Guys, thanks for detailed guide and useful comments. But I still need an advice.
I have 2 TB MBL. After doing everything described on this pages my WD still have blue light with green blinking periodically (looks like boot loop).
I’ve tried all guides, no usb-sata adapters, different power supply, diskpart cleaning, IP assign in the router settings, everything, but dashboard is still no accessible after debricking procedure. No errors during image copying. Hard drive seems to be working. SMART is OK.
Early tries was successful, I got access to dashboard, but it was very slow (for my feel) and MBL became bricked soon on next day for unknown reason.
Well. This guide give no result for me, but I found the solution: using freshInstall.sh script from WD.
Topics: Help request: how to install/config Mybook Live software on a new/non-stock hard drive
and original guide from: Complitly debricking guide (draft) - Hacking WD MyBook World Ed
In my case I used systemrescue live cd instead of ubuntu distr as suggested in this two guides.
Nfodiz, thanks anyway!
WD scripts: GitHub - chnrxn/MyBookLive: Collection of scripts for the Western Digital MyBookLive
I know this is old but I am hoping for some help. I have got this procedure to work with both 1TB and 2TB drives. No problems there. Now I am trying this with a 6TB. Everything went smoothly. Dashboard shows “Usage: 3GB / 6TB” but windows isn’t seeing it that way. Properties as a mapped network drive still showing it as a 1TB drive. When I put the drive back in the computer and open Disk Management, it shows the drive as 6TB.
Any ideas? Thanks in advance.
Hi all,
I have a 3TB MBL which is stacked in yellow light.
I have tried both guides but no success.
The terminal output completes with no errors but when I put the drive on the pcb first I see blue light (when power on) and then yellow and that’s it.
Any further help please?
Hi @nfodiz
Thanks a lot for your awesome guide, MBL 3TB work great with new HD.
Passed through your steps on guide 2 using Ubuntu running on VMWare, and a usb dock to plug the mbl hd, all good : )
If some of you try to do same, don’t forget to sudo on step 10. (ubuntu do not allow root access by default)
Also you could have to unmount your thumbstick (where your copy the .img) before step 10. ie you get an error message like " Mount is denied because the NTFS volume is already exclusively opened". In gparted a lock will appear next to the partition name of your thumstick, just right-click and select unmount.
This is a lot of fun to get the mbl revived, it’s like coming back from the store with a new toy 
I had a bad HDD.
I purchased a new WD RED 3 TB HDD, did the steps from Guide 2 and all is ok again.
Thnaks @nfodiz
Hi Everyone 
first, thanks alot for this very helpfull tuto !
so I got a MYBOOKLIVE with an old WD Green 1tO inside, I was able to get back my datas, that’s fine.
Now I have an empty box… which I would like to use again as a NAS 
So I bought a brand new WD Black caviar 1To. It’s formated in NTFS and empty as it can be. When I try to copy the mybook.img as described in the procedure, everything’s going well.
BUT (there is always a but ;D) when I put it back into MBL, I got blue light… sometimes flashing red, and return blue again, ans so on and so forth…
impossible to access to the UI. I can’t even see any IP in my router.
What am I doing wrong ? should I repartitionnate the new HDD in ext3 or 4 and recreate every partition before copying the mybook.img ?
As far as I’ve read, it doesn’t matter if the disk is in ntfs or unpartionned in first place, considering that the motherboard attached in the MBL is supposed to read the image and recreate everything…
Or maybe is there a delay (few more hours ?) for the motherboard to recreate and reallocate partitions in the new HDD when you put it back ?
penny for your thoughts ! and thank you again for your help
ps : i did the version 2 tutorial !
EDIT : so I made the tutorial again and again, and I found what was the problem so I wanted to writte it down just in case someone would have the same as mine !
so here was the trouble ! → I did everything as described but the HDD kept booting in the empty space, swtiching between red and blue light.
Turned out that I made a mistake during the copy of the “mybook.img”.
As said in the tutorial, you have to identify in first place the name of your HDD and thumbdrive. In my case the HDD was SDA and the thumbdrive SDB1
BUT, when I was looking at the HDD, I got one partition, named SDA1, and an empty space, unnamed. So I decided to copy it into SDA1 (the part of 933 go, and forgeting about the 1,7go of empty space, thinking it was some kind of space for management disk; whatever !)
the solution was in fact to copy the all image onto the path SDA, don’t matter about the partitions on your disk (for instance if your HDD had some partitions). Just copy the image on the all disk, whatever partition !
As result, before disconnecting your HDD once your copy is finished, just check if the disk is partitionned correctly. Everytime it didn’t work my HDD was still with NTFS partition. When it worked, before disconnecting, all the HDD was already formated with the 3 partitions in EXT3 and the biggest one in EXT4
hope it can help someday
see ya
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I’d been trying to fix mine for years! Just got it working! Thanks again for all your effort in producing the guide.
Thank you sooo much for this guide - it really made my day. I used it to de-brick an WD MyBook 3TB (i.e. not Live type) disk. It worked like a charm!
Thanks / Gunnar
You made my day!
I have a 2TB My Book Live, which I can swap in 4TB drives as I used these with my Kodi and Timemachine setup.
I was wondering if anyone has tried the steps below yet on this method of upgrading the hard drive from 2TB to 4TB.
- Clone the drive using a cloner disk station or Clonzezilla
- Put it in the My Book Live case (just connect the connector and put it on the network) allow to boot up
- Take the drive out and go into G-Parted distro and expand the partition to 4TB or the full capacity of the drive.
- The only advantage of this method if it works, you never lose anything. and downsize depending on the amount of data you have it could take several hours cloning. It took my 2TB to clone into a 4TB over 4-5 hours because I have over 1.65TB worth of data.
I am going to perform this method on one of the My Book Lives first and if it works repeat it on the second one. I guess if it does not work this way, there is a confirmed method above.
I will keep everyone posted, let me know any feedback.
Update on the cloning of the drive.
This is more of steps how to upgrade your HD only. The debrick is also a good solution for new drive update if one’s is just dead.
So only thing I had to do was clone the drive, connect it to gparted or any partition resizer and put back into the case (this kept my data as is, did not have to upload it again, a plus for me).
- Clone the 2TB into a 4TB using a clone station (am sure Clonzezilla would work the same).
- Put the cloned 4TB into a USB case and booted into GPARTED OS via USB drive
-
- There was an error stating backup partition did not load, click use primary.
- Re-sized the partition, to use the full 4TB.
- Placed the drive back into the MyBook Live case and closed it up
- Booted up and I had 4TB drive with all my data.
- This solution is probably easier for most, who want to keep the data as is and just upgrade the drive.
- I performed the steps on (2) MyBook Live drives, upgraded both to 4TB.
Let me know if you have any questions or need help.
Has anyone tried this with a 8TB RED WD drive?
Wow old thread! I hope someone is still around that can help me.
I used Guide 2 on my 3TB MBL. I bought a new 3TB Red to use in it as that was what was in it from WD. Everything went well but I keep getting an error from the dashboard notifications that the SMART function isn’t working and to notify WD and the dash board indicate the drive is bad. This resets if I reboot the MBL but as soon as SMART message shows up the drive is indicated as BAD as in the picture.
This worked in my v1 guide so it might work for you
If you get a smart fail error message in the dashboard then SSH into the drive using PuTTY or Terminal and run this command to fix it. Then do a short diagnostic test from the dashboard under utilities
smartctl -s on /dev/sda
Good luck
Man! What a fast reply! I will give this a shot. Not real handy at these command lines in, I guess linux, but I do have putty and will give it my best very shortly.
Thanks so much for the help, the guide and for still watching over this thread! I will return to express my success
I have been away for quite some time and don’t tinker with the MBL anymore like I used to so I have forgotten most things in these old threads LOL. I do still have a MBL running over here with the original hard drive in it though! Hope the command fixes your issues flhthemi
Do I need the MBL connected with cat5 directly to the PC to use putty? I have it up on the network with a static IP and tried but I keep getting a rejection “Network error: Connection Refused” via putty.
The MBL just needs to be connected to your network router/switch via CAT5. It sounds to me like you may not have SSH turned on in the dashboard.
To enable SSH load your MBL dashboard and add /ssh after the /UI at the end of the web address up top.
Example:
http://192.168.1.51/UI/ssh
From there tick the SSH Access box to enable SSH. Note the username and password on the same page and use those in putty when requested.
User Name: root
Password: welc0me
That’s a zero and not a capital o in welc0me
Good luck
