[GUIDE] Debrick a completely dead MyCloud

[djh816]

As I have seen many questions about debricking (recovering) the MyCloud, I figured I would write up a guide for the tech savvy users that get stuck. This is a last hope recovery procedure and will erase all data. Please download your appropriate image below and follow the steps.

DISCLAIMER: This assumes your warranty is already void. DO NOT open your MyCloud if you intend to keep your warranty. I am personally writing this procedure and I have zero ties to Western Digital. They would probably not encourage this.

MyCloud - 2tb:  Download (md5: 64d2014001671921503dd6f0207916cd)

MyCloud - 3tb:  Download (md5: f41ef03858a85d10323a27450cac8af9)

Requirements:

• MyCloud 2TB/3TB (only virgin images I found)
• Desktop/portable computer with SATA connection
• USB drive or CD with GParted Live ( http://gparted.org/livecd.php))
• Second USB drive of 8GB size or higher for the extracted MyCloud image from above (NTFS or exFAT required for 4GB+ file sizes)

1. Extract the appropriate MyCloud .7z file to a USB drive and rename the extracted file to “mycloud.img”.

2. Open your MyCloud’s case being very careful not to break the tabs. You can still close it if you do break the tabs but it won’t be as secure of a fit. I followed this video.

3. Carefully remove the hard drive from the enclosure and then remove the screws that hold the board to the hard drive.

4. Power off your computer and then connect your computer’s SATA cord to the MyCloud hard drive.

5. Boot the GParted Live disk, choosing low end graphics mode if you get a black screen when you first let it fully boot.

6. When the GParted graphical application comes up, ignore any errors if prompted and do not edit any partitions. In the drop down list in the top right corner, figure out the device paths of your WD MyCloud and USB stick and make note of those. Example: /dev/sda for WD MyCloud, /dev/sdb for USB stick that has recovery image

7. Close the GParted graphical application and open a terminal session. Mount your usb drive if necessary and change into the directory of the extracted image. Follow the example below, replacing /dev/sdb with the device path of the USB stick that contains the recovery image.

   mkdir /mnt/usb; mount /dev/sdb /mnt/usb; cd /mnt/usb

8. In terminal type the following, replacing /dev/sda with the device path of your WD MyCloud. Don’t worry if it errors, this just ensures the drive is unmounted.

   umount /dev/sda

9. In terminal type the following, replacing /dev/sda with the device path of your WD MyCloud. Make sure the input file is .img extension and is NOT the .7z archive file! This command will write the recovery image back to the MyCloud giving you a fresh drive. You will see very little feedback while this occurs.

   dd if=mycloud.img of=/dev/sda

10. Hopefully dd will take some time and then report success. If so, run “shutdown -h now” to shutdown the GParted Live disk. You are done!

11. Hook the MyCloud hard drive back to the MyCloud board and attempt to power on the drive. Hopefully you will get the blue light after a bit.

Please give me kudos if I helped you.

[LinAdmin12]

Point 2)

Could anybody confirm that it is possible to open the case without breaking the tabs? Imho they are constructed in such a way that this is not possible.

Point 11)

If you are lucky MyCloud will boot to blue light, but most probably you have a faulty situation because these images are not ok.

I wonder why WD does not make available correct images.

[djh816]

2. You can see in the angle of the video when he opens it, no broken tabs.

3. I don’t know why you say the images are bad… I PERSONALLY restored using the 2tb one with zero issue. I understand you may have issues with certain bugs but calling it unstable or faulty is just not true.

[djh816]

At around 4:45 in the video.

[thomas88]

Hi !

I followed you guide and i work perfectly !

I Just got one problem, the 3TB img doesn’t work I just get bluelight but cant acces it

If i mount the 2 tb img, it works fine, but i only got 2 tb free space (missing 1tb(

In gparted i got 1 tb unallocated space. Can i get it to work?

Kind regards

[chetan_shah]

-start GParted and extend the sda4 partition to fill up unused space

I followed this guide http://community.wd.com/t5/WD-My-Cloud/Rebuild-your-My-Cloud-or-upgrade-the-HDD-on-it/td-p/675109

[thomas88]

Thanks alot, i will give it a shot !

[djh816]

For anyone curious, the 3tb file I link to in first post is same md5 as the 3tb image mentioned in the other thread. Thomas, sorry I can’t help further. Good luck!

[dattaway]

This was the only solution that worked for me.  I have the 4TB model and flashed it with the 2TB image.  I was able to resize it with my Linux computer using fdisk, deleting the ext4 partition and creating that same partition number again using all the space available.  The WD software automatically formatted the blank partition.  So this was a quick fix that works well.

[djh816]

Glad to hear! Thanks for the resize tip for 4TB. If anyone would be so kind as to point me at a full virgin image for the 4TB, I’ll gladly update the original post.

[thomas88]

Hi !

I have restored my 3TB with a 2 tb img. It works fine, but only with 2 tb free space

I try to resize by following the guide, but when i do this, i Can acces the drive? My cloud, is just blinking blue, but i can acces either the Dashbord or any mountet drives

Does anyone know where to get a 3tb img?

[LinAdmin19]

thomas88 wrote:

Hi !

 

I have restored my 3TB with a 2 tb img. It works fine, but only with 2 tb free space

 

I try to resize by following the guide, but when i do this, i Can acces the drive? My cloud, is just blinking blue, but i can acces either the Dashbord or any mountet drives

 

Does anyone know where to get a 3tb img?

It is not really necessary to have a 3TB image.

Describe how you tried to resize it, most probably you did not exactly what is required.

[djh816]

Thomas, for the resized partition, try formatting it as ext4. That may fix the issue

[thomas88]

Hi !

I did as describe

dd the 2tb img to my harddrive. Plug it in the case and i works fine (just with 2tb free space)

Took it out and in to my computer and open Gparted and resize it as Ext4.

Plugged it out and put it back to the case.

The flash just light blue, and i can’t connect or see it anywhere on my network.

i did like this:

http://community.wd.com/t5/My-Book-Live/GUIDE-Debrick-MyBookLive-v2-0/td-p/567582

From (16 

Thanks for all the help so far

[xslip]

Same issue with 3TB. For me it is also not ok. Will try 2Tb this evening.

[xslip]

Success! 2T though, instead of 3, but finally dashboard is accessible, so ssh will…

Thanks!

[Flear]

i’m reading through this & great, … but …

got about 1tb of data on my 3tb mycloud drive i don’t want to loose

linux isn’t reading the drive at all

through windows recovery tools are reporting only 1 sector and can’t read anything

k, i care about my data (WD doesn’t)

got a second drive (online order) so this second drive should work properly right, … same as with the origeonal drive

i would love to get my data back, … repartitioning or whatever else to start over scares me as i really don’t want to loose anything

any help ?

or something to help my confidence that i can recover my drive instead of reformat it

[djh816]

Hm difficult answer… If the drive can’t be recognized currently, you may be out of luck. That being said, I would expect dd could still at least try to read the raw drive and save it to an image. from that maybe you could find some tools online to recovery your files from the corrupt disk. if even dd is unable to save the drive though (through something like dd if=/dev/yourdrive of=/output/of/drive.img) then I would expect it’s a physical issue with the disk and the only way to get it would be through professional disk recovery services ($$).

[xslip]

Hello,

I’ll just describe my solution (just in case it will be useful to anyone).

Firstly, I’ve used SATA - USB convertor, so this way I’ve connected disk to my notebook.

dd command failed to me: it hanged for 6 hours without completion. while dd for 3Tb image worked flawlessly in minutes, but the firmware there was broken or not compatible to my disk.

So’ ive uploaded the firmware via Ubuntu disk utility as backup update and assembled drive back. It ran correctly w/o errors.

Secondary, I’ve made factory restore, so I was able to register users again and use SSH. Still there was a problem with diskspace of 2Tb instead of 3 physical terabytes.

Then I’v tried old-school unix fdsik utility to alter /dev/sda disk and resize or delete/create sda4 partition. Fdisk showed that it is not the best utility as GPT partition been used and recommended to use parted utility. Parted utility could be a solution here, but it showed that it cannot make changes to partition unless partiton is used by drive. Umount comand did not helped. Looks like there have been some autoreconnect scripts. So I’ve googled till gdisk utility, which actually equal to parted, but can work without dependency to used by OS partitions. So, it showed broken GPT partition table and I fixed it by using options ( r       recovery and transformation options (experts only), d use main GPT header (rebuilding backup)), then I’ve ran w and made a reboot. GPT fixes were needed due to the fact, that utility wasn’t able to use unalocated space before them, maximum amount was the same as for previous partition. Then I’ve deleted 4th partition and created a new one with extended diskspace. Then again w and reboot.

After reboot it was still shown 2Tb in dashboard, so I’ve made yet another factory restore and ran first configuration utility. Next setp - I’ve loaded firmware update from 14.06.2014 and still using it flawlessly.

Jevgenijs

[xslip]

Just to add: 

gdisk should be installed with “apt-get install gdisk”