EX4100 stops communicating and won't power off

My EX4100 (16GB) stops communicating (Shares, Web Browser, SSH, etc.) within 24 hours of a restart. When it does it also will not power down using the power button. The only recourse is to remove power and reboot. Current firmware is v2.11.140. Is anyone else having this problem or know of a solution? This little box is an awfully expensive brick.

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@jltrue,

Never seen that happen on my unit, but wonder if it is worth restoring it to factory defaults and then try and reflash with the latest firmware and see if that helps. Obviously make sure you have a backup elsewhere of your data before doing this. Only other thing I would suggest is maybe put some sort of scripting in place on the unit itself to take a copy of key files at different times to NAS shares (eg. /var/log/messages) as these are generally cleared on a reboot I believe but you can copy them to a share location and then at least if you reboot the NAS, you might have a chance of working out what is going on.

Cheers,

JediNite

I have a similar problem with an EX4100 (2.11.140) which has happened twice in the last month (never 24 hours after a restart). I can ping the device, but not connect to it or shut it down via the front panel button.

Capturing the logs is a good idea. I can also try starting fresh. Though this is a replacement unit. The first one I got failed and had to be replaced. On this replacement the process was powered on, went through setup, upgraded firmware, set up shares, then it started going deaf. Mine doesn’t even respond to pings.

I could also try factor reset, upgrade firmware and then just see wait and see if it locks up with no further configuration. Didn’t know there was a problem before I defined the users and shares so I don’t know if that affected the problem.

It would be so helpful if WD would make diagnostic information available or even better yet captured diagnostic information when the unit is restarted and saved it for analysis. The failure of the first unit resulted in hours on the phone with someone who wasn’t very knowledgeable about the product.

My brand new Ex4100 is doing the same thing. This system is at my place of work. It seems to happen over the weekend when there is no activity (Could be the 24 hour thing). It responds by the web page so the network is running fine. The home page reports everything is working, but you can’t access the data on the drives via a network share. I can’t reboot the EX4100 from the web page it has no effect. I can’t use the power button as well. I have to unplug the power to fix the issue. This system is setup with a static I.P. but I know it’s not a network thing because I can access the webpage.
Does WD read any of these posts or do I need to contact them?

You are not along. I have had my EX4100 for almost a month now and it has happened twice. This is not due to sleep mode of any kind, all turned off. The unit just hangs and I have to pull the power cord. Same firmware as everyone else.

same happened on my EX4100, firmware 2.21.111
test with and without Active Directory, Static IP, Drive Sleep OFF, Power Schedule OFF

local WD support suggest to quick restore from Utilities dashboard, but need to try firmware downgrade to 2.11.133

Since all this started I have updated to 2.21.111, backed up all my files and done a restore to factory defaults. When the restore finished it rebooted the device and within 24 hours it was locked up again. I power-cycled to restart (the power button does not work) and then turned of the drive sleep mode just in case that was the problem. Within 24 hours it had again transformed itself into a a very expensive door-stop.

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downgrade firmware not solve the problem.
not respond device still come

I’ve just had my third occurrence of this problem. Running firmware 2.21.111.

This issue had not happened for months with my EX4100 except today! I just checked to see if it was responsive and it was not displaying my data! I had to unplug the power to reboot it. Damm-IT I thought it was not going to happen again!

Occurrence #4 for me today. Considering that the only solution to this is to unplug the power, I’m getting nervous that one of these days I’m really going to mess up the RAID array and lose everything.

Occurrence #5 today on 2.21.119

Hello EX4100 Users,

We’re very interested in understanding the root cause of your issues.
If you’ve opened a case with our support department and provided system logs, please PM me your case number.
If you haven’t, please open a case and put “EX4100 stops communicating and won’t power off” as the subject and attach the system logs.

http://support.wdc.com/support/case.aspx?

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I must have jinxed myself on this months ago. I’ve had it happen once, but was okay after a power cycle by pulling the power cord. Would have been nice if pressing the power button on the front initiated a graceful shutdown but even this did not work.

Hopefully will not happen again.

WD Case [[DELETED- Privacy]]

I updated to the latest release 2.21.119 and it is still stops communicating and won’t power off

Case - [[DELETED - Privacy]]

@jltrue and @MNur Please send your case numbers to @SBrown via PM.