying that people buying the product should find out about a back door access that isn’t mentioned in the product manual, then enable it, then change the password. Purely because you know that the product doesn’t work.

Unfortunately for WD, selling a product that doesn’t work, is illegal. LOL, this WD is cracking me up … should sell products that are fit for purpose! Double LOL.

Chaos311 wrote:

LOL this Caph is cracking me up. . . Should have enabled SSH…

Chaos311, you registered two hours ago as new user, posted to “Re: Share access” and then 10 other threads in a manner that shows you know about the MBL product (and its many failings). I’m assuming you work for WD? Or you were recently banned and have just rejoined?

The MBL dos work. It’s just that a few of the firmware releases were not tested properly before release.

CaphWD wrote:


Chaos311 wrote:

LOL this Caph is cracking me up. . . Should have enabled SSH…


That just about sums up this product though doesn’t it? You’re saying that people buying the product should find out about a back door access that isn’t mentioned in the product manual, then enable it, then change the password. Purely because you know that the product doesn’t work.

 

Unfortunately for WD, selling a product that doesn’t work, is illegal. LOL, this WD is cracking me up … should sell products that are fit for purpose! Double LOL.

Myron wrote:

The MBL dos work. It’s just that a few of the firmware releases were not tested properly before release.

The CURRENT firmware release doesn’t work Myron, the CURRENT one. Which one do you think it’s important for them to test, the one two years ago, the one 5 years ago, or the CURRENT one that everyone that buys an MBL is going to upgrade to.

Seriously, if you haven’t got anything worthwhile posting then do us all a favour.

Look.  

People who think that, if it doesn’t work for THEM, it doesn’t work for ANYONE, are loons.  

The CURRENT firmware works for 99% of people, or more, including myself.

Are some people going to have issues?   Absolutely.  With ANY firmware release, there will ALWAYS be a select number of users that will encounter issues, and a smaller percentage that will encounter significant issues.

Stop painting everyone with the same brush.

TonyPh12345 wrote:

Look.  

 

People who think that, if it doesn’t work for THEM, it doesn’t work for ANYONE, are loons.  

 

The CURRENT firmware works for 99% of people, or more, including myself.

  

Tony, Tony, Tony, you have just made my day with that post. I’ve not stopped chuckling for the past few minutes. I don’t know whether it’s your blatantly ficticious yet implausibly exact 99% statistic or the massive irony of you posting this to a forum littered with threads about how the current firmware doesn’t work that is tickling me the most. The icing on the cake is seeing threads like “cannot access http://myb​ooklive” and “Can not longer access mybooklive​/UI/#” with hundreds and thousands of reads respectively, and posts like “The RAMLOG only has 20Mb allocated to it. Once that fills it disables itself  … Finally the system partition gets full-up and other services will begin to malfunction” by Myron on the very same page as this thread referring to the current firmware.

I don’t know if you were aware of how ironic your post was (it was dictionary definition quality), but I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt on this one. I’m certainly going to be laughing at your post all evening - you’ve really cheered me up with that one!

By the way, the response from WD is not that I have a faulty drive and that it should be returned, so they are not treating this as a one off problem (but then you’d have to be a blind loon to think that having read the posts in this forum, right Tony?). Apparently having the NAS box lock up twice in three weeks seems par for the course and just requires another factory reset.

Now back to chuckling …