MyCloud is dead and need to recover data

Legacy Products My Cloud OS 3
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Help: so MyCloud is dead and WD sent me a new one. I bought an external hard drive enclosure installed the drive in the enclosure. connected new external drive to my computer through a USB connection. 6 local disk drive appear. all are not accessible unless I reformat. I cancel and get the following message:

The volume does not contain a recognized file system
Please make sure that all necessary file system drivers are loaded and that the volume is not corrupted

Any suggestions on recovering the data other than sending out to a data recovery expert for $500?

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Are you connecting the dead My Cloud hard drive to a Linux OS computer? If not you will need to do so otherwise Windows (if your using Windows) won’t read the drives properly.

If the drive is corrupted then one can attempt to run recovery software on it. There are other threads that discuss that issue. Do a forum search and you should find several threads recovering data.

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Whatever you do, do not format!

You have in your hands a Linux hard drive. You can either:

  • Use a live CD Linux to boot any machine without installing it
  • Linux machine
  • Install a program that will allow to see the partitions in Windows/Mac.

Select one of the options mentioned above and search away, plenty of options and how-tos out there.

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no windows, so only a Linux OS Computer? So I would need to find someone running that system?

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Shabuboy: I am pretty much a novice, what do you mean by make a pic?

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Sorry, typo… meant “pick”… edited my previous post to make it a bit clearer.

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[quote]no windows, so only a Linux OS Computer? So I would need to find someone running that system?
[/quote]

No, like he said, get yourself a Live Ubuntu CD, hook up the WDMC HDD to your own PC, and copy the data to whichever drive you want.

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You don’t need to “find” someone who is running Linux, you can run it yourself by using a Linux boot disc that is burned to a DVD and which can be run on any Windows computer that supports DVD discs.

One popular Linux boot disc is Ubuntu: http://www.ubuntu.com/download
Try Ubuntu before you install it: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/try-ubuntu-before-you-install
How to burn a DVD on Windows: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/burn-a-dvd-on-windows

One would connect the My Cloud hard drive to either an internal SATA connector on their computer or to a USB external SATA connector then boot the computer with the Linux boot disc. Once booted the Linux boot disc will attempt to read and mount the My Cloud hard drive partitions.

There are methods of reading the My Cloud hard drive within Windows but it involves installing additional software and drivers which may not properly read and write to the My Cloud Linux formatted hard drive partitions.

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I had had trouble, my windows computer kept crashing when I tried Ubuntu, but I found Diskinternals Linux Reader and installed on my computer. worked flawlessly, was able to transfer to another external USB hard drive. will now keep that second hard drive as a back up to mycloud as well as storing the very critical items on the “Real” cloud if there is such a thing. thank you for your help.

2 Likes
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Thanks for posting this. Could you walk me through how you transferred your data to another drive? I downloaded the reader, can see the WDMC drive, but can’t access it still. I have it connected using the cable I would use to connect to the server (USB to LAN).

Thanks!

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so you did not remove it from the WD enclosure? you have to put it in an external drive enclosure to access it. at that point the reader will work.

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OK. That makes sense. I ultimately have to return the unit to WD. How did you open it without damaging it?

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@CHRIS_OLSEN, Nothing beats a “real” backup :grinning:
Backup in a nutshell means having 2+ copies of the same files at different media.

  • Laptop + Mycloud + some other cloud such as dropbox, google drive, onedrive, etc.
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Thank you so much @CHRIS_OLSEN!!
Diskinternals is the solution.
In Diskinternals I see many “drives” that I couldn’t open, but one of them (4GB) is readable and contains all the data.
I’m copying it right now.

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Hi @RolandR, thanks for posting that follow up mate. I am currently doing the same and using the program you linked (though there are others)… fingers crossed I am able to recover the files. Just posting now

Symptom - WD MyCloud 2TB was not working.

Possible Solution - Was able to remove the HDD from the WD caddy and plug the into an old generic plug and play caddy (where you connect the sata power + data) and plug into my PC via USB.

This resulted in 6 different drives appearing in Windows. Downloaded ‘diskinternals Linux Reader’, installed and started it… took quite a while to ‘detect’ the drives (progress bar looping for about 5-10 minutes).

Once loaded you can use the program to try copy the files off the partition that was storing the data on the WD HDD. Unfortunately… the program seems to stop responding when I try to view the contents of the drive, I will keep playing around. Just posting now as this was the first result that came up in a Google search and hopefully a similar strategy works for others.

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Hi @ JWIlliams, My Cloud Home is not working, i want my data back please advise me the process

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Hi @rehannabi786, unfortunately I was not able to progress any further with the issues I encountered on that drive (as per my previous reply two years ago) and gave up :frowning:

Best of luck to you.

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en… wd company would change a new one to you .but they can not save you data .
I will open the meeting and take out the hardisk .and connect the pc with sata line.
pc must installed a linux. because the wdmycloud
dataformat is Linux format. you can copy data from the hardisk