[GUIDE] How To Unbrick your 2TB/3TB/4TB My Cloud

Hello all,

 I got a WD mycloud 1TB, everything is working perfectly, updated the software to V4. I have a Samsung 2TB laying around and tried to restore the 2TB image to it. Everything went fine. Checked the partitions, they’re all there. Plugged in the WD mini board, the white led then a few minutes later, red LED is on forever. Can’t connect to it. I know the BLUE led must be on for the device to connect.

 The post is for 2TB, but mine is only 1TB. Is it possible?

 Made an image from my 1TB hard drive, restored to the 2TB, same red led.

 Please help to find out what’s wrong with the process? I did both using Mac and the rescue disk with PC.

 Thanks,

Louis

Found the problem. It’s the drive, I put in the Green WD 2TB and it worked without a hitch.

  • Create an original image of the 1TB. Do the quick factory restore from the dashboard - utilities.

  • Don’t create user or anything. 

  • Turn on SSH.

  • Get Putty and do the command to create image and download the image.img to the 8GB USB drive = 5.2GB.

  • Follow the instruction on post 1.

  • After the restoration to 2TB is done, reboot, reformat EXT4 and extend the other 1TB.

  • Plugin and it will have blue LED instead of red like the Samsung drive.

Cheers,

Louis

Hi!

I have the same problem as Eric_Jalbert. With 2Tb image - solid white light, with 3Tb image - reboots every 45 seconds. But formatting ext4 gives no result. 

Maybe the problem in the latest firmware, don’t remember version but I updated on 4th of June. 

Also I using latest version of Gparted live flash drive instead system rescue cd because of several reasons, but I don’t see difference.

I read through all posts and still can’t find solution. 

help

I did have to downgrade from V4 to V3. Search this wd community on how to downgrade if yours is V4. I update the firmware as soon as I connect the device…

Cheers,

Louis

Thanks for responding! But as understand I can downgrade only with browser or SSH, but device is not booting at all and I can’t access over network

What’s your original configuration 1TB, 2TB, or 3TB? The mother card I believe only see the original image of the drive. If yours is 2TB, you must use 2TB and extend the extra 1TB. At least in my case 1TB, I used the original 1TB and extend my extra 1TB of the 2TB. Must be WD drive.

 I reset firmware to V3, and used WD drive, so I don’t really know if it’s the V3 or the WD drive or both.

Cheers,

Louis

dognmonkey wrote:

The mother card I believe only see the original image of the drive.

Not sure about that. I removed a dead 4TB drive and put in a spare 250GB one, used a 3TB image (or maybe it was 2TB) from one of the threads here and was able to successfully setup the 250GB drive in the My Cloud enclosure. Did have to properly format the various partions under Linux.

Perhaps, and this is a total guess, one has to use an image that is either the same size or larger than the hard drive they are trying to setup or unbrick.

dognmonkey wrote:

 

…The mother card I believe only see the original image of the drive. If yours is 2TB, you must use 2TB and extend the extra 1TB. At least in my case 1TB, I used the original 1TB and extend my extra 1TB of the 2TB. Must be WD drive.

 I reset firmware to V3, and used WD drive, so I don’t really know if it’s the V3 or the WD drive or both.

 

Its the drive.

MyCloud’s don’t have “firmware” updates, though they insist on calling it that.  They have an Operating System.  Everything is stored on the hard drive, and the board chips are not flashed in any way (yet).  In fact, I doubt they are flashable.

It doesn’t matter what size drive you have, the partitions are always set up the same way.  (Re-read the guide)  The first three partitions are the Operating System, the last (#4) is the data storage volume; THIS is the only difference in all drives by size.  In fact, I have a change I’ll try and make to the guide in order to make this more simple for everyone.

Unless you’re custom modding your MyCloud, use the latest firmware.  Understand, however, that there are big differences between v3 and v4, and this directly effects custom programs.

Bennor wrote:> Perhaps, and this is a total guess, one has to use an image that is either the same size or larger than the hard drive they are trying to setup or unbrick.

 

Close.  The hard drive image must be SMALLER than the hard drive they are trying restore.

**bleep** that I have to work all weekend; I really would love to get started on this and crack it out.  Stay tuned.

BTW I’m replying to  eriffoorp who shared the 250GB image!

Many thanks for sharing this image. I tried all the others and they failed with a white led on my WD Mycloud 3TB with Red WD hard drive.

I dd’d this image, put back in the mycloud and booted then after a while it restarted and let me log on to do a factory reset. I then put the image back in my pc and used gparted to resize partition 4 to 2.9TB

(I didn’t use bs=1m switch)

Everything worked really well then I bricked it again trying to install minidlna…

now that I have your image I can rebuild again tomorrow!

I bricked the 2TB from using static ipaddress settings. Somehow, the authentication is bad, it got stuck at the dashboard, no login after downgraded from V4 to V3.

-Tried the restoration image and now only white LED, restarts at every 45 sec.

-Same procedure but doesn’t work anymore.

-Tried with WD1.5TB, still same problem. 

-The original 1TB RED WD drive is still working.

-Something is still wrong with the procedure… hit and miss dependent upon the drive.

-May be my board no longer works.

Cheers,

Louis

Just love my hackintosh.

Out of drives to try. Did the same thing on the same computer. I hooked up the external USB sata connector to my 1.5TB.

Use mac terminal

dd if=/mycloud1tb.img of=/dev/disk2 

waited for about an hour or more, when it’s done.

Put the drive in the motherboard, turn on the power, push the reset button, the yellow LED flashing after 40 sec… I knew then it’s working. The blue light came on.

It actually sees 1.5TB data. But I reset to factory and came back to 980GB.

Use gparted to extend the extra 500GB. it’s perfect now.

I’m going to try the 2TB that’s dead.

So if you have the white LED that reboots after 45 sec. The hard drive is not written correctly. Use different machine or MAC terminal.

Cheers,

Louis

I did it again with my 2TB drive and it worked. 

So the Mac terminal seems to be more reliable than the other way.

restore_mac.jpg

Cheers,

Louis

I created a video for my upgrade 1TB hard drive to 2TB hard drive.

Cheers,

Louis

This is my “mycloud1tb.img” that I created and used if anyone is interested to use.

Cheers,

Louis

Hi

A month ago i bricked mycloud without knowing why or how. I’ve tried several differente ways to restore/replace guides, unbrick guides, and none of them worked, and i tried several times, the problem was when i upgraded to the last firmware i couldn’t acess mycloud anymore. Today i  tried this method, and at 1st attempt, i got it fully working, and upgraded to the last fw.

Thank you so much for all the guys that help make this guide possible and 100% working !

Thank you once again, and have a good day, tiagowoa.

Finally I have time to try one more time to unbrick mycloud and have succeed with 250Gb image. But after quick restore I have only 250 Gb, and this is sad. I try to increase the size of the /dev/sda4, but gparted says that I need to fix the disk, and every time when I fix the volume, device started to reboot every 40-45 seconds.

Any suggestions?

PS: sorry for bad english

don’t do the quick restore, just use gparted to format the ext4 and resize it. It should work. 

Cheers,

Louis

yo yo yo!

Thank you guys very much! Now I have 3Tb mycloud working!!

The main problem was that I surrounded by laptops and usb devices, so here’s my problem:

  1. systemRescueCD that I used with usb cd-rom works incorrect
  2. latest version of gparted (gparted live flash drive) I suppose have different fixing algorythm and it bricks mycloud when I try to fix the drive and extend 4th partition
  3. for my case only helped 250 Gb image

the sequence:

  1. created gpt partition table
  2. format the whole disk in ext4
  3. dd
  4. fix
  5. resied partition from 250Gb to maximum
  6. format 4th partition in ext4
  7. connect wd drive to it’s miniboard

after reboot - stable blue light!

But!

when I try to update a firmware I can’t connect to mycloud, despite of blue light, so I have now firmware v03.04.01-219

I disabled automaical firmware updates, now all works as it should. 

best

Vladimir

Thanks to this guide I successfully restored my drive after playing around with apt-get which I found out is very dangerous command.  I wish there was a way to do this without opening the drive as I broke most of the clips, so the case is a little loose, and now I have no warranty.  I am wondering if they could be fixed with superglue?  Also it is tricky to get the metal spacers that holds the board back in place, a little scotch tape helped with that greatly.  You need to be very careful how you take these things apart.  I also found out that It does have an red drive inside the case,