What does the PN # on the bottom of the My Cloud single bay enclosure end with?
If it ends with “-00”, then it is a first generation single bay My Cloud.
If it ends with “-10”, then it is a second generation single bay My Cloud.
The process and files to “unbrick” either an existing single bay My Cloud or new hard drive you want to put in a single bay My Cloud enclosure differs between each version.
You can search this site for the “unbrick” process for either the first generation or second generation My Cloud. There are many past discussions on the process and ways to perform it on either an existing single bay My Cloud hard drive or a new hard drive you want to put into the enclosure.
For example some have used the following directions mostly with good success. One may need to perform the steps more than once before it works correctly. And one may need to perform a My Cloud reset (40 second pin reset) after successfully booting a unbricked My Cloud the first time to clear the “0” capacity error and fix some other issues that might appear upon first boot.
Hey BEnnor, Thanks for the clarification! My label ends in -00, so it’s confirmed as a Gen 1 unit.
Since my 4TB drive has just been repaired for bad blocks, I need to unbrick it without losing any of the existing user data.
Could you please share the absolute simplest, step-by-step procedure for a Gen 1 unit to restore/flash only the OS and system partitions (kernel/rootfs/config) while keeping the data partition intact?
Most directions that can be found in these subforums for restoring the operating system to a single bay My Cloud hard drive involve wiping or erasing the existing data on the hard drive. Most will suggest backing up that data before proceeding with any of the methods to try and restore the operating system to the hard drive. Because the data partition on the My Cloud hard drive is formatted for EXT4 one would use either a Linux OS or a driver on Windows to allow access to EXT4 formatted drives so the data can be recovered and copied somewhere else.
Don’t know if anyone has been successful at keeping their original data while trying to restore the My Cloud operating system/firmware to the hard drive. Use the forum search feature to see if there are past discussions on such a method and if people were successful.
The main issue is the hard drive has to be configured (partitioned and formatted) in a specific way for the My Cloud firmware (and operating system). It is one reason why people typically start from scratch and partition, format and then restore the firmware. Hence the suggestion to backup the data if possible first from the drive since a partition and format will wipe any existing user data.
A guess, if you want to try and save your existing data, is to just try restoring the firmware to the hard drive using the steps #8 onward. Those steps stop and create the RAID needed on the drive, then attempts to copy over the firmware files to their respective partitions on the drive.
Note that anything you do is at your own risk!!! Try to backup your data prior to performing any actions on the existing My Cloud hard drive. Many people have tried to recover their My Cloud hard drive and there are ample past discussions on those attempts that one can find and learn from.
Edit to add: Also check Youtube and similar sites. There may be videos detailing how people were able to recover or restore their My Cloud hard drive.
