Help! All data in mybook live gone and owner password unknown

Actually, you can. Download and extract the latest firmware. Then use diff -rq to compare the system files. Of course, exclude the /DataVolume directory.

For MyBook Live (Uno):

# MyBook Live (Codename "Apollo NAS")
# https://support-en.wd.com/app/products/product-detail/p/231#WD_downloads
wget https://download.wdc.com/nas/apnc-024310-048-20150507.deb

# You must be root to preserve the file owners!
sudo su

# Extract DEB file
mkdir apnc-024310-048-20150507
dpkg-deb -R apnc-024310-048-20150507.deb apnc-024310-048-20150507/

# Mount rootfs.img
cd apnc-024310-048-20150507/CacheVolume/upgrade
mkdir rootfs
mount -o loop rootfs.img rootfs

For MyBook Live Duo:

# MyBook Live Duo (Codename "Zermatt", probably previously "Apollo 2")
# https://support-en.wd.com/app/products/product-detail/p/232
wget https://download.wdc.com/nas/ap2nc-024310-048-20150507.zip
unzip ap2nc-024310-048-20150507.zip

# You must be root to preserve the file owners!
sudo su

# Extract DEB file
mkdir ap2nc-024310-048-20150507
dpkg-deb -R ap2nc-024310-048-20150507.deb ap2nc-024310-048-20150507/

# Mount rootfs.img
cd ap2nc-024310-048-20150507/CacheVolume/upgrade
mkdir rootfs
mount -o loop rootfs.img rootfs

(I haven’t tested if dpkg-deb exists on the MBL. It did this on a separate Linux box.)

To recover the system files to factory default, you can do a firmware update (to the same version). It should replace all your system files but keep the data. But I am not 100% sure if it really replaces every system file.

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