New Release - My Book Live Firmware Version 02.43.09 - 038 (1/27/2015​)

WD Legacy Products My Book Live
1

Just for the record, I applied this new firmware update and everything seemed to go smoothly.

Note that I use my MBL solely as a local file sharing device for 5 Windows PCs.  I don’t do any media streaming or remote access.  I currently have only about 150GB or so of data on the device (1TB MBL).  My MBL is probably going on 3 or 4 years of age.

the HumpMan

2

Prior to the update, are you having problems accessing it from thecomputer  network as well? Did you back up your files first before doing the update, as warned?

3

I was not having any problems accessing the files on my MBL before applying the update.

I keep a full syncronized (mirror) backup on two different backup drives using SyncBack Free.  So yes, I made two backups of my files before applying the firmware update.  By doing daily mirror backups it only takes about 5-10 minutes to keep a duplicate copy of my 120GB of data.

the HumpMan

4

Thanks. Do you know how I can back up from the internet access? I do not have access from the computer network.

5

Well, my update experience was a little disconcerting but it did work out fine in the end.

After reporting the firmware update 90% complete I got an error message to the effect the there was a problem retrieving the firmware update and that I should refresh the page and try again. I refreshed the page and immediately got a message that the firmware update was successful and the drive was rebooting.

The drive seemed to be taking a long time to reboot but eventually (probably 3-5 minutes it seemed) it came back up and everything appears to be fine. It was a little scary at the time, though.

6

Hi RalphG,

Did you backed up your files prior to updating the firmware?

After updating, did you need to retrieve backed up files? I am afraid of updating the firmware becasue I haven’t backed up my files. I cannot access my files through the network. The internet remote access does not have the capability to copy files to my computer.

Any suggestion? I am so frustrated as I cannot work since Modnday because of this!

7

This is unbelievably poor. My MBL GUI has slowed from very slow to timeouts. And on the rare occasions the update has downloaded and installed, an error message follows to say the update has failed. Plus there is no update from file option for this update that I can see offered in the Dashboard. I have reset, rebooted, power cycled, etc. The MBL files are visible thru other devices in the house - DVD, menu in streamer etc - but the Dashboard GUI is useless. You people at WD should test your updates better before unleashing them on your customers.

1 Like
8

Like a dummy mine was set to auto update, thought I had turned that off. But at 3:10 this morning I got the update and all seems to be fine. However, I had to make changes to Java security settings to avoid the security warnings.

But, so far, so good.

9

MyBookLive_nuts wrote:

Thanks. Do you know how I can back up from the internet access? I do not have access from the computer network.

MyBookLIve_nuts:

I’m not certain how you don’t have access to the MBL via your network, but you are concerned with updating the firmware.  AFAIK, the MBL will either auto update (via the Internet) or you have to manually do it from the MBL Dashboard which is done via a browser interface from a PC on the local network.

If you have remote access turned on you should be able to access the files on the MBL and should be able to copy them off.  But this would likely be very slow and not practical if you have a lot of data.  But I don’t use my MBL remotely.  I only use it for local file access.  I also don’t do any media streaming.

My update process was basically smooth, but I won’t say I didn’t have a little trepidation.  The download seemed to pause at 10% for a while, then for a longer time at 60%.  I think it finally went to 70% and then fairly quickly to 90%.  I don’t know exactly how long it was at 90% but probably 5 minutes or so.  Then it did the reboot which took maybe 5 minutes.

Again, I have had an MBL for several years now and other than some early minor difficulties in doing the firmware updates, it has largely been successful.  Way back when, I did prefer to download the update manually and do the upgrade using a local file (on one of my networked PCs) but over the last few times, the upgrade directly from an Internet download seems to have worked OK.

I do remember an episode of the Dashboard once slowing down to being unusable, but that seems to have been resolved several updates back.

WD did replace my MBL twice, but not for software issues.  The early ones seemed to have a problem with the LEDs that provide the multi-colored indicator on the front.  On two occasions one of the LEDs stopped working, making some of the colors unavailable.

But that was a few years ago.  Since then it has been acting as a shared file server for simple files very reliably.

the HumpMan

10

I updated my My Book Live and it’s working okay, but it’s waking up on it’s own rather frequently.  I can watch it go to sleep and then wake itself up less than a minute later.

I’m pretty sure it’s finished indexing. The /var/log/mediacrawler.log file doesn’t have any new entries since 9 AM this morning, though it does keep writing the following text to the log periodicallly.  There’s currently 14 of them in the log at the bottom:

exec: No such file or directory

That seems to be waking up the drive.

I went back in the log to the last time I did a firmware update.  I did the update at 1:30 PM and the drive woke up 3 times in the first 4 hours after the update and then slept from around 5: 30 PM till 3 am.  

This time I did the update at 8 AM this morning and the drive is still waking itself up at 8 PM in the evening.  It’s already woken itself up 11 times today and normally it wakes up 1 to 3 times.

The longest time my drive was in standby today was for 18807 seconds and the shortest time was 7 seconds. For comparison the longest time the past 2 weeks was for 85795 (yesterday) and the shortest was also 7 (Jan 20). On average though it sleeps at least 12 hours a day.

Also I am seeing constant errors in the daemon.log file occurring what seems like several times a second.  It doesn’t look right, but I don’t know what it means.  Doing a Google search it seems to have something to do with Bonjour and Wake on Lan:

Jan 28 20:58:00 MyBookLive mDNSResponder: ERROR: getOptRdata - unknown opt 4
Jan 28 20:58:00 MyBookLive mDNSResponder: ERROR: getOptRdata - unknown opt 65002
Jan 28 20:58:00 MyBookLive mDNSResponder: ERROR: getOptRdata - unknown opt 4
Jan 28 20:58:00 MyBookLive mDNSResponder: ERROR: getOptRdata - unknown opt 65002
Jan 28 20:58:01 MyBookLive mDNSResponder: ERROR: getOptRdata - unknown opt 4
Jan 28 20:58:01 MyBookLive mDNSResponder: ERROR: getOptRdata - unknown opt 65002
Jan 28 20:58:02 MyBookLive mDNSResponder: ERROR: getOptRdata - unknown opt 4
Jan 28 20:58:02 MyBookLive mDNSResponder: ERROR: getOptRdata - unknown opt 65002
Jan 28 20:58:09 MyBookLive mDNSResponder: ERROR: getOptRdata - unknown opt 4
Jan 28 20:58:09 MyBookLive mDNSResponder: ERROR: getOptRdata - unknown opt 65002

11

Hi Humpman,

Thank you for that feedback. I was surprised as well when suddenly I cannot access the MBL from my network. It usually happens in the past but after few minutes or hours (if I’m unlucky), it will connect again. However, last Monday was different. I can see the MBL drive but when I click on it, it gives me an error message that it does not want to get connected - or somthing to that effect, which is the first time. Until Tuesday it  cannot be connected. Then Wednesday there’s a new firmware update with warning that I need to back up my files. My last back up was early October so I do not want to risk losing precious client files I cannot update without back up files. I painstakingly and tearfully (if I cure, I will!) copied and pasted more than 11,000 files from 1-pm to 5am just to be able to update the firmware. I was given instructions (after bombarding Technical support) with emails. This is the one that worked: (the other one was a nonsense just killing time telling me that they will call but for two days did not! - sorry I am really furious with that!):

  1. Disconnect the Power-Supply of the My Book Live for 20 seconds and reconnect, making sure that its connected to a wall socket (recommended)

  2. Do a Soft Reset. To do this, please find a paper clip pin and press and hold the reset button in the back of the My Book Live for 10 seconds max and wait for the reboot cycle (Blue, Yellow amber, Green)

Then, please proceed to open the dashboard of the unit in order to update the firmware:

How to access the Dashboard on a My Book Live or My Book Live Duo

http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5871

How to update the firmware on a My Book Live or My Book Live Duo

http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5735

What is lacking in his instruction though is that you will need to reboot the computer as well. Woohooo!! Now I can see it from the network drive. But I think I need to consider buying another cloud that have a USB connector just in case this happens again and I need to access files quickly.

12

 

Did you backed up your files prior to updating the firmware?

 

After updating, did you need to retrieve backed up files?

No, I didn’t backup my MyBookLive drive before the update. I have at least two alternate sources (PC, Notebook, Tablet) for all important content. The fiemware update was successful despite the error message so, no, no need to retrieve any backed up files.

13

My drive seems to be sleeping normally now.

Still don’t know what all those error logs are about though.

14

I did the firmware update this morning here in UK. It could be a co incidence but I cannot access it remotely on iPhone via the my cloud or photos apps now! Is there an issue at WD? Strangely the WD Classic photos app which I still have on my phone is working though. It’s very alarming!

15

I checked the settings page and it shows as port forwarding established. Plus I can access the apps fine within my local home wifi network but as soon as I go out onto cellular it’s not working!

16

Ok it is working but it is extremely slow to find the drive in the my cloud app when out and about. I wonder if WDs servers are glitching a bit. It will just stay on the cloud graphic filling up for upto a minute before it then finds the drive contents. Once located it is then fast and instant. If I force kill the app and then relaunch it then it’s the same slow finding process again. So it looks like the wd servers are being very slow to respond to the request for the external IP address initially.

17

Of course this could also be a side effect of the new firmware so i would be very interested to see what others are getting. Maybe the servers if they are too blame are on a regional go slow as I am in London.

18

Must of been WD servers as its functioning normal now on the app. Very unreliable again fro WD

19

Surprise!!! All well and … to the first !!! Thank you… :smiley:

20

is it gonna delete transmission?