Potential complete data loss

My Cloud OS 3 Personal & Network Attached Storage My Cloud EX4
1

Hello,

I am really concerned I may have a complete data loss on my hands, this includes a lot of irreplacable data for my family.  I have a myCloud EX4 with 4x 2TB drives set up in a RAID 10 configuration.

I just powered down my MyCloud EX4 before moving it to our new home by going in to Settings->Utilities->Device Maintenence->Shutdown.

Once it successfully powered down, I unplugged everything and moved it very carefully to the new home.  Note: I did leave the disks in the drive while transporting the myCloud.  When I arrived, I plugged everything in, and powered it on.  When I did this, I saw a message on the LCD display stating “Disk Inserted in Bay 1&2&3&4”.  All lights are blue (no red lights).

I logged in to the mycloud page Storage->Raid and I see this message under “Raid Profile”:

RAID Profile

RAID Health
No Configured Volumes
 
Setup a RAID Mode to configure new RAID Volume(s) on this device.

The only option I have is to set up a raid mode, as I am clicking through the steps, I cancel out because I am very concerned that it will format the drives while setting up this raid volume.

Will completing these steps purge the data, or is there any way to recover the data on these drives?  Any advice would be very helpful.

Thanks

2

I did find this thread with a very similar issue:

http://community.wd.com/t5/WD-My-Cloud-EX4/Raid-Recovery/td-p/662101

However he did not post the resolution.

3

tagged for solution update

4

I will post as I find out how to correct this, or if it is a complete data loss.  

So far I have submitted a ticket through the “help” menu in the myCloud admin page.  I received a reply saying they would like to speak over the phone rather than email.  I replied back with contact times last week, haven’t heard back yet.

5

Do not setup the RAID again, because that will format the drives, then it will take serious recovery to restore anything that might be there.

I  know that the drive supports RAID roaming, which means that you can remove the drives and put them into another RAID supporting system and still have access to the data. You could try a couple things, while will not effect your data.

  • Turn off the EX4

  • Remove your drives ** Note what bay each came from.

  • Turn EX4 back on and let it book up.

  • Check for any FW updates (while there are no drives) *don’t really need to do this,but would not hurt. 

  • Shut down the unit

  • Re-insert drives **In same locations they came from

Power up the system and see if it recognizes the drives. 

I cannot imagine that your data is lost, it just might take some recovery method to bring it back.

6

I just followed your instructions exactly, a quick note, the firmware was up to date already, so none to download.

After installing the drives back in, letting it completely boot (which took quite a while, 5-10 min) it came up with exactly the same message on the LED panel (Disk Inserted in Bay 1&2&3&4)

I logged in to the admin page, went under diagnostics:

Temperature - Normal

Fan speed - 945 RPM

Drive status - Healthy

Raid status - No Configured Volumes

I am racking my brain at how it could work for over 3 months at our previous house, all I did was shut it down and move it.  The drives say “healthy” but the raid volume just vanished.  I feel like I am missing something here.

7

Thanks for the feedback. I cannot think of anything else at this moment either. It does not make any sense for the volumes to just vanish on a RAID 10 like that.

8

It has been a few weeks, and WD is not responding to my emails aside from one saying they wanted to discuss it on a phone call.  Trying to set up a time, they haven’t responded.

On the other hand, something hit me today, I remembered seeing a message a while back about drive 3 having some issues with its SMART data.  I figure if the drive died, it would just show a degraded raid volume, not saying it just simply doesn’t exist.  So I decided to remove drive 3 only, and boot it.

I did, it took MUCH longer than normal to boot.  Then I got the best email I had ever seen:

"

Event title:Volume Degraded
Event description:Volume 1 Degraded.
Severity:critical
Event code:0208
Event time:04-26-2014 02:07:16 PM

"

To me, this means it detected the raid volume!!!  So I waited, got a second email very similar, red light started flashing on the raid, and the disc 1,2,4 flashing like crazy.  Eventually it allowed me to log in to the admin page.  Sure enough, the raid volume was there, as well as the shares re-appeared.

I immediately logged in and started pulling files to my desktop in order of what is valuable to me.  That is where I  sit right now, raid flashing red, degraded raid volume but accessable.  Still backing it up.

My next steps will be to shut it down, reinstall drive 3, and reboot to see if it goes back to not detecting the raid volume.  If that happens, I will probably reboot with 1,2,4.  Once it is up with degraded raid, I will hot insert drive 3 to see if it tries to re-attach that drive to the raid.  Run a full scan on the disk to figure out what is up, and then potentially replace that drive.

If anyone has another suggestion of what I should do after I have pulled the files to my local pc, PLEASE post your ideas below.  Maybe re-inserting drive 3 is a huge mistake, I honestly don’t know.

9

I just shut down via the admin page, inserted disk 3, powered it back up, and received the same results from my original post.  This is bizzare, how could it ignore the raid volume information if disk 3 is in?

10

Another update,  I just hot inserted drive 3 after backing up everything from the raid.  The admin page said please wait… when it finished mounting the drive, the entire raid volume disappeared again while it was still running.

I am shutting it down via the admin page to remove drive 3 while it is off and power it back on to ensure the raid volume re-appears.

I just purchased a new hard drive to replace drive 3, I am going to hot insert that as soon as the raid comes back online, assuming it detects the volume with 1,2,4 installed.

11

Powered it back on with 1,2,4 installed, saw the degraded raid volume.  Inserted the new WD Red in drive 3, and sure enough, this time it recognized the drive, and began auto-rebuilding the raid volume.  I believe when this is complete I will be back up and running! 

I will write any final comments when it finishes.  Hopefully this thread helps someone in the future.

12

Looks like I was wrong.  After letting the raid volume rebuild for a few hours, the system emailed me this:

"

Following events are generated on your WDMyCloudEX4.
Event title:Rebuilding Volume
Event description:Rebuilding Volume 1 Time: 00:00:00

Severity:critical
Event code:0210
Event time:04-27-2014 02:20:31 PM

Firmware version:       1.02.25
Event title: Drive Failed
Event description: Drive failed in Bay 3. Replace the failed drive. Purchase a new drive at:  www.wdc.com
Severity:critical
Event code:0201
Event time:04-27-2014 02:20:30 PM

Firmware version:       1.02.25
Event title: Drive Failed
Event description: Drive failed in Bay 4. Replace the failed drive. Purchase a new drive at:  www.wdc.com
Severity:critical
Event code:0201
Event time:04-27-2014 02:20:30 PM

Firmware version:       1.02.25

"

Essentially it is telling me the new drive (disk 3) and the 4th drive both just failed during the rebuild…I am starting to suspect the raid enclosure as the problem now rather than the disks themselves.  I am glad I was able to recover data from the drives when I had disk 1,2,4 in there.  But now when I rebooted it says all disks are healthy and good, but the raid volume is once again missing…

It also will not let me run any tests on the disks which confuses me, the two buttons in the utilities page are greyed out.  I assume they require a volume to run the tests.

I am honestly not sure what to do next, return the disk 3 saying it was DOA (test failed upon first installation), then buy a new red 2tb for my disk 4, rebuild the raid and pray it doesn’t fail again randomly?

Any suggestions would be useful.

13

It definitely sounds like a problem with the EX4 unit and NOT the hard drive.  In reading the forums I see a lot of issues related to the disk 3 slot.

I would call WD, get an RMA number and then send it back for replacement.

14

WD just called me directly and it looks like they had the same thought as you.  They want to replace the array.  

He created a new case # because my emails weren’t making it through to him.

He also is having me run the WD software"DLG" on drives 3 & 4 that failed to see what it tells me.

Hopefully he gets these responses and we can get this taken care of.

15

I am glad to see that. They should.