I knocked my My Cloud off the desk

[David_Flynn]

Hi All,

I knocked my My Cloud off the desk and it landed pretty hard. Now it won’t boot. I did get it to a blue LED once, but still could not access via shares or Dashboard. Further attempts to reset or recover resulted in a solid white LED. Dashboard attempts give “no network connection” or similar, but unit is connect and port led’s are flashing.

Obviously, I broke something. The question is, can I recover my data? If I bought an EX2 (for the RAID 1, and which I would glue to the desk), could I put the My Cloud disk in it and read it?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Dave

[Myron]

Sorry. Unfortunately it’s bad news. Several spinning discs with drive heads flying over the drive platters and the width is less than that of a strand of human hair.

You’ll need to send it to a specialist data recovery specialist and pay their price. I do think the drive in the NAS is now dead.

[David_Flynn]

Thanks for the reply. I was afraid of that.

Dave

[Bennor]

It can sometimes, if one has a lot of data on the drive, take a very long time for the My Cloud to boot to a blue LED from a white LED.

You can pull the drive, which would violate the WD My Cloud device warrantee, and connect it to a computer running Linux to try and pull the data off the drive. From what I’ve experienced if the M.y Cloud LED was red then there is potentially some sort of error reading the drive, white on the other hand (from what I’ve seen) indicates the drive is being read but there is a problem loading the My Cloud OS firmware.

If after leaving the My Cloud sit for a bunch of hours it fails to boot to a Blue LED then I’d pull the drive and see if it can be accessed in a PC. If so then I’d run a full drive check to ensure the drive is OK (no bad sectors, etc.). Then backup the 4th partition (EXT4) containing the user data (Shares). Then try to unbrick the drive.

[Great_Scottt]

@Bennor - I’d agree with that assessment if there wasn’t physical damage to consider. When physical damage comes into play, recommending a procedure which would void the warranty is never a good idea imho.

Data recovery specialists can likely (no guarantees of course) get to the data, but it will be pricey. The more the drive is run, the less likely they are to be able to recover anything as it can (depending on the kind of damage which cannot be determined externally) continue to damage the device every time the damaged part of the platter passes the head.

[Bennor]

@Bennor - I’d agree with that assessment if there wasn’t physical damage to consider. When physical damage comes into play, recommending a procedure which would void the warranty is never a good idea imho.

Data recovery specialists can likely (no guarantees of course) get to the data, but it will be pricey. The more the drive is run, the less likely they are to be able to recover anything as it can (depending on the kind of damage which cannot be determined externally) continue to damage the device every time the damaged part of the platter passes the head.

While true it is not an official WD recommended course of action, pulling the drive, the original poster specifically stated; “If I bought an EX2 (for the RAID 1 … could I put the My Cloud disk in it and read it?”. That indicates the OP wants to access and recover their data immediately or as soon as possible. And the method in my post is another way of doing that without having to buy an EX2 if they’re going to pull the drive from the My Cloud enclosure anyhow.

Without knowing when the OP bought their My Cloud its entirely possible their warrantee expired, not to mention I don’t think the My Cloud warrantee covers user initiated damage to the drive in the first place.

The OP will have to decide if it is worth spending a considerable amount of money (and possibly time) to recover their data if they send it to a drive recovery service or send it back to WD. In past experience with damaged hard drives, drive recovery services (which charged in excess of several hundred dollars per drive) success at recovering data was mixed at best.

[Myron]

In a quiet room while holding the My Cloud NAS against an ear, you can power-up the NAS. What you can be listening to is for, maybe, the drive spinning up and spinning down and alternating with this. Another tell-tale sign is if you can hear a pattern. By this it will be the drive trying to find a track on a disk platter. It’ll be a repetitive sound. The sound of a hard drive struggling is a bit difficult to miss.

If the sounds from the drive are pseudo-random then it’s a better sign.

Whenever I encounter a hard drive that’s got problems that’s what I try to do first. Listen to it. (Bit like a doctor listening to a patient’s chest.)

@Great_Scottt, is also correct with it being a NAS, when powered up it will be trying to possibly write to the drive on power-up. This and also if there is a physical fault would make it more difficult for data to be recoverable each time an attempt is made to power-up the drive.

I’m guessing the My Cloud was powered when it hit the ground? Not good.

I once managed to drop a drive. Cried for a while. With the NAS I have now, it’s in the other room, in a corner where I don’t have an reason to go there often and also located where the frequently visiting dog can’t get to it to knock it over. Lesson learnt once suffered the pain.