Six years later, this guide is still accurate. Gen 1 my cloud single 4tb bricked when it fell while in use, solid red and dead. Ordered a WD red 6tb drive only. Followed original guide up to and including step 9. Then I rebooted to grub recovery cd, accessed new 6tb drive again with GParted and deleted the ext 4 partition Id #4 and recreated to use all unallocated free space. This gave me 5.9 tb for backups in ext partition.
Reassembled unit and came up to solid red, but able to access via http web and performed quick factory reset. On reboot, all 5.9tb space available to unit. However, unable to update firmware via auto download, so I downloaded latest gen 1 firmware (.deb file not zip)from web site and manual update of firmware from web interface worked on first attempt. My bricked WDMycloud is back better than ever with an additional 2tb of space. Can’t thank you all enough! Updated build steps below:
What To Do
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Burn the SystemRescueCD.
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Unzip the 2 or 3TB Virgin Image, and copy the mycloud2tb.img file to the 8GB+ USB Drive.
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Disassemble your My Cloud. 2.8k
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Pop the Linux RescueCD, the USB Drive, and the WD Hard Drive into the PC. (It is recommended you disconnect any other drives in your PC, to avoid confusion.) Boot off the CD. For Dell, press F12 during BOOT to get the option.
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When the RescueCD finally boots, start the graphical environment by typing STARTX.
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Click on the Gparted icon it task bar at bottom, and use it to determine what devices are what. (click at upper right to change devices) Take note of your Hard Drive (usually /dev/sda) and your USB Drive (mine was /dev/sdb). The partitions/sizes should be a big hint, especially if you have no other drives connected.
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Close GPARTED then click on Terminal Window icon, and enter the following commands in the terminal window:
mkdir /mnt/usb
mount -t ntfs /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usb
ls /mnt/usb -
‘mycloud.img’ should be listed in results of list command above. NOW it’s time to overwrite everything on your new hard drive…. The next command is Disk Duplicate and copies the image found in In File IF (the USB drive) to Out File OF the new hard disk drive
dd if=/mnt/usb/mycloud2tb.img of=/dev/sda -
Be patient, there will be no response for 5 minutes. Your hard drive is being overwritten and that takes some time. Your result should be
10240000+0 records in
10240000+0 records out
5242880000 bytes (5.2 GB) copied, xxx.xxx s, xx.x MB/s. -
Reboot the Rescue CD (Linux), start graphical interface with STARTX
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Single click to start GPARTED and access newly rebuilt drive. Open up partition table and take a look at what you have. I had numerous partitions and large amount of unallocated space available.Lets use available space.
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Delete the EXT4 partition (this is the largest partition numbered 4 in my build).
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Create a new partition 4 of type EXT4 with GPARTED using the balance of unallocated space.
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Write the changes to the drive using GPARTED to finalize the build
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Shut down Linux
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Remove the new WD Red hard drive from build PC and reattach to logic board of WD MyCloud
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Connect network and power. My drive comes up to solid RED light (again).
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Access the drive as if it were new using My Cloud
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My drive accessible at 192.168.1.3, same as original config. Can manage at
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Drive showed only 1.5TB of storage and has lost access to its files, also firmware is older at ver 03.00.232. All of this is causing the solid RED light
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Go to Settings, then UTILITIES tab, choose the SYSTEM FACTORY RESTORE and take QUICK RESTORE, system will spin for a while, then reboot. (NOTE, if you take option for FULL RESTORE, be prepared for hours or days of waiting as this process is intended to cleanse your personal data and writes patterns of data to the entire drive as a way to delete personal data. Reports of this running 24 to 48 hours are posted. Don’t do FULL RESTORE.)
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When drive reboots, all of the new storage space was available (5.9TB in my 6TB drive!!)
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Still had error Solid RED due to Firmware. I attempted to download and install firmware recommended AUTOMATICALLY with CHECK FOR UPDATE. System would not allow the firmware upgrade, it errors out on a space error or not able to download error. I found the firmware for Gen 1 on this page:
WD My Cloud v3.x, v4.x and v2.x Firmware Versions Download Links -
Downloaded the .deb file and then from SETTINGS, FIRMWARE and MANUAL FIRMWARE option, was able to upgrade from version V03.00 to V04.05.00-342.deb
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The unit rebooted to BLUE light, with white background on new administration panel, I completed a new configuration setting Time Zone, adding a new user and adding a new share. Now everything is fine, and able to access from same old links, no problems saving backups to the drive.
