Followed steps 5-10 from this post [GUIDE] Debrick a completely dead MyCloud to write img file to my new HDD.
Finally command should look like this: dd if=mycloud.img of=/dev/sda bs=256M status=progress
Adding bs=256M increases write image speed. So it takes only several seconds to complete.
I used same GParted Live USB to extend EXT4 data partition. This was quite easy through graphical interface. I opened GParted tool, right clicked on a EXT4 partition and chose resize/move then I put maximum allowed space (up to 5.9TB) and applied my changes. It called resize2fs tool to make this happen and proceed just several minutes.
High-speed HDD in this NAS is useless, because speed will be limited by lan connection (~125MB/s) or by CPU (Real speed around 60-90MB/s for Samba on Gen1 device).
Better to chose low-energy (green) HDD or something cold, beucase there is no active cooling.
Will second what Fox_exe said. Buying an expensive and fast hard drive to use inside a first or second gen single bay My Cloud enclosure is extreme overkill due to the limitations of the hardware used by the single bay My Cloud. On a multi bay unit one might see an advantage but even then it still eventually comes down to hardware used by the NAS device and any limitations with the firmware (like old modules/code).
But it should also be noted that WD recently admitted to certain WD Red drives (2-6GB versions apparently) were SMR, which may potentially have a very negative affect write performance in NAS devices, or have other possible issues with an NAS enclosure or it’s firmware. Numerous online discussions on the issues, here is one posting:
So swapping out the WD Red drive that is SMR which came with the My Cloud with a non-SMR hard drive, one may see a possible write speed increase. But in the end the low end capabilities of the single bay My Cloud hardware (processor and RAM), along with old/outdated code in the firmware, are still going to be the ultimate bottle neck. As many have discovered.
But in any case @jb_wanted thanks for posting your method and drive used. Hopefully will help others.
Do you think one of these drives would work well to upgrade the HDD in an older MyCloud? I’ve got a 4Tb single drive unit. It’s worked great for many years, and still continues to work fine; it’s just that I’ve run out of room on it! 50Gb space left out of 4Tb!
Seagate BarraCuda ST8000DM004 8TB 5400 RPM 256MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive
Can it work? Likely yes. But there may be/are better options. Note that if a drive isn’t designed for NAS use (like the WD Red line of NAS drives or Seagate Ironwolf line of NAS drives) one may end up having the hard disk drive fail faster in a NAS/My Cloud than it would under normal desktop usage.
And another issue is the SMR vs CMR. Generally SMR drives are not recommended for use in a NAS for a number of reasons. Seagate indicates (https://www.seagate.com/internal-hard-drives/cmr-smr-list/) their Barracuda drives 2GB-8GB are SMR drives. CMR is best when it comes to NAS drives.
Hard disk drives up to 12TB or more should work in a single bay/single drive My Cloud enclosure. Some past experimentation from a few years ago with WD hard disk drives:
Thanks for the good info Bennor! Do you know what the original drives in the 1st Gen MyClouds were? The 4Tb I’ve got in there now has been running for around 7-8 years w/o issue so I would like to get the same type but more storage capacity. That Seagate Ironwolf drive was giving you heating issues? Maybe a 5400 “Green” drive is better? Fox_exe recommended that type for cooling reasons. Do you think the original drives in the 1st Gen MyClouds were CMR or SMR type drives? Thanks.
Most (if one searches past discussions here) single bay My Cloud’s came with WD Red drives. WD has the following blog post (https://blog.westerndigital.com/wd-red-nas-drives/) indicating which WD Red’s are SMR and which are CMR. I’ve never used a Seagate Ironwolf drive so don’t know if it experiences heating issues. I’ve experimented, in a first gen single bay My Cloud enclosure, with various hard drives (and brands/models) ranging from 250GB’s in size up to 12TB. From 3.5 inch drives down to laptop 2.5 inch drives. Only drive’s I couldn’t get working in a first gen enclosure were SSD drives.
While SMR drives will work in a single bay My Cloud enclosure, one may experience slower write speeds (or possibly read speeds) than with CMR drives. I briefly used a 500GB WD Green drive and it worked fine (if a bit slow). If one is worried about heat, enlarge the cooling vent holes on the enclosure and or aim a fan at it. (or leave the enclosure cover off).
If you are worried about the SMR/CMR issue, use your favorite internet search engine to read the many available posts about the issues one may experience using SMR in a NAS enclosure.
One can find WD Red Plus (CMR) drives on sale from places like NewEgg and Amazon (if in the United States). 4TB versions usually run around $90 USD on sale. What more than a few have done is buy WD Easystore external USB hard drives that go on sale from time to time at stores like BestBuy and “shuck” the 3.5 inch drive inside for use in NAS enclosures.
I went ahead and got an 8Tb WD Red CMR drive to upgrade from the old 4Tb drive. I was thinking of trying to just clone the old 4Tb drive over to the 8Tb using Clonezilla or similar. It’s an ext4 filesystem running Linux isn’t it?
You should be able to clone the old working drive to a newer hard drive. Just make sure to clone the entire drive (and all it’s partitions). Generally the data partition is the one formatted for EX4, the other partitions generally are used to store and run the My Cloud operating system.
After cloning the old drive the new drive to the new drive, or using one of the unbrick processes on a new drive, the My Cloud Dashboard may incorrectly report the free space capacity of the new drive. If this is the case do a System Only restore from the My Cloud Dashboard > Settings > Utilities > System Factory Restore > section. If one see’s a red front LED after cloning or unbricking, attempt to access the My Cloud Dashboard anyway. If the Dashboard can be accessed, run a System Only restore to fix the front red LED issue. Basically, it is generally a good idea to perform a System Only restore at first boot after cloning or unbricking a My Cloud.
Edit to add: There is another thread that discusses using Clonzilla.
Hi Bennor,
Do you know if I can take my old 4Tb NAS drive and delete all the partitions except the ext4 data partition and then mount it under my Ubuntu server? I.e. I want to remove all of the other partitions entirely and expand the ext4 partition to use all of the space and then install some kind of dlna media server software on my Ubuntu server and serve it up that way.
Thanks for any info! superswade
P.S. the new WD Red 8Tb CMR drive has been working great in the WD Gen1 NAS for the last few weeks!
Yes, it should be possible using a good disk partitioning program either on Linux or a program that supports manipulating Linux partitions. But no matter how you do it, you should backup any data if possible just in case there is an issue during the partition removal and partition expansion operation.
And your Ubuntu server would have to support EXT4; likely does but one should check to make sure.
I got a WD My cloud for free, with 2tb disk, working, but I have a 4tb red disk from another NAS so I wanted to upgrade. I wasted so much time on this that I would probably be better without it by now haha
I did an image of the 2tb disk and tested didnt work., then came back to use the 3tb image, before even changing the partition size, I turn it on to check, its on firmware 3. Tried to upgrade to 4, like I had before, and I have the error that there is no enough space.
So not sure how ppl were able to upgrade the FW of this old disks images.
I will go back and try to do another image of the factory disk to try from there, since these images dont let me upgrade the FW…
Hello
I just clones the original 4TB HDD from MyCloud to a new 8TB one (dd then KDE PartitionManager to expand the data partition)
The device boots but doesn’t recognize the data partition
Actually if I ssh in it, /dev/sda2 was mounted as /mnt/HD/HD_a2 but it doesn’t
If I manually mount it, I can see all the folders/files are there in ssh
But on the UI … nothing
It consider that it’s a brand new device
I tried to do Settings → Tools → Recovery system only (I did made a config backup before)
But it didn’t help
It still want to configure a RAID system but as there is only 1 disk it fallback to JBOD
And at some piont it wants to format and erase everything. I stop at that point
Any idea I could get it to recognize what is already there ?
If not I will have to reconfigure from scratch and copy files & folder from the 4TB through an USB adapter
One troubleshooting suggestion is not to do DD to copy, use a dedicated cloning program like Clonezilla or any of the backup programs that support disk to disk cloning. Next don’t adjust or expand the data partition after cloning the drive, let the My Cloud firmware do it when you perform a System Only Restore after accessing the My Cloud Dashboard upon first boot with new drive.
When cloning the old drive to a new one, the partition size has to be copied exactly otherwise one may have boot issues or issues in the My Cloud Dashboard. Also note that the single unit My Cloud units do not do “RAID” for the data partition due to only having a single drive. If you want RAID, buy a multi bay NAS or My Cloud.
