[GUIDE] Debrick a MyBookLive DUO

From what I researched and experience, the firmware checks for a western digital only not type of western digital drive. I have tried a seagate but couldn’t get it to work. I am sure if you really wanted to use a brand other than Western Digital, you would have to do some coding.

There is no need to coding man.

I use the MBLD with 160gb seagate + 500gb hitashi for a long time

Now i use 1tb WD + 500gb hitashi and works pretty good.

Hello NFODIZ, I’m glad I could find such a detailed description for MBLD repair.

I need help as I’m not a SW experienced person, specially in Linux area. I need some support here as WD support is nearly at 500 km away from me. I have a 2 x 2 TB MBLD, about 3 years old.

Here are some highlights of what happened to me:

  • I took a long trip and decided to power down the MBLD. It was off for 30 days. When I returned  I powered MBLD on and a steady yellow LED was there in the front panel. Both HDs were quite hot;

  • I removed both HDs and turned MBLD on again and still the yellow LED was there;

  • Then I found your post and went thru some steps;

  • I completed STEP 1 and recovered 100% of all my data using Disk Internals Linux Reader. I used a SATA enclosure and a USB cable to connect the HD to my notebook (i don’t have a desktop at home);

  • I completed STEP 2, downloading and preparing all needed SW. I burned the ISO SystemRescue CD and also decided to create a SystemRescue thumbdrive.

But I’m stuck at STEP 3 as I understood I must have a desktop to do a direct SATA cable connection.

So, my question if I can use my notebook USB input to connect the MBLD drive and do the STEP 3. In case yes, how the line commands should be typed in ? Still the same commands ?

Thank you

Allan Cavalcanti

Yes, you can use an usb to sata to do the job, just check the sd??? partitions on gparted

Hi thanks for your response.

I dont know what youre talking about with “sd???” and gparted.

Can you explain further ?

Tkx

On the top of this picture you can see [1] /dev/sda right? Its the actual drive of Gparted ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GParted)) are working on. 

When i said sd??? i mean the drive you will need to find to do the job, like /dev/sda (your drive) or /dev/sdb (your flash drive).

You will use gparted to know/find the drives you will do the job [2] , sda, b, c etc… ok?

ok got it !

Tkx

Allan

Henrique,

I did the procedure to drive B instead of doing it to drive A. Everything went flawless and just when I was about to put the drive back to the MBLD enclosure I saw I had missed the right drive.

I decided to redo the whole procedure to drive A, which also went flawless.

Now I am in doubt in what to do in order to bring drive B back to its status.

Any hint ?

Tkx

Allan

fatice wrote:


sndflea wrote:

I’ve followed Guide 2 and have a USB stick with the software loaded in the PC.  GParted shows the USB drive and the MLD drive I’m trying to rebuild.  The cd /mnt/usb runs without an error.  I get the reeor messages when I run the mdadm for md2 and md3.  Then when I run the last line  (“./ debrick.sh rootfs.img /dev/sda destroy” ) I get the error message that it can’t find debrick.sh.  I replace the sda with whatever GPartwd shows


There is no space between “./” and “debrick.sh”

OK - I’m still struggling with this.  It seems that my USB is not being mounted.  When I follow Guide 2 to mount the drive and then go into gparted to take a look it states that the drive is not mounted.  I suspect that is why it can not find drbrick.sh. 

It is hard to tell from the thread where in each command there are spaces and where are there not spaces.  I’ve tried several different ways but no success.  For instance,  in the mount -t vfat/dev/sda1/dev/usb  I only put a space before ahd after the -t.  Otherwise I get an error message.  Same on the final command.  I suspect there is a space between debrick.sh and rootfs.img.  Is there also a space after rootfs.img.

Any ideas why I can not get the script to run (other than I don’t know what I’m doing :))

The debrick process ´´reset´´  the status of A or B drive. It install a new system on it.

You can try yo boot the systemrescue cd whitout your flash drive, just with the hard drive you will try to unbrick and afer it boot up you can plug the flash drive. The system should recognize automatically. Try another usb port if gparted dont see the 1 one…

mount -t vfat /dev/sd??? /dev/usb 

this is the correct command @sndflea

ATTENTION WITH THE SPACES…

henrique.h12 wrote:

You can try yo boot the systemrescue cd whitout your flash drive, just with the hard drive you will try to unbrick and afer it boot up you can plug the flash drive. The system should recognize automatically. Try another usb port if gparted dont see the 1 one…

 

mount -t vfat /dev/sd??? /dev/usb 

 

this is the correct command @sndflea

 

ATTENTION WITH THE SPACES…

Thank you for the feedback.  Excactly where do the spaces go?  As noted earlier. I only put one before and after the -t.  are there other spaces? Seems like I’ve tried spaces elsewhere but got an error message.

Note [space]

mount**[space]-t[space]vfat /dev/sd1[space]**/dev/usb 

they are all 1 space

OK, finally got the script to run.  I needed to add a space between “vfat” and “dev/sbd1” to mount the thumb drive.  Script runs.  I get a lot of warnings but it ends saying that the device was debricked.  When I put it into the enclosure and boot it I get to a yellow light and it goes no farther.  The 3T drive has partitions of 15MB unallocated, 489 MB partition, 2 X 1.91 GB partitions and a 2790.21 GB partition.

Is it possible that my enclosure is bad or did the debrick script not run properly.  Aly thoughts?

Thanks

OK - from reading through the thread (a while ago) I vaguely remembered someone posting that they had to run the process twice on each drive.  So - I ran it again. Interesting, it ran quite differently the second time. The MBLD now boots though I get a red light - progress.  I can access the drive.  It seems that it doesn’t like my B drive (A is a 3T … B is a 250 gig … seems like I used the second 3T on another project).  No real surprise there.  I’m going to order a second 3T and go from there.  I suspect that I might need som additional assistance down the line but I do want to thank everyone for their help to date.

Thanks!!!

I got the MBLD to boot - did a factory restore - and am in the process of resetting storage to raid 1 from raid 0.  My question revolves around the swap file:

  1. What is it

  2. Since the drive is (or will be when it is done running) set up for raid 1 do I need to manually create the swap file or was it done automatically.  I used guide 2

  3. Assuming that I need to manually recreate the swap file, can I get some info on the format of the SSH command.  I need to log into 192.168.1.13

Almost there

Thanks

Using Cygwin to run SSH I get the following error message:

ssh: connect to host mybookliveduo port 22: Connection refused

I get the same error when trying to run SSH from the rescue CD.  

Any ideas? 

sndflea wrote:

Using Cygwin to run SSH I get the following error message:

 

ssh: connect to host mybookliveduo port 22: Connection refused

 

I get the same error when trying to run SSH from the rescue CD.  

 

Any ideas? 

Did you re-enable SSH after the restore?

well - I did several Google searches and read a lot since my last post.  I am a noobie on this and did not realize that SSH had to be enabled on the MBLD.  The following thread got me moving in the right direction:

  http://tech.avivo.si/2012/10/enabling-ssh-and-sftp-on-western-digital-my-book-live-duo/

note that the ‘0’ in welc0me is a zero and not a capital O.  Once I logged in to the MBLD through my browser, I then ran another browser window and entered the xxx.xxx.x.xx/UI/ssh address which brought up the window to enable SSH. I enabled SSH, then ran Putty and logged in using the username “root” and pw “welc0me”.  This got me into the MBLD. Then followed the directions in guide 2 to create the swap file.  

Again, thanks everyone for the help.  

Hello guys,

I have a WD MyBookLive Duo 4TB and here is my issues.

Earlier today I was installing mutt on my MBLD using apt-get in ssh, and during the process I lost electricity at my home. When my power came back on the MBLD shows I solid green light on the front but is no where to be seen on my network any longer. I tried doing the reset (holding reset for 10 secs when unit is powered on) , but it made no difference. I still cannot get it to show on my network (even using my routers GUI it is not listed under Attached Devices any longer).

I did not backup my MBLD and was using all 4tb for data (roughly 2.5 used) so I had no Raid configuration. My MBLD has been one roughly 3 hours now with a solid green light but still not located on the network. I recall seeing something about the led on the back by the ethernet should be amber colored but both mine are green. Anyways, would following guide 1 on this be my best bet to get my MBLD working again and retaining my data?  Also is it safe to use the firmware released in January 2015 or should I use the one linked in the first post?

Thanks guys for any help,