How to unbrick a totally dead WD My Cloud

I followed the guide from Sammarbella on page 1.

My cloud have the yellow blinking led and i’m not been able to do the 4 or 40 sec. reset.

I have the file roofs.img to write over the 2 raid partitions and i’m in Ubuntu utility named Disks.

But i see no option to write it over the partitions on the My Cloud.

Sammarbella wrote:

"Open disk util in ubuntu (disk, disks, gnome-disks several names…just alt-f2 “gnome-disks) select the first raid partition in MyCloud HDD , click on the gears icon (the one in the middle of the util screen)”

“click on “Restore Disk Image”, browse using the combobox and select rootfs.img.”

I see no gears icon  and have no option to choose for “Restore Disk Image”

Solved on the way JRman described.

The only thing is that he forgot to say that you must type “sudo” before the command to overwrite the raid.

Otherwise you get the error  permission denied :smiley:

I am read a few branches on the forum and did throught manual. Nas is works fine, but on the old frimeware.I try to update it. the process of downloading, then install and reboot after the firmware is old.

I made a bash script that redo a fresh virgin my cloud system with any disk, or to an image file. From scratch. See this thread.

Hi all,

I have the 4TB version. Initially I was having issue that I can’t access the webUI with error access denied. I have no other choice but to do the 4secs reset. After this the issue is still there and then I tried the 40secs reset. This made me lose the SSH access and I still got the error access denied from the webUI.

The question is how long does it takes for the device to initialize at first boot after overwriting both raid mount with the rootfs.img?

Nazar78 wrote:

Hi all,

 

I have the 4TB version. Initially I was having issue that I can’t access the webUI with error access denied. I have no other choice but to do the 4secs reset. After this the issue is still there and then I tried the 40secs reset. This made me lose the SSH access and I still got the error access denied from the webUI.

 

The question is how long does it takes for the device to initialize at first boot after overwriting both raid mount with the rootfs.img?

I got it fixed, the extracted rootfs image was corrupted somehow when transferred to a VM as I can’t loop mount the image. Thanks to this useful thread… :smiley: Did a few tweaks, 50-70Mb/s up and 60-80Mb/s down.

Just to share how I restored the rootfs.img below. If you do this, be prepared to void the warranty. For my case it was already voided on day one due to root :flushed:

Details with resized photos :

1) Remove the harddisk:
Place up right on a flat surface with the device rear facing you, slide in two 15cm rulers into both rear openings (starting from the top curves all the way till the bottom end). Alternatively you can use two credit cards but you need to align them near the inner/outter catch clips. Apply light pressure at the top of the device towards the flat surface while you gently tap on the two rulers inwards. The plastic catch clips should easily pop off after a few taps. To remove the cover, slide it out towards the front of the device along the slide guide. After sliding the harddisk out, remove the three obvious securing screws from the PCB then separate the PCB from the harddisk via its sata connector. Be extra careful not to damage the “protruding” LED light.

2) Three options to mount the harddisk:

  • a) Mount the WD Red harddisk to any PC extra sata port and plug in the sata power cable. Hotplug would be great.

  • b) Get a SATA-to-USB cable/adapter. Never tried this but I think you will need a way to power up the WD Red harddisk.

  • c) Get an External Harddisk enclosure. Doesn't matter USB2/3/eSata as long as it supports Sata harddisks.

3) Restore the two 2GB Raid partitions with rootfs.img extracted from the official firmware:
If you're using Linux Distro, I'll assume you'll know the rest of the recovery steps. But for Windows, best is to download any LiveCD/gparted ISO or Linux Distro ISO and run them via VM for Windows. This can be easily achieved even without installing the distro, use the "Try" method. I shall not elaborate on how to run/use a VM, you can find these online especially on how to load the USB filters. For my case Lubuntu via Virtualbox's USB filter to load my External Harddisk enclosure USB interface. For LiveCD use gparted app, for any other distro I would recommend DISKS app. Advanced users may use "dd" dump. Transfer the rootfs.img to your distro working area such as ~/Desktop via SMB or SFTP. Select your harddisk and locate the two 2GB Raid partitions and choose the rootfs.img to dump into these two partitions. With DISKS app or forked "dd", you can dump the two partitions at once. You can choose to backup these two partitions prior overwriting but I think it's unnecessary due to it's already corrupted but unless you need to retrieve back any custom modifications to the rootfs.

4) Finally:

Once you have restored the two 2GB Raid partitions, assemble back the device and power up. The public shares should appear within 2-3mins and you can proceed with the My Cloud's Quick Restore if necessary. If you still can't still the shares, check if the original rootfs.img is not corrupted. You should be able to loop mount this rootfs.img on the Linux distro and browse its contents. Else your partition table is really corrupted. Read up more on this thread for the solution provided.

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That *almost* worked the magic.

  1. I took the dang thing apart and connected the drive to my PC.

  2. Installed Ubuntu-Gnome on a USB drive and booted PC with it.

  3. I did the firmware restore thing that sammarbella wrote.

  4. reassembled the dang thing and, walla~ blue LED. And I can even connect it.

  5. Trouble is, it somehow halts at user name screen where I input my first and last name and email address, but never a password. When I try to reconnect. There is a user name in my first name and password is nothing I can guess. Tried password recovery through WD site, but the site says it can’t connect. SSH connection isn’t obviously possible.

  6. I did the whole process again by taking it apare again (dang, I’m getting good at it) and the same thing.

What should I do? Perhaps I will try with a former firmware, if I can find it. If that doesn’t work, I will try dumping mycloud image from some funny Chinese site (that I don’t trust) on the whole drive. If that doesn’t work, I will prolly throw the dang thing outside of the window.

Hello all! I am another unlucky owner of a my cloud 2 TB with white led issue.

As reseting the device did not work, i might be forced to open it . But first i have a few questions:

1.If i do it this way my data is lost?

2.Where do I get a 2TB image so i can restore it?

3.After I do restore the image , upgrading to the latest FW 4.00.00-607  will make the soft like “out of the box”? Meaning no errors?

4.I have waranty, so if i send it in service would they replace the unit? Can they see if i had SSH enabled and void the waranty? I did not do anything over SSH but left it enabled for situations like this (but useless).

Instructionhttps://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_6OlQ_H0PxVejVic2ZubXBfbHM/edit?usp=sharing

Backup imagehttps://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_6OlQ_H0PxVSWl6ZURLMGJKT1U/edit?usp=sharing

  1. If you use this instruction - no.
  2. No need to get full-size image. Just RootFS, kernel and config. (See header)
  3. See this:  http://community.wd.com/t5/WD-My-Cloud/ALL-OF-MY-Cloud-Problems-Solved/td-p/776603
  4. Yes. Sometime WD replace “dead” cloud to another or repair hem in few days.
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Thanks for your quick reply .

Will do it this way

Can I extract the rootfs from oficial v4 firmware and write it instead?

dpkg -x firmware.deb

tar xvf firmware.deb

Or any GUI arhiver.

Also you need Kernel from v4 (Important!)

Thank you for your assistance, you saved my drive.

I managed to get it up and running last night, backed up everything , restored the FW and upgraded to V4 clean as you sugested. So far it’s working flawlesly…speeds increased , better UI response …and fixed my problem with the subtitles over dlna.

Dear sammarbella, I tried to restore rootfs.img into my both raid partition but without any results. I have an error that device is busy. When I open disks in open susy I saw WDMC disk with all partition and raid matrix. First what I tried to do to make backup of both raid partitions but also error device is busy, When I go to raid matrix there are connected both raid partition. I can make backup and I can also restore img file on raid matrix.

Can You tell me what I should do to restore both raid partitions.

I red most of the themes at this forum and I don’t know what to do.

I have problem with blinking white led. I lost some date probably after firmware update. I bricked my WDMC and restored date with r-linux. When I assembled WDMC and tern power on I have white led. I tried put 40 sec. reset button, no results. I am angry of this but I want to make my WDMC live. Thanks for your help.

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Hi all, a simple post to thank this community for helping me out on bringing back to life my wdmycloud 3tb.

preface:

I got it bricked while trying to install minidlna on v3 firmware and the system just stop working.

solution (maintaining the data !):

http://community.wd.com/t5/WD-My-Cloud/Here-is-WD-My-Cloud-2TB-virgin-disk-image/td-p/637769/highlight/false/page/4

what I’ve been doing is to plug the hard drive to the sata port of a dekstop computer (seems possible to do it though the usb3 though… so no risk to break the case…need to be confirmed)

donwload the data contained in the dropbox folder :

https://drive.google.com/uc?id=0B_6OlQ_H0PxVSWl6ZURLMGJKT1U&export=download

and follow the instruction as it were a new hard drive, I simply didn’t format by data partition.

once all the dd were done, I re plugged the hard drive in and restarted it, and BOOM, blue light

hope it helps someone else.

L.

You can’t do it via the USB port on the device. You need to connect it via the internal SATA connection. Bricked mine 3 times now lol.

The only way that I was able to unbrick my device was deleting all the partitions and dd the virgin disk file. This is what I did:

  1. Disassemble My Cloud.

  2. Use SATA to USB cable and plug into computer running linux.

  3. Mount device and recover data off partition.

  4. Delete all partitions using GUI application.

  5. sudo dd if=/path/to/virgin.img of=/dev/

  6. Unplug from computer running linux and reassemble My Cloud.

  7. Power up.

  8. Profit

I wonder how/if a docking station would work?  It provides the power and a USB connection.

No brick here, just wondering.

Fox_exe wrote:

Instructionhttps://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_6OlQ_H0PxVejVic2ZubXBfbHM/edit?usp=sharing

Backup imagehttps://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_6OlQ_H0PxVSWl6ZURLMGJKT1U/edit?usp=sharing

  1. If you use this instruction - no.
  2. No need to get full-size image. Just RootFS, kernel and config. (See header)
  3. See this:  http://community.wd.com/t5/WD-My-Cloud/ALL-OF-MY-Cloud-Problems-Solved/td-p/776603
  4. Yes. Sometime WD replace “dead” cloud to another or repair hem in few days.

man I LOVE YOU! last time i bricked my my cloud i fixed it just by restoring rootfs… now it didnt work… but your guide works just great… thank you for saving my drive and my files:)

I have restored my wdmc.

then i pluged it in the small plate and then boot up but i cant connect to the mc.

i connect to power and then first white led, then blue led first i can connect to the dashboard after a few minutes (2-3) there is no more connection to the dashboard.

in the first time i cant restore to factory defaults and can not update the firmware.

what can i do now?

Because in order to access the disk file system directly, without the mycloud’s operating system getting in the way, you need direct access to the SATA interface. It’s like asking why you can’t get direct access to the hard disk on a Windows PC…

Then, has anyone found a method that DOES NOT require “reformatting the ENTIRE disk”?

Have you read the entire thread? Most of the suggestions involve simply overwriting the OS partitions.

Is this proprietary? If so, then WD needs to change that because I AM NOT accepting that I just need to delete my data. That’s ■■■■■■■■ and scammy.

It’s a Linux ext4 filing system. The only proprietary bit is the design and use of the partition system to support limited RAID on critical partitions, and create the user space partition. There’s nothing ‘■■■■■■■■ or scammy’ about that.

Provided you can get the mycloud working again, it doesn’t matter what happens to the data on it; to recover your data, just go to your backup device. You do have a backup for the mycloud, don’t you…?