We own a My Home ff 04 NAS, and need to access photos stored on the device. When plugged in, even after a few hours, it still flashes yellow on the front LED. We have tried multiple access points/routers. We would like to get the unit into working condition, but the main priority is to get to the files/photos (hopefully) without opening the shell. We have also tried to connect a USB with version 04.06.00-111 on it for about 30 minutes, but nothing changed.
What we know:
It is a My Home Gen 1, Single Slot ff 04.xx.xx NAS.
It is most likely no issue with the Ethernet/power.
The My Home dashboard and files themselves arent accessible on the network, and the network does not recognize the device from the Google Fiber dashboard.
What we don’t know:
What the Yellow blinking light exactly means. Multiple sources list Ethernet issues, too hot/too cold HDD, or hardware/firmware issues.
We don’t know what version/update has been installed.
As a troubleshooting step, check the network port on the My Cloud for bent pins or dust bunnies blocking the port. Quite often a yellow front LED means it cannot connect to the local network. Make sure the My Cloud is directly connected to the local network router. Try changing the network cable as well. In extremely rare cases one may need to put a network switch between the My Cloud and the upstream network router, so one should try that as a troubleshooting step. Another troubleshooting step is to connect the My Cloud direct to a computer’s Ethernet port and see if you can access the My Cloud Dashboard.
Look, based on what you’re describing with that My Cloud NAS—yellow light constantly blinking and nothing showing up on the network—you’ve got either a drive that won’t initialize, a corrupted filesystem, or some firmware issue that’s stopping the whole thing from booting up. That yellow blinking light on these WD My Cloud units means the system can’t mount the internal drive or finish starting up. You’ve already tried different routers and let it sit for hours without it showing up on Google Fiber’s dashboard, so this isn’t a network setup problem—something’s wrong internally.
First thing to try is a real power cycle—unplug it for a solid five minutes, then while it’s unplugged, hold down the power button for 30 seconds to drain any leftover charge. Plug it back in and give it a good 10-15 minutes. Also hit that little reset button on the back for 4 seconds—that’ll reset system settings but won’t touch your data. If that doesn’t do anything, you can try the 40-second factory reset, but heads up, that’ll wipe your network settings. While it’s booting, try typing 192.168.1.100 or 192.168.0.100 straight into your browser, or try http://mybooklive. Sometimes these things actually boot up but just don’t announce themselves on the network properly.
But here’s the thing—you said getting those photos is what really matters, not necessarily fixing the NAS. If the troubleshooting doesn’t pan out, just pop open the case and pull the drive out. These My Cloud boxes use regular SATA drives with Linux EXT4 formatting. Hook that drive up to a Linux machine, or even a Windows PC if you grab some EXT4 drivers, and you can pull your files straight off it. Your photos’ll be in something like /shares/Public or whatever user folders you had set up. This completely bypasses all the firmware headaches. And if you don’t feel like cracking it open yourself, any local data recovery place can do it pretty cheap since the drive itself isn’t dead—the box just won’t boot.
