Firmware update killed my My Cloud 2TB

I went away for a few days at the end of March. When I came back, the WD Mycloud was unresponsive and had a fast blinking blue light.

I tried the 4 and 40 second reboot, changed the network cable, tried waiting half an hour before rebooting and had no luck. Now I’ve learned that a new firmware update was released.

It has been running its supposed ‘disk check’ for well over 48 hours now. Clearly this is not working. It’s just a 2 TB unit, about 2/3rds full.

Long story short: WD’s firmware update has screwed me over big time. I’ve already invested hours in this. I didn’t get a NAS because I needed a new hobby, I need this thing to work. I suppose all there is left to do is to remove the drive and copy the data, which will take ages and leave me without a NAS.

Final step: make a Youtube video telling people not to buy this brand. Better be damned sure I’m carving out half an hour for THAT chore, WD.

edit: Okay, I gave up. Recovery procedure doesn’t work. I ripped the drive out of the WD Mycloud and am now copying the data on my Mac to a new disk. Reading Ext2 is a pain in the ass, but you can get a free 10 day trial from extFS for Mac by Paragon Software (OSX). I am using a file sync util to copy everything. The RED drive is going into a new NAS, but not a WD one. Done with this brand.

edit2: Told ya I’d make a video: Is your Western Digital My Cloud bricked by firmware? Here's what I did. - YouTube

edit2: 40,000 views and counting. ■■■■ ON THAT, WD.

3 Likes

I have the same problem. Can anybody tell us how to solve it?
Thanks

Do a forum search (magnifying glass icon upper right). Lots of complaints about the second generation single bay v2.x My Cloud getting bricked (blinking blue front LED) after recent firmware updates.

One possible fix is explained in the following post:

More here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B_6OlQ_H0PxVRXllYjY5RG1CZEU

1 Like

Hi Bennor,

Thanks for your time and effort.

The Google Drive link is great. It contains a text document with instructions to restore. In this document, there is a link to http://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?g=904 for the ‘original firmware’, which is needed as part of the unbricking procedure.

However, this leads to a download link for the LATEST firmware, released 03/26/19, which bricked my My Cloud. I was expecting a link to the first firmware version since release, not to the one that caused the problem.

Am I supposed to restore this latest firmware?

Thanks again for your time.

Generally one would restore the current/latest firmware. But if the current/latest firmware is causing your My Cloud to brick then one can try using a previous firmware. See the following link which has past firmware links for the first gen (v3.x and v4.x) and second gen (v2.x) single bay/single drive My Cloud units.

What ever firmware version you use, make sure to turn off the automatic firmware updating feature in the My Cloud Dashboard > Settings section.

I just updated both of my gen2 My clouds to 2.31.163 with no problems. I then upgraded both to 2.31.174. Again with no problem.
I also did a little testing. When the gen2 boots it momentarily flashes wha
t looks like purple to me. The goes to blinking blue. After boot up it turns to solid blue. While it was flashing blue I pulled the network cable. The front led did not change.

I was hoping that the upgrade of my gen2’s would see the problem. I wonder why some people seem to have the problem after upgrade and others don’t.

Thank you. I’m not an expert user, but I’ll give it a try. WD should provide all users a fix to this inconvenient. I guess I’ll never buy anything from them again in the future.

When yur device is flashing blue. Would you try to use putty to rlogin? Let me know the results.

Thanks

I’ll give it a try tonight… as I said, I’m not an expert… I doubt I can fix the problem this way… I cross my fingers…

…Wished it helped, but after follwing all of the steps, the drive does not give me a cursor back from this command umount /mnt/root /mnt/usb

The telnet connections just doesn’t respond anymore - I left it over 6 hours. I can write on the telnet window, it just doesn’t do anything.

Saddly when I turned the drive back on (without the pendrive), after about 15/30 seconds of flashing blue, now i get flashing red.

I tried the USB booting many times, no problem there.
Using PuTTY, i could finally connect using telnet, I also tried windows telnet client and also another telnet client. but I always get stuck on this unmount command.

same forn me… I got stuck on the umount etc etc command

@MartijnW What WD Device do you own? The last update for the WD My Cloud WDMyCloudImage has to be downloaded and then manually installed.

How can you uogrde the firmware if you can’t access the Mycloud? Have you read the other posts?

by the way, the new firmware is the origin of all lthis trouble… take some time and read all the posts…

has anybody something to say about the umount issue? Thanks in advance

@lisciandro I’m not sure who you are replying too. I read all the post but I replied to the OP who said.

" I went away for a few days at the end of March. When I came back, the WD Mycloud was unresponsive and had a fast blinking blue light.

I tried the 4 and 40 second reboot, changed the network cable, tried waiting half an hour before rebooting and had no luck. Now I’ve learned that a new firmware update was released."

I downloaded and installed the new Firmware and so far haven’t had any problems.

image

image

cat0w, I guess the firmware can be installed manually if you can connect to your myclod, but many people can’t connect to it via the dashboars, and I don’t know if there’s a way to install the new firmware witohout connecting to mycloud…

There are two methods of unbricking a gen2 single bay My Cloud. If the first method using a USB flash drive formatted for FAT32 doesn’t work try the “alternate method” which uses a Linux boot CD/DVD/USB flash drive.

Unbricking English Directions:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_6OlQ_H0PxVQVhnLVJOdDZISUU/view

Ubuntu is one popular Linux distro that offers a boot CD/DVD or boot USB Flash Drive option.

Edit to add (with updated corrected links to needed files):

One of success-story with this howto: 
https://community.wd.com/t/my-cloud-gen2-using-an-8tb-hdd-and-formatting-failure-error-code-600/221499/1

0. Download these files:
http://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?g=904 (Original firmware)
https://community.wd.com/t/wd-my-cloud-v3-x-v4-x-and-v2-x-firmware-versions-download-links/148533 (past firmware download links if not using latest firmware)
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_6OlQ_H0PxVUWdCU01DcTdMWk0 (usbrecovery.tar.gz - WD Recovery + My miniOS)

1. Use any USB Flash drive, format it to FAT32 (Important!)
2. Unpack usbrecovery.tar.gz to this drive (You will get "boot" folder and 4 files inside)
3. Plug this USB drive to WD MyCloud, turn on power. Wait yellow-red (blinking) light.
4. Connect via Telnet (Search IP in your router, unde DHCP section.)
5. Format HDD if need:
parted /dev/sda
mklabel gpt
mkpart primary 1049kB 2149MB
mkpart primary 8591MB -1MB
mkpart primary 7517MB 8591MB
mkpart primary 2149MB 3222MB
mkpart primary 3222MB 4296MB
mkpart primary 4296MB 6443MB
mkpart primary 6443MB 7517MB
q
mkswap /dev/sda1
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda3

6. Install original WD recovery and reboot:
mkdir -p /mnt/usb /mnt/root
mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/root
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usb
cp -r /mnt/usb/boot /mnt/root/
cd /mnt/root/boot
rm uImage uRamdisk
mv uImage-wdrecovery uImage
mv uRamdisk-wdrecovery uRamdisk
cd /
umount /mnt/root /mnt/usb
sync
reboot -f

7. After reboot device get old IP address and accessable via Web-GUI (Recovery mode). Use original firmware (.bin file) here.

Done!

=====================================
Alternative way:

Use Debian/ubuntu or any other linux distro (USB/CD Live image)
All "/dev/sda" change to your disk! (List disks in system: "parted -l")
If this is new disk or damaged (formatted) old, recreate partitions first:
parted /dev/sda
mklabel gpt
mkpart primary 1049kB 2149MB
mkpart primary 8591MB -1MB
mkpart primary 7517MB 8591MB
mkpart primary 2149MB 3222MB
mkpart primary 3222MB 4296MB
mkpart primary 4296MB 6443MB
mkpart primary 6443MB 7517MB
q
mkswap /dev/sda1
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda3

Download and unpack files from https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B_6OlQ_H0PxVdU9QWURqTXpaenM - uImage-wdrecovery (https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_6OlQ_H0PxVRzM2YjlQUE9KMkE) and uRamdisk-wdrecovery (https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_6OlQ_H0PxVZGZRc3ZFdzh6bTg)
Write it disk:
mkdir /mnt/boot
mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/boot
mkdir /mnt/boot/boot
cp uImage-wdrecovery /mnt/boot/boot/uImage
cp uRamdisk-wdrecovery /mnt/boot/boot/uRamdisk

Done. Connect disk back to WDMC and turn on.
After few minutes WDMC boots to "WD Recovery". Go to webgui and upload official firmware.
Done!

I read there’s a second way to unbrick, but I don’t know anything about Linux, so I was following step by step the first method… (btw: my usb drive is fat32 formatted, but the first method is not working). I can’t understand,in the second method, how to download and unpck files uImage-wdrecovery and uRamdisk-wdrecovery…

This post is to all new users having trouble with updating firmware or may need this in the future.

When a notice is given about new firmware being available for download you should download it and I suggest placing it on your desktop so it is easy to find. After this go to the Dashboard>Settings>Firmware Update>Manual Update and click on the button Update From File. This will be the file you downloaded. You should not have any problems. See example image below. Click on, tap or activate image to enlarge it.

See this article for more information.
https://support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?ID=26961&s=