This is not a “detailed how to” but a summary of resources used and a commentary on some of the actions required.
Background
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My backups started to fail to complete (I should have taken it as a warning!)
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Eventually I couldn’t login to MyCloud device on my PC (after entering the MyCloud IP address in my browser, either didn’t get the login screen, or if I did, was unresponsive). Reason for different situations depended on whether I did a reset (4 sec or 40 sec) beforehand.
Actions
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Getting inside the unit. There are multiple videos on the web that break the tabs and say it’s “not important”. Really? However, the best video I found used credit cards to disconnect the catches so that the cover can be slid off. It was from Erif Foorp and uses no words (How to open a WD My Cloud Case - YouTube). I used two cards so I could ensure I kept the first edge disconnected while I worked on the second edge.
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Initialising the new drive. I found a very useful video from 31Mike (How to Replace a WD My Cloud hard drive - YouTube) which described his experiences based on using (other) references on the WD Community forum.
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31Mike used this reference from djh816 ([GUIDE] Debrick a completely dead MyCloud) as the basis of his work, with modifications that I suspect were related to the fact that he was replacing a 4TB drive with a 6TB drive (as I was doing, too).
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I used VirtualBox with the Linux OS used in SystemRescue ISO. The version I downloaded has been revised since 31Mike’s video so some of the references are different. I used “Boot SystemRescue using default options”.
7. Now comes the ‘difficult’ part
I am wary (from long experience) of instructions that use “magic numbers” without explanation, especially since my Unix experience is 20 years out of date. I had the “good fortune” however, to be able to look at the dead disk (only the user data partition is bad (at the moment) so I was able to verify that MyCloud indeed uses 7 partitions on the disk with the ‘second’ partition (sdX2) containing the backed up data. The partitions had the numbers mentioned in the 31Mike details.
8. The win
In order to look at the disk outside the MyCloud box I purchased a Simplecom docking station (Simplecom SD352 USB 3.0 to Dual SATA Aluminium Docking Station with 3-Port Hub and 1 Port 2.1A USB Charger) which, although being a little overkill, allowed me to clone all the good bits of the old drive so that I didn’t have to manually create the partitions, and neither did I have to install the image software.
GParted in the GUI interface recognised that the final 2TB of my new disk was “not defined”, fixed it so that it became “unallocated”, and therefore allowed me to extend the sdX2 partition to the full 6TB.
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I then reinstalled the drive into the MyCloud enclosure and after some minutes of flashing blue light, got the very welcome steady blue light.
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Logging on to the MyCloud drive and setting it up was straight-forward after that.
I hope this helps someone facing the same task!
