My Passport Wireless Pro - System Recovery or Hard Drive replacement

WD External Drives My Passport Wireless
82

I figured out a way to mount the file system.

Boot the device and login via ssh:
Using dd write the first 512kb of each partition to a file

dd if=/dev/sdd of=sdd.512k bs=512 count=1024

Scp the file off the device
Turn off the device, take out the drive, and mount it in your dock
Get the last sector of the partition and the sector size of the device and write these down using fdisk

fdisk /dev/sdb

Using DD write the last 4gB to a file

dd if=/dev/sdb of=last4.img bs=512 skip=7805579264 status=progress

Open sdd.512k in hxd and copy the bytes it starts with
Open last4.img in hxd and search for those bytes

Take the offset the nulls in sdd.512k start at convert from hex to decimal, divide by 512, and add it to the last sector of the partition
This number can then be used to mount the partition with losetup.

My drive has 7814037168 sectors, my partition ended at 7805579263, and the /dev/sdd partition started at 7809775616. So in my case the /dev/sdd partition starts 4196353 sectors from the start or 4261552 sectors from the end.

losetup -P -v -f -o $((7809775616*512)) /dev/sdb

show the mounts

losetup -a
fdisk /dev/loopNUMBER

mount the drive

mkdir /mnt/a
mount /dev/loop8p1 /mnt/a

Here are some instructions for doing this whole process with Linux:

Use gdisk to purge your new disk of a partition table:

gdisk /dev/sdc

then press ā†’ x ā†’ z ā†’ y ā†’ y

Create a new partition table use fdisk:

fdisk /dev/sdc

then press ā†’ g ā†’ n ā†’ Enter ā†’ Enter ā†’ (Calculate and Type in Default - 8457136) ā†’ y ā†’ n ā†’ Enter ā†’ Enter ā†’ Enter ā†’ w

mkfs.exfat /dev/sdc1

Overwrite the second partition with 0ā€™s. Control+C when it gets > 4gB

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdc2 status=progress

Use fdisk to remove the extra partition

fdisk /dev/sdc

then press ā†’ d ā†’ 2 ā†’ w

Remove the drive and put it back in your WDWP
Format an SD Card to Fat32, put the firmware on it, and put it in your WDWP
Press and Hold the Power Button and .25 second to a .5 second press and hold the SD card button. Hold for 5-10 seconds.
When the hdd starts flashing it is copying data to the new drive. After about 10 min if it shuts off something failed.

If your new driveā€™s serial number is >= 12 characters it should have succeeded
Try logging in with the 5th-12th characters of your drives serial number
On login your capacity will be wrong, you need to go to Admin ā†’ Factory Reset ā†’ System and Disk
With one final reboot, it should be good.

Once the drives were prepped. I was not able to swap between the old and new drives. I had to reformat and rerun the firmware update.

I tried fixing the scripts referencing a serial number and setting a static one, changing the md5, and rebuilding a new firmware, but I was unable to make the firmware installer run. Iā€™ll probably need a uart cable to do more debugging.

83

Hi!

I have an MPWP 4TB, a Samsung 860 QVO 1TB,
a SanDisk X600 1TB and a WD Blue 250GB M.2 with SATA enclosure.
Samsung and SanDisk drives do not work at all with any method.
However, WD works without any copying or partitioning.
Automatically creates partitions after normal startup and starts showing incorrect capacity.
Entering the Web UI and clicking on the full restore will work with correct capacity after restart.
But I want to use the Sandisk X600 1TB drive, please help me how to solve it.

I think need a customized firmware to recognize drivers from other vendors.
I have not been able to make an applicable, working firmware.

Thank you for all your help ā€¦

PS.
I bought a WD Blue 3D Nand 1TB SSD and works after the firmware upgrade process as My Passport Wireless SSD, and the wrong capacity is also good on the Web interface to restore factory settings (system and disk)

84

Hi

Have read an this thread and find this very interesting, as I have wanted this for some time.

But just to be sure, before buying a ssd, does this work for the old wdwp or only the new generationā€¦I have the old one.

85

Hi all,

I thought Iā€™d let you know that I was able to upgrade a My Passport Wireless Pro 3TB HDD to a 2TB SSD. Buying the parts cost AUD$650 vs. AUD$1500 to buy a My Passport Wireless Pro SSD 2TB, not to mention the robustness advantages of an SSD over an HDD.

The main reason I think I got it to work is that I used a WD Blue 2TB SSD.

This is how I got it to work (basically the same as PuDLeZā€™s original post):

  1. Format an SD card using Windows Disk Manager into FAT-32
  2. Create a folder on that called ā€œupdateā€ (without the ")
  3. Download a manual firmware update from the WD website and copy it into the update folder
  4. Format the SSD using Windows Disk Manager into exFAT
  5. Note the last 8 digits of the SSDā€™s serial number - this will become your wifi password
  6. Open and remove the HDD from the My Passport Wireless Pro
  7. Replace the HDD with the SSD
  8. DO NOT put everything back in the case - you may need to troubleshoot
  9. Insert the SD Card
  10. Power on the device and immediately hold the SD Card import button for 5 seconds
  11. You will see the HDD LED flash indicating that the boot loader is installing the firmware from the SD Card
  12. After about 7-8 minutes, the device will reboot and power on - the easiest way to tell is to keep refreshing your wifi networks on a phone, and when the mypassport hotspot appears, you know itā€™s working properly
  13. Connect to the wifi (using the last 8 digits of the SSD serial number you noted earlier) and go the UI in your browser as before)
  14. Make sure the device is connected to power and conduct a factory restore ā€œSystem and Diskā€ from within the UI - you may not need to do this, but the drive size was showing incorrectly and I wasnā€™t able to install Plex until I had

In my case, it actually changed the icon from the HDD to the SSD unit (ie. from grey to orange). I did have to reboot once as the wifi bridge timed out on setup, but other than that, works perfectly.

3 Likes
86

Thank you! Just used this method to great success. I upgraded a 3 TB model with a 1 TB WD Blue PC SSD (WDS100T1B0A). I had the same experience with needing to perform step 14 to get the drive size to register correctly and to allow Plex to be installed.

87

Hi folks,
Iā€™ve tried to ā€œupgradeā€ my MPWP from 2TB HD to 1 TB SSD (WD Blue WDS100T2BA0A), which seemed to work with the method described in #85. In all my trials I never reached a point were the system works, or at least there was something written to the SSD, neither pre-partioned (200M(none form)B, Max-4.03GB(exFAT); 4.03GB(none form.), nor with only one single partition (exFAT or None formatted). The required process will start with all LEDs blinking (L-S-S-S) then after about 5 min, the battery LEDs will get dark and only WLAN/HDD LEDs will blink and after about 7 min, the lights will go off and thats it. Restart will end up in all LEDs blinking simultaneously, after a short time where WLAN/HDD LEDs will look like booting up.
So my question to the community is now, what has gone wrong?? With HD the system works again fine, the soft in the update-dir is the actual SSD firmware versionm the HD firmware wouldnā€™t start up the rebuild processā€¦
kind regs and thaks in advance for your support
Mike

88

Hi all,
I am writing this, because I actually got my Samsung EVO 860 QVO SSD with 2TB to work after a few steps and then it stopped working after I updated the firmware.
I have got a My Passport Wireless model E2B. I think I bought it in 2014.
I have just created the exFAT partition and left roughly 4GB unallocated space. I have use Windows 7 to do so. I have copied the data from the original hard drive to the new one and installed it.
The drive has been recognized and worked properly. I just notice one strange behaviour: the drive was recognized as a 4TB drive. After doing a factory reset the drive was recognized as 2TB. Everything was fine. I copies the data back to the drive and tested it. Actually, the test was rather meant to test the new 5000 mAh battery and it worked perfectly.
Finally I made the mistake to update the firmware to the latest available version, which is v1.07.02. After the update the drive was gone and there seems no way to get it back running again.
How do I redo the firmware update? I could not find old! {removed} versions on the WD homepage.

89

Please note that this thread is for the Pro/Gen2 model. If youā€™re talking about 1.07.02, youā€™re either talking about Gen1 or youā€™re trying to use the wrong versionā€¦ If you flashed the wrong firmware version, who knows what broke hardware wise. You could easily have a paper weight on your handsā€¦

If you are truly talking about the 1 gen hardware, I believe 1.05.01 is the minimum version you should go to as it contained a charging fix so the battery doesnā€™t bloat and possibly explode but I would would think that 1.07.02 would be the better version to use, just work through the issues. My gen1 hardware has been sitting on the shelf with wires soldered to the uart pins. Havenā€™t looked at it since I got the Pro/gen2.

As for how to get the older versions. Look at the releases notes for it, note the version numbers. Then look at the latest versionā€™s download url, change the version number as needed.

90

@nkr70, are you able to copy the data off the drive via USB first then reformat the drive with another device reset and see if the issue remains?

You can also try to manually install the FW from SD card without going through the web dashboard.
https://support-en.wd.com/app/products/product-detail/p/260#WD_downloads

How to Install the Product Update: SD Card

  1. Download the firmware to your desktop.
  2. Unzip the file and you will find the actual firmware in this format: MyPassportWireless_x.bin.
  3. Format an SD card FAT-32.
  4. Create a folder on the SD card named ā€˜updateā€™.
  5. Copy the MyPassportWireless_x.bin file into the ā€˜updateā€™ folder.
  6. Turn OFF the My Passport Wireless.
  7. Insert the SD Card.
  8. Turn ON the My Passport Wireless.
  9. The My Passport Wireless will boot up, then will start flashing a White LED while the update is happening.
  10. Once the update is complete the LED will return to the normal ON state.
91

I am actually talking about the Gen1 hardware. Thanks for the hint about the charging fix.
I did use the web dashboard to install the update and I tried to reformat the drive several times. I reformated with MBR and GPT partitions and different partition sizes. The drive is not recognized.

92

@jayband @henderpa @wwwsam @Matt_Hayes @tdilauro @PuDLeZ

Iā€™m failing terribly (iā€™m usually good with computers)ā€¦
I have tried two different drives:

  • 2TB M.2 WD Blue SSD into a SATA enclosure
  • 1TB WD Blue HDD

I started with the sd-card approach. Formatting it to FAT32, creating the update-folder and uploading the bin-file.
I then formatted the SSD/HDD into exfat (GPT). When booting up the wireless pro I press the sd-card-import-button 5s, 60s later all the lights are flashing.

I gave up and tried a second approach. This time I use hddguru tool that is cloning your drive sector by sector. Essentially it made my 2tb a 1:1-copy of the 2tb wireless pro-drive. This process took over 12h since it literally copies every sector on the drive. It doesnā€™t ask you if your target should be MBR/GPT or what filesystem since this will be replicated when cloning all sectors.

This also failed and resulted into flashing lights. It feels like Iā€™m missing something.
I thought that the hddguru-route would work.

Any input?

Edit: I got it to work. I had to convert it to mbr and then the SD-card could update it. My original hdd in the wireless pro is also mbr. Donā€™t know if itā€™s regional or what.

1 Like
93

Hey guys,

Trying to replace the HDD in my broken My Passport Wireless Pro. I paid a significant 310AUD and donā€™t want to pay for another.

I dropped it and it no longer works properly. I canā€™t get into the interface via Wifi web/my cloud app - it just takes forever and does nothing (broken hdd).

I tried to error fix with windows but it says the errors canā€™t be fixed.

It used to make the clicking sound but thatā€™s gone.

The drive works If I plug it into a computer (as in I can copy the files off) either via USB or alternate caddy.

I donā€™t know how to tell if itā€™s gen 1 or 2 but itā€™s model is E6B bought in Dec 2017.

Iā€™m trying with an old WD Scorpio Black 7200rpm to see if I can get it working before buying an SSD to replace it.

Iā€™ve followed all the steps in PuDLeZ including some permutations like, creating the 4GB empty partition, formatting and deleting that partition, using MBR, using GPT etc.

I canā€™t for the life of me get the drive to do anything other than eventually shut down after I power it on with the SD card already inserted. Iā€™ve tried holding the SD card button for 5 seconds to 15 seconds (or following official instruction and not pressing any button), it does the same thing which is usually end up all blinking fast blue OR the all blinking 1 long and 3 short, powering down the drive, combination of wireless/hd blinking and then shutting down.

Any help appreciated.

94

I donā€™t really like my MPWP 4TB - it seems slow, but most importantly it is ā€˜brokenā€™ if it is connnected and mac desktop has to have a sudden reboot or somehow the connection from drive to desktop goes. Thereā€™s an exfat loading error that you can bypass to get read access to the drive, but you will need to wipe and start again if you want to read/ write again.

So itā€™s been lying in the drawer, and I was going to dismantle it to get the 4tb drive out to put into my OWC Thunderbay RAID. Whilst googling this, I found this thread about replacing the drive with the SSD. To those that have changed HDD to SDD, has it been worth it? To get a 2TB WD blue SSD from the big A, costs 215USD at the moment. Cheers

95

Whatā€™s about the wifi password after getting it to work? Is it the previous one or new one?

96

It is worth is. 2TB is really sweet on the go, and SSD consumes less battery.

97

Chers

98

Just signed up to the forum to thank @Matt_Hayes and @PuDLeZ for the excellent inputs.
I just repaired a broken 1tb HDD to a 250gb SSD for Ā£40 :slight_smile:
(250gb is fine for me as a travel plex server).

BTW I had a usb serial adaptor, and I found it extremely useful to monitor the console to see what was happening etc. Its well worth the few $ for one of these + the 4 dupont cables that can be shoved into the SoC serial port if anyone is having trouble seeing what is happening when the LEDs are blinkingā€¦

99

new one. last 8 chars of the SN from the back of the new HDD/SSD

1 Like
100

Yeah, I learned this one the hard way after closing the drive up :joy:

101

np, I fully agree on the uart/serial adapter! Makes it much easier! Kind of wish I knew how to use the MCU ports as Iā€™m sure it would be good to get an image of that/be able to restore it.