Just bought a 4TB MY CLOUD (RECERTIFIED) -some questions

Legacy Products My Cloud OS 3
1

Hi everyone

I just bit on a great price for a 4TB WD My Cloud (refurb) - https://www.wdc.com/en-gb/products/wd-recertified/my-cloud.html?gclid=Cj0KCQjwkd3VBRDzARIsAAdGzMDH8rKklLaFyTkRmYTAuMqxf_G-o0sFABT5tdjEgit_wVrMInIMI1gaAhiVEALw_wcB#RWDBCTL0040HWT-EESN

And now I have some qs - Sorry if these are newbie, but - er, I am a newbie, and the threads seem to go back some years, Shout if I’m being an i-d-i-o-t

I’m aware that refurb HDDs come with some of their own issues - and will have an actual offsite backup for anything I put on it. I’m also not planning on attempting 4k video realtime across a wifi network :slight_smile:

Before it arrives, I am trying to work out how to make best use of it. My background - 20 years of using GNU/Linux at home and work, competent with Solaris/*BSD and Samba/ZFS/sshfs.

Went for this to - basically- stick family pics on and retire an ageing linux box with a few USB drives attached

I am interested in a couple of things that aren’t immediately obvious and I wondered if anyone could shed some light.

  • There seems to be a firmware jump - from 2* to 4* - I can’t work out which my NAS will come with. any way to tell before it arrives?
  • It looks like it’s full of 'features* that aren’t (eg no powerdown in software) - correct?
  • If I set it up stock and then (as maybe will happen) the various addons and poor optimisation ( that it appears to comes with, eg IO or indexing) is there a way to reduce it to a factory-supported NAS - eg just NFS/CFS mount and EXT4 drive?
  • If the above doesn’t work, is there a current recipe for Debian (or close) that won’t void warranty/ 30 day return?
  • I will prioritise reliability and steady read/write over ‘performance’ - any tips?

Basically, I have low expectations, but if it does what I want, it’s a steal at £75 (85USD), and I am happy to play around with it to get it into shape.

Be keen to hear any current or recent war stories. And, as I say, I am not trusting it with any data nor expecting a $1000 NAS box for 75 quid.

Happy to report back when it arrives and will follow any sane recipies happily while it’s empty of data :slight_smile:

Clients to read/ write will be mainly Debian boxes and laptops on the LAN, with an occasional OSX laptop (partner) and maybe family with Windows remotely using the cloud to look at pictures (if that feature works…) Former - local client read/write on LAN is the key.

Regards all

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it appears you bought the basic starter WD NAS, Not a lot of bells and whistles, but quite serviceable, nonetheless. This HAS appears to have been discontinued at the beginning ,of 2019. It also appears at this point to have been replaced by a lesser product called the My Cloud Home which is not a true NAS like the My Cloud. People who jumped from the My Cloud to the Home version have expressed a lot of disappointment in the Home. Be glad you did not get one.

To upgrade from My Cloud requires one to chose from the two upper tier NAS series, the EX or PR series. I have one of the upper tier My Clouds; the recently discontinued DL series.

Oh, and BTW, you posted your question in the wrong forum, You posted in the My Cloud Home forum, and it should be posted in the My Cloud forum.

MODERATOR: Please move this post to the correct forum.

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@slowandsteady

https://support.wdc.com/product.aspx?ID=904&lang=en

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No, due to the crazy world of WD, v4 firmware is older, and v2 later. The chances are that you will receive a Gen2, v4 device, since Gen1/v4 devices were superseded about two years ago. No way to tell before it arrives, unless you have access to the full part number; Gen2 devices end -10, Gen1 end -00.

I’d suggest you start by downloading and reading the appropriate user manual.

V2 firmware is based on Busybox, and upacks every boot, so any changes are lost. There are ways around this,; either installing chroot, or using funplug on a USB stick; search the forums.

Don’t use any prior linux experience to decide to use apt to get or update packages from standard sources; the device uses a non-standard 64k page size, so any apt-get or apt-update commands are likely to brick your device.

5

Hi everyone

Coming back to this after my rather drive-by post. Thanks for all the answers.

I’m still very confused about how the best way I have to find the device I have is to google this post :slight_smile:
No idea why WD implemented such an odd naming scheme and massive version change, nor how hard it is to find out actual hardware info :frowning:
Device functioned just fine as “dumb” NAS. Then total HD failure - with help from this forum and elsewhere I swapped in a replacement drive.

Now thinking about doing something more complex/ interesting with it - hence back here. Thanks for the pointers, help, and TBH to WD for hosting the forum with all its alternate firmware/ criticism/ etc.

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I’ve learned quite a bit recently after de-bricking my not actually bricked device. I wrote about it in This Post and I include some links to other posts/sites that should be useful to you in repurposing the device. Of course mine is a Gen1 device (with supported firmwares starting with 03 and 04), not a Gen2 device (with 02 firmware)

On a Gen1 I suspect it is possible to coerce the factory bootloader into loading whatever you’d like via clever manipulation of the contents of various partitions.