So I had some connectivily problems over the last few days. I restarted the NAS and that seemed to help. But when I opened up the control panel, I saw an error that said drive B failed a few days back. (Running RAID 1.) Okay, so I tried to run the drive daignostics. Even the quick test would time out most of the time. But both drives did pass a few times. The long test always seemed to hang. And the control panel was dreadfully slow. Now the NAS gets stuck on bootup, yellow light never goes off. So I found this post: http://community.wd.com/t5/My-Book-Live-Duo/GUIDE-Debrick-a-MyBookLive-DUO/td-p/544860 I used the Disk Internals Linux Reader to get my data off the NAS after connecting it to an external dock. What I realize now is that most of the directories that I recovered are empty. And the data that is actually there is mostly corrupt. A few files work, but the vast majority are corrupt. So then I used the R-Linux program that was mentioned in the de-bricking guide. It’s showing that both drives have sectors that are bad. Sorry I don’t recall the exact messages I got, but in general it’s saying both drives have problems. What is the most likely scenario here - both drives going bad at the same time, or the NAS box itself going bad? I will try swapping the drives and using the reset button before going through all the steps in the guide. But how much faith can I have in the unit now? Not a rhetorical question - if the de-bricking guide gets me up and running, will the unit be “as new”?
Hang on, I read in another post that using USB / SATA docks with the drives can be finicky… I just plugged drive A directly inside my computer using the SATA cable and all of the missing files are showing up now using DiskInternals Linux Reader. I’m copying over the files I need. It’s painfully slow, but at least it seems to be working. I’ll try the de-bricking guide again later, hopefully it will work now that I’m not using that USB dock. It may take me a couple of days, as the three kids are keeping me busy…
I had a heck of a time trying to figure out what was going on with these drives. I ended up having to load Ubuntu to do a proper check of the drives. Looks like one of them has some bad sectors. I set up the NAS for mirroring, so I don’t know why it wasn’t able to save all of my data. Even with the “good” drive and running the debrick guide, I wasn’t able to get the NAS to boot. Not very encouraging… In any case, I’m going to give it one more go. So I need to install a new drive. The existing drive is a WD Green, model WD30EZRS. The one for sale on Amazon is WD30EZRX. Is that a close enough match?
The only difference seems to be SATA II versus SATA III. It does not seem that should cause problems, as SATA III is backward compatible. EZRS drives can be found on a search, but new ones are rather pricey. Many that turn up are used or refurbs, which I tend to shy away from. Support tends to be very conservative in their recommendations for replacements, more so than is probably necessary. I hope that one of the longer term contributors might weigh in on this question.
Is there any chance that you can RMA the failing drive? What is its age? If it is close to its warranty period, it’s worth asking Support.
Thanks for mentioning the warranty, I had just assumed I was past that date - but I’m not. I’ll be sending the bad drive back to WD and getting a new one.
I was finally able to get the other drive up and running using the debricking guide here in the forums. I can’t say it went smoothly, but it did work. I know more about Linux than I ever really wanted to know…
I was finally able to get the other drive up and running using the debricking guide here in the forums. I can’t say it went smoothly, but it did work. I know more about Linux than I ever really wanted to know…
Ed
That is excellent news! I know what you mean about the guides and Linux. I try to be up on some things in that area, but it is a very different world.
