Bricked MyBookCloud

Hi, this is my first post on this forum.
I have a MyBookCloud 4T HD. I’ve had it for several years, so I guess it’s Gen 1. And I also have a 4T MyBookLive. Both disks have extremely valuable data on them, but are now both bricked.
I have seen posts about debricking a MyBookLive. But the thing is I’m a MacOS user, and I’ve found no procedure to debricking those failing pieces of … :rage::rage::rage:
I have no access to a real PC or Linux machine. I tried the procedure using a VM but with no success.
Will never ever again by a network drive!!!

Any help appreciated.
Thank’s for your help.

Whaooo. Not a single answer. That’s very comforting.

My Book Cloud? Do you mean My Cloud? The My Cloud device is different than a My Book. If you do indeed have a My Book then see the dedicated subforum for those devices if you haven’t already.

The single bay My Cloud looks like this:

For unbricking a single bay/single drive My Cloud one would first need to determine the version they have. First gen My Clouds run v3.x/v4.x firmware and the P/N number on the bottom of the unit ends in “-00”. Second gen My Clouds run v2.x firmware and have a P/N number ending in “-10”.

One can “shuck” the My Cloud enclosure to remove the internal hard drive. Plenty of how to videos on Youtube one can watch. One can then connect the hard drive to their computer using a USB to SATA cable/docking station/enclosure and attempt to read the Linux formatted partitions. If one can read the data partition on the drive one can copy the files/data off the drive to another location.

For running Linux one can use a Linux LiveCD/DVD boot disc. Ubuntu is one popular Linux distro that can be burned/copied to a CD/DVD or USB flash drive and used to boot a Mac computer.

https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop
https://tutorials.ubuntu.com/tutorial/tutorial-burn-a-dvd-on-macos
https://tutorials.ubuntu.com/tutorial/tutorial-create-a-usb-stick-on-macos

User Fox_Exe has created general directions on how to unbrick each single bay My Cloud version that some have used with sucess to unbrick their My Clouds…

The main Fox_exe repositories for multiple My Cloud models can be found either here:
https://fox-exe.ru/WDMyCloud/
or here:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_6OlQ_H0PxVRXF4aFpYS2dzMEE

First gen directions:
English: https://fox-exe.ru/WDMyCloud/WDMyCloud-Gen1/Replace%20HDD%20-%20English.txt
English: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_6OlQ_H0PxVbzZac0plbkZKeGM/view
Russian: https://fox-exe.ru/WDMyCloud/WDMyCloud-Gen1/Replace%20HDD.txt
Russian: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_6OlQ_H0PxVakNZMjFvdzloRVk/view
The img files needed for the first gen Fox directions can be found in the WDMyCloud-Gen1/Backups folder in the main Fox_exe respoitory link above.

Second gen directions:
English: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_6OlQ_H0PxVQVhnLVJOdDZISUU/view
English: https://fox-exe.ru/WDMyCloud/WDMyCloud-Gen2/_Unbricking_en.txt
Russian: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_6OlQ_H0PxVazVOdWNSejFXV2s/view
Russian: https://fox-exe.ru/WDMyCloud/WDMyCloud-Gen2/_Unbricking_ru.txt
Various files used in the second gen Fox_exe unbrick directions can be found in the WDMyCloud/WDMyCloud-Gen2 repository.

Note that this is mostly a user to user support forum. If you need actual WD Support it’s best to contact WD Support directly.

Lastly, like any hard drive the My Cloud can fail. The My Cloud includes an option called Safepoint / Backup that will backup the contents of the My Cloud to a USB hard drive attached to the My Cloud USB port. See the My Cloud user manual for more information on how to setup/use the Safepoint / Backup feature.

Hi and thanks for your answer.

Yes, my bad. I indeed have a My Cloud 1 gen. P/N ending with -00. And a MyBookLive. Both are bricked. And I have no access to a real PC or Linux box.

edit

I see MacOSX is your vehicle of choice. OK–
Let me see about getting a good set of options for your needs.

OK. The issues:

  1. you need parted, and mkfs.ext4. OSX does not have these.
  2. rootfs is a software RAID volume created my mdadm.

The first one we can get around using brew.sh (https://brew.sh/) (it installs packages for commandline osx that you would otherwise not have, such as e2fsprogs, to make ext4 file systems and pals.)

mdadm is a potential deal breaker though. this makes it very difficult to do what you need done using the instructions as given.

It might be doable if we bake a dd image instead, then you use brew.sh and e2fsprogs package, so you can grow the ext4fs of the data volume after using dd to push the image onto the drive. I am hesitant to create such an image though, because it would contain the copyrighted materials owned by WD, and I do not have permission for that.

ALTERNATIVELY

Create a mac bootable linux live usb stick.

As previously indicated you can use a Linux boot disc, per the links I posted above, to boot your Mac into temporarily into Linux. This way you can access the My Cloud hard drive (once removed from it’s enclosure and connected to the computer) using Linux.