MyCloud Ethernet to computer to establish Safepoint Prior to Factory Reset

Per WD tech support I need to reset the MyCloud to factory settings due to issues connecting a hard drive to the USB port. I’m not able to establish a Safepoint to either a drive connect to the MyCloud itself or My router so I’ve connected the MyCloud directly to my MacBook. I have connected to my MacBook USB port a 3tb drive to receive the Safepoint.
The MacBook found the MyCloud right away and I was able to navigate to the dashboard on the MyCloud thru the web browser with the wdmycloud.local address. My problem is the MyCloud doesn’t see the USB attached hard drive. It does find my internal drive but I wasn’t able to establish a Safepoint on it because it couldn’t find a share. I know I can just copy directly from the MyCloud to the USB drive however using the finder however, I thought it would be easier to restore a Safepoint back to the MyCloud after the factory reset. Has anyone had any experience establishing a connection using the Ethernet to MacBook to USB drive and if so were you able to complete a Safepoint. Thank you so much. I have found so much help here in the WS community pages. The postings are very helpful and explained explained very well. For the most part the MyCloud is nice to have. Backups that I don’t need to initiate or babysit are a time saver. My daughter who attends college in San Diego uses the IOS app to watch movies from the MyCloud. I just have a few things I’m still trying to figure out. Thank you again to all the folks that take the time to answer questions in this community and also the people that raise those questions openly.

I’ve seen some users with the configuration you have described. However, performance seems to vary depending on the USB drive in question, the version of Mac OS, and the system itself since there could be a NIC bottleneck.

Hopefully some of those Users will be able to assist.

If you do a ‘System Only’ factory restore, it will not delete your data, just restore your settings to factory state.

I’d be wary of relying on WD Support advice for issues regarding problems with USB drives; they are legion, and WD don’t seem to have a clue.

My guess is that they are advising “IT Solution #1: have you tried turning it off an on again?” And then doing various levels of factory reset, blindly hoping that this will miraculously fix problems with their firmware.

You may be better of telling us exactly what problem it is with the USB that you are trying to solve. There’s plenty of experience with those problems here.

https://community.wd.com/search?q=Usb%20category%3A105%20order%3Alatest

@Bennor seems to have investigated USB connectivity issues fairly thoroughly.

The problem I ran into was 2 USB drives connected to the MyCloud failed within a week of each other. First a 3TB Buffalo everything on it went MIA. I couldn’t find it anywhere. I just chalked that up to spontaneous drive failure. The drive was under warranty and Buffalo replaced it already. So I had a WD 2TB Elements in the bull pen I erased and partitioned so it would be found by the MyCloud. I was so relieved because connecting an external drive to MyCloud is not easy. I hold my breath until I see that it has been found. I had a hard drive connected to my router which is a TP Link Archer C8. The router showed it my computers found it, MyCloud had blinders on. It couldn’t locate the network drive. I finally did some trial and error with formatting and partitioning and got it right. Unfortunately, I fear the MyCloud has some issues now I’m afraid to trust it with another hard drive. So back to the 2nd hard drive failure. I received an email that the hard drive connected to the USB of the MyCloud has been ejected improperly and I might have some data loss. Now, I don’t believe in ghosts and I live alone and don’t have a cat so it didn’t happen physically. I rebooted everything and plugged the Hard Drive back in and navigated to the dashboard of MyCloud. No trace of the hard drive. I then worked on checking the drive by attaching it to my mac. I tired everything even Single User Mode with an application that if it can be found it would find it. That app reported that the USB port was dead. It was actually the drive the drive the USB was fine. I sent a message to WD explaining what happened and since neither my WD drive or MyCloud are in warranty the suggestion was to take all my data off MyCloud and reset to factory settings. I’m quite nervous about connecting the replacement Buffalo to the MyCloud in fear that the killer MyCloud will strike again. I also contacted Apple thru the beta testing msg app since I was beta testing OS 10.11.4 which I don’t see how it could have caused the drives to fail but it was a failure so I sent the info. Those drives didn’t indicate any issues and didn’t throw any errors on disk diag no warning just had some sort of HD coronary and died. I’ve transferred all the files and it took 12 hours to reset the MyCloud. I’m cleaning up some files before I put them back on. If I had the 2 disk system I wouldn’t worry about connecting a drive but I don’t so I need to backup. I not only have my files, my daughter stores her photos on MyCloud downloading them with the WD Photo app. I would feel horrible if I lost her files. If the USB would connect and work correctly the other little issues I can work thru but not being able to backup all movies, music, photos and documents has me shaking in my boots.
If anyone else has had a MyCloud go rouge and take out its fellow hardware I know how you feel and you’re not alone. Thanks for the responses I’m seriously considering replacing the MyCloud but I don’t know what issues I may run into with another brand. I purchased the WD MyCloud because of all the fantastic reviews.

:smiley::thumbsup:I am happy to say all is right with the MyCloud. After the long painful transfer of all files from the MyCloud, resetting it factory settings that took a long time, 12 hours. transferring the files back onto the MyCloud. I partitioned the Buffalo HD Master Boot Record Format to OS X extended. For 2 weeks now I’ve had a perfect backup daily at 2:00am. Now, if the Dodgers can bring this game back around life would be perfect. :sunglasses: Thanks so much for all the helpful replies!