[GUIDE] How to unbrick a totally dead MBL

a_abhijit · June 29, 2013, 11:42am

Hi,

In you post you said

"STEP 4 (PREPARING TO BOOT THE SYSTEM RESCUE CD)

Make sure your thumbdrive containing the two files is plugged in, your MyBookLive hard drive is hooked up to your computer via e-sata to sata or sata to sata cable"

I have a Laptop with esata connector, can I just connect the HDD (2TB which I removed from MyBook Live) to Laptop with esata(laptop) to sata(HDD) connector directly without a separate power source for HDD??

Or does the HDD also needs a separate power souce also to power up.

Depending on that I can place an order of connector on ebay.

Can you post a pic of your setup in the guide thread, that will be very helpful.

Thank you.

nfodiz · June 29, 2013, 12:18pm

It will need power from some source. I use a Thermaltake BlacX esata to sata dock but I don’t think it comes with the esata to sata cable. I THINK it just comes with a usb cable and results vary over usb.

rhartinger · July 3, 2013, 10:38am

It works. Easy and fast. I think the UI is a little bit slower as before

nfodiz · July 3, 2013, 10:46am

Is it possibly indexing all of your media again? Or did you destroy the data partition

rhartinger · July 3, 2013, 4:04pm

Data is not destroyed. I can index. The HDD is working the whole time

busby · July 5, 2013, 8:46pm

I can not seem to mount my drive

I get the following message

root@sysresccd /root % mkdir /mnt/usb

root@sysresccd /root % mount -t vfat /dev/sdb /mnt/usb

mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb,

missing codepage or helper program, or other error

In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try

dmesg | tail or so

any help please?

nfodiz · July 17, 2013, 8:44pm

Is your thumbdrive formatted to FAT32? Are you mounting the right drive?

Wildcat445 · July 17, 2013, 11:43pm

I’ve also had the “yellow LED of death” show up on my 3TB MBL. During boot, the LED is blue, but then changes to solid yellow and does nothing.

Checking Disk Internals, all of the data is there and is all intact; Win8 even reported all partitions as healthy.

I went to the debrick.sh script following the instructions, and it is throwing a few errors. Here is what I saved from the terminal window:

root@sysresccd /root % mkdir /mnt/usb
root@sysresccd /root % mount -t ntfs /dev/sdd1 /mnt/usb
root@sysresccd /root % cd /mnt/usb
root@sysresccd /mnt/usb % dir
Acer\ V551\ Drivers boot debrick.sh rootfs.img setup.exe support
autorun.inf bootmgr efi rootfs.md5 sources upgrade
root@sysresccd /mnt/usb % mdadm -S /dev/md0
mdadm: stopped /dev/md0
root@sysresccd /mnt/usb % ./debrick.sh rootfs.img /dev/sdb

**********************DISK**********************

script will use the following disk: 

Model: ATA WDC WD30EZRS-11J (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 3001GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags: 

Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
 3 15.7MB 528MB 513MB primary
 1 528MB 2576MB 2048MB primary raid
 2 2576MB 4624MB 2048MB ext3 primary raid
 4 4624MB 3001GB 2996GB ext4 primary

is this REALLY the disk you want? [y] y

**********************IMAGE**********************


**********************IMPLEMENTATION**********************

everything is now prepared!
device: /dev/sdb
image_img: rootfs.img
destroy: false

this is the point of no return, continue? [y] y


mdadm: /dev/sdb1 appears to be part of a raid array:
    level=raid1 devices=2 ctime=Wed Jul 17 13:12:52 2013
mdadm: size set to 1999808K
mdadm: creation continuing despite oddities due to --run
mdadm: array /dev/md0 started.
mke2fs 1.42.7 (21-Jan-2013)
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
Stride=0 blocks, Stripe width=0 blocks
125184 inodes, 499952 blocks
24997 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
Maximum filesystem blocks=515899392
16 block groups
32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
7824 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks: 
	32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912

Checking for bad blocks (read-only test): 0.00% done, 0:00 elapsed. (0/0/0 errdone                                                 
Allocating group tables: done                            
Writing inode tables: done                            
Creating journal (8192 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done 

mdadm: cannot find valid superblock in this array - HELP

synchronize raid... done

copying image to disk... 
dd: writing to ‘/dev/md0’: Input/output error
1+0 records in
0+0 records out
0 bytes (0 B) copied, 0.00718786 s, 0.0 kB/s
mount: /dev/md0: can't read superblock
cp: cannot stat ‘/mnt/md0/usr/local/share/bootmd0.scr’: No such file or directory
./debrick.sh: line 359: /mnt/md0/etc/nas/service_startup/ssh: No such file or directory
umount: /mnt/md0: not mounted
mdadm: stopped /dev/md0
read: Input/output error
read: Input/output error

all done! device should be debricked!

root@sysresccd /mnt/usb %

Interesting that the drive is showing as having RAID partitions. I don’t know if that is part of how a 3TB drive operates in the MBL, so I did not touch anything in GParted.

I’m going to go back again and read through this thread. Worst case is that I go buy a 2nd 3TB drive (just an external USB drive) and back this thing up, and try to RMA it if I can’t debrick it any other way…but since I was able to access all of my stored files with DiskInternals, it appears the drive itself is OK.

I’m at a loss as to what to try next…I’d try anything, but am afraid of losing the data.

EDIT: my MBL drive is connected directly to the motherboard via SATA. I have the script and image file on a USB card reader using an SD card–I wonder if I should change it to a thumb drive (if I can find one around here). I can see the contents of the SD card, and I can read (and edit) the debrick.sh file using Midnight Commander in the terminal window. So it looks like the SD card is being read OK.

nfodiz · July 17, 2013, 11:58pm

I see a major issue which might require a destroy debrick to fix. If you take a look at partition 1 it doesn’t have a filesystem listed.

1 528MB 2576MB 2048MB primary raid

Partition 1 and 2 should both be ext3 partitions. You may be able to fix it by formatting just that partition in gparted. 4096 blocksize I believe otherwise backup all data and try a destroy debrick.

Partition 1 and 2 are a software raid for the OS. When you do an upgrade, the raid is broken and the new firmware is written to sda1 or sda2 and then the 2 partitions sync again at 3am via a cron job. The raid is in a degraded state as either md0 or md1 until this happens.

Wildcat445 · July 18, 2013, 12:53am

nfodiz wrote:

I see a major issue which might require a destroy debrick to fix. If you take a look at partition 1 it doesn’t have a filesystem listed.

1 528MB 2576MB 2048MB primary raid

Partition 1 and 2 should both be ext3 partitions. You may be able to fix it by formatting just that partition in gparted. 4096 blocksize I believe otherwise backup all data and try a destroy debrick.

Partition 1 and 2 are a software raid for the OS. When you do an upgrade, the raid is broken and the new firmware is written to sda1 or sda2 and then the 2 partitions sync again at 3am via a cron job. The raid is in a degraded state as either md0 or md1 until this happens.

Thanks for that info–I’m looking at it again.

I notice that partition 3 also does not show a filesystem, and it is only 489MB. Is that another concern? Looking at it again in GParted, those both show up with the orange warning triangles. (And I swore on my first attempt that they did show filesystems in there.)

nfodiz · July 18, 2013, 1:21am

Partition 3 is the swap partition and won’t show a filesystem and looks good from your output

Wildcat445 · July 18, 2013, 1:50am

nfodiz wrote:

Partition 3 is the swap partition and won’t show a filesystem and looks good from your output

I managed to dig through this thread again, and found one of your script outputs showing what the partition tables should read, and it indeed shows “linux-swap”.

In my experience, formatting a partition does not affect the others, so I should be reasonably safe trying to format it. But I’ve hit a snag where it thinks the partition is mounted and in use. Searching a bit with Google, I found that with it being part of a RAID array, the computer locks it up.

I found a guide on the Overclockers site showing how to remove and stop the RAID for partitions:

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6749336&postcount=9

There may be enough there that I can modify it a bit to work with that partition and get it formatted, then make sure it is flagged again as part of a RAID array.

I also have the option of formatting partition 3 as “linux-swap”–I wonder if I should go ahead and do that also. I’m wondering if the OS on the MBL might be expecting that to be formatted if it tries to access it.

I’ll report back with progress. Thanks much!

nfodiz · July 18, 2013, 2:05am

It doesn’t show as linux-swap in gparted but it will show as linux-swap if you were to ssh in and type parted in PuTTY so no need to do that as I have been there done that.

Try rebooting the syrescuecd again without running the script as I think the script is what is preventing you from formatting that partition but I could be wrong

Wildcat445 · July 18, 2013, 2:25am

I made it to that point–I’ve rebooted a couple of times but still can’t format the partition. I wonder if the OS from the rescue CD is seeing those RAID flags and mounting or locking them somehow, even if the OS isn’t actually using them. That’ is what I’m tackling next.

I’m going to tackle this again in the morning–the computer is generating a bit of heat and I’m a bit mentally wiped from messing around with this for a few hours. ;)

More later!

nfodiz · July 18, 2013, 2:33am

Doh I just booted into sysrescuecd to help you. Have my spare MBL in a dock ready to go

nfodiz · July 18, 2013, 2:38am

It let me format both sda1 and sda2 without issue. No complaints about anything mounted. Raid flags still set as well

Try typing

cat /proc/mdstat

Some comands to break the raid array (You might have to change some letters around depending on what mdstat tells you and what letter your drive is mounted under)

mdadm /dev/md0 -f /dev/sda2

mdadm --manage /dev/md0 --fail /dev/sda2

nfodiz · July 18, 2013, 2:58am

I’m gonna debrick this drive again and call it a night, I think you are on the right track though.

Wildcat445 · July 18, 2013, 3:15am

Thanks! I’ll take a look at your posts in the morning once my mind is a bit fresher. I still can’t help but think I should go buy another 3TB drive (or even 2TB…I have about 1.7TB of data), backup the data onto it, and then do a full debrick (with destroy) if this doesn’t work. I could always find a MBL on eBay with a dead drive, and put together another one with the replacmenet drive once I fix this one.

It is also making me wonder why the MBL failed as it did. We did have a brief power outage, but I can’t recall if it was this past week (the day I found it not working), or the week before.

nfodiz · July 18, 2013, 3:37am

A power outage will do it

Wildcat445 · July 18, 2013, 11:12pm

No such luck now–started in again this morning and the computer can’t even see the drive anymore. I may try another computer or SATA port, but for now I can’t even access it anymore.

If I can get it going I’ll be back with progress. I’ve been in worse jams with drives before. ;)