Help with My Book Live Duo PLEASE

WD Legacy Products My Book Live Duo
1

Hi all, sorry about the desperate title but i am in desperate need of help.

I purchased a 4TB My Book Live Duo and received it on the 26/07/12

I switched it to Raid 1 2TB so i was protected in case of failure.

I transferred all of my photos/music/video and other information to the drive (about 1TB) and all seemed to be working well for about a week.

Then i noticed the quick view in the taskbar flashing i moused over it and it said raid was degraded. Logged into the dashboard and it said Drive B had failed and to replace. I tried rebooting the device and the drive was detected again and raid was rebuilt (took around 10 hours).

Las night i came home to find the drive with a solid yellow light and i couldn’t access the dashboard. I read in the manual the yellow light means its loading its operating system so i left it for about 2 hours and the yellow light was still on so i pulled the plug and left it for 10 minutes to cool and then plugged it back in and got the blue light follow by the yellow light for about 10 minutes and then it went to a solid green light so i figured it was operational.

I checked the quick view and it shows MyBookLiveDuo loacted at 192.168.0.3 but says Temperature unknown, used 0% and doesn’t show any info about the raid. I am unable to access the dashboard by typing the ip address into my browser (Chrome and Internet Explorer) and if i right click the quick view and choose launch dashboard i just get a timeout error again.

I went to unplug the drive again and try it again and the case was very warm so i popped the plastic top open and the drives are unbelievably hot so much so that i cannot touch them.

I have tried calling WD Support this morning and the guy on the phone says i need to unplug the device and leave it off for an hour or two and then if it boots up again i should be fine. I have left it for about 4 hours while i went to do some shopping and plugged it back in about 30 minutes ago and the light went green after 10-15 minutes and is a solid green but again the quick view shows MyBookLiveDuo Teperature unknown Used 0% and nothing about the raid.

I have tried calling the support number again but i am being told the same thing again, the My Book Live Duo doesn’t have an internal fan so gets very hot so we recommend you unplug the device daily for at least an hour to let it cool down. 

I am not happy with that answer as i bought the drive to be constantly available as a backup and storage drive.

I guess i am looking for someone to offer some assistance of either getting the drive working again or how to get support to acknowledge a problem and offer some assistance other than unplug it and let it cool down.

I am contemplating returning the drive and looking at an alternative which would be a shame cause for the week it worked it worked well

Thanks for any assistance

scrappysphinx

2

Welcome to the club, the same thing happened to me. The way I fixed it was by reinstalling the firmware. Did you by chance enable SSH? If so, you can reinstall by SSH. If not, I don’t know what to tell you, other than this book is plagued with problems.

http://community.wdc.com/t5/My-Book-Live/Firmware-Update-via-SSH/td-p/310064

There’s how you install via SSH.

3

Hi ChrisH1984, unfortunately no i didn’t enable SSH.

A little update though, i plugged the drive in last night and it proceeded to boot up i was able to access my files via the mapped network drive in my computer for about 20 minutes and i then i saw the light go out and come back on blue then turn yellow and has been sat like that since last night. Again the drives are incredibly hot.

I’m gonna give WD support one last call tomorrow and if they tell me to unplug it again i’m gonna return the product to the store.

4

Questions.  What is the ambient temperature of the room where your MBLD is located?  Is the drive upright?  Are the vents at the bottom of the MBLD in any way covered?

5

Hi Myron, room temperature at the moment is about 22"C and the room rarely gets much warmer than that

MBLD is currently on and has been since this morning when i posted and it is still sat on the yellow light. 

Drives are upright, vents at the bottom are clear, vents at the side are clear and i’ve popped open the top of the MBLD and sat a thermometer on the top of the drive cage which is reading at 40"C.

Like i said i think i am giving up on trying to get it to work and just gonna return it to the purchase store if WD support don’t offer any sort of help tomorrow.

Thanks again for the help so far.

6

I wonder if the RAID 1 array got built from the drive that was indicating a fault.  Have you tried removing the faulty drive and operating the MBLD with only one drive?  Does the yellow LED still show.

Temperature issue are only flagged when the temperature of one of the drives reaches about 70"C.

Could could also just be unlucky and have been sold and unhealthy NAS, but on that remember that if this is the case then it does not matter what make and model of NAS it may be.  All of them will have sent out poorly NASs that fail quickly.

I have been a MBLD, it’s operating the latest firmware and not a single problem with it.   (. . . touch wood . . .)

7

I’ve not tried with just one drive so thats certainly a valid thing to try.

I will still call WD tomorrow and see what they say as i was very happy with the unit when it worked for the first week or so and would be happy to keep it as long as i could get the issue of getting stuck booting and then dying again resolved.

I have no problem sending the unit in for repair or replacement but all WD support would tell me on the two occasions i called them is that the unit has no fan so gets warm and i should be unplugging the device daily for at least 1-2 hours.

I get that occasionally bad units gets shipped from all manufacturers and would have no problem if, as said above they would acknowledge a fault with the unit, if not since it is still within the first 28 days of purchase i have contacted the store i bought it from and i can return it there for exchange or refund.

Thanks again for the help

8

If WD support is telling you to shut-off the NAS for one to two hours then whoever answered is a bit clueless.

I don’t turn my NAS off.  Just checked the temperatures of both drives.  One drive is at 40 degrees Celsius and the other at 39 degrees Celsius.  The room where the NAS lives is cool so not much heat is introduced in addition to the the heat the NAS is generating.

If the ambient temperature of the room where the NAS is too high then, yes, the MBLD will end up getting rather hot.

I guess a key to a reliable NAS, fan or fanless, is to keep it in a cool environment.

9

My Smartware reported the same thing:  I called WD Tech and it’s sending me a new one.  My MBLD is less than 3 weeks old.  Tech support was great.  It’s sending me anew one and giving me 30 days to return the broken one.  I am able to transfer files to my WHS 2011.

10

On a related note, I think the raid1 configuration for security is baloney. To me it seems that almost any problem that would cause a failure in one drive (lightning, dropping, fire, theft, water, etc.) would probably wreck both drives. I wonder if the raid 1 configuration with drives mirroring may not also cause the device to work harder and thus get hotter. Ive seen a lot of comments on this forum from people with raid 1 configuration (coincidence?). For this reason i I stick to raid 0. For security I do a periodic manual copy of critical folders to an external drive which I keep elsewhere.

11

Thing is, I have a good quality RF interference and surge adaptor on the mains feed for the DUO.  Also got surge suppression between the cable modem and router.  The drive and electronics on the MBLD is contained in a cage which I believe would protect the electronics and the drive from external RFI.

I agree that keeping a separate copy of important and irreplaceable stuff is essential and the inclusion of a USB connector is a good call.