Support For My Cloud Changing

We’ve developed a new OS to keep up with evolving security standards. Compatible devices must Upgrade to My Cloud OS 5 by January 15, 2022 . Incompatible devices will lose support on April 15, 2022.

Upgrade to an eligible device.

Why exactly is the EX2 not compatible with OS 5? Is it because the on board storage is too small? Is it because you need more than 512mb RAM? Is it because WD wants to force people using older models to upgrade?

I’m going to be honest: I don’t feel valued as a customer. And being given the “privilege” of upgrading to an eligible device is not satisfying. I would have loved to upgrade to a more capable unit in time, but now I have to worry that the next version will be arbitrarily cut off down the road as well.

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is there an alternative / unofficial firmware that we can use on the unsupported devices like Mycloud EX2?

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Unfortunately, the “eligible upgrade” devices are very (VERY!) expensive. The least expensive is 16TB EX2 ultra, that will be obsoleted by WD in 2026, costs $750! Thanks a bunch, WD!

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Hello,
Western Digital, you need to change your direction and offer an equal alternative free of charge. End of support, I can understand, however, you are “breaking” my device so that it can’t work the way it is currently working. As mentioned above post(s), the alternatives are VERY expensive. Why can’t you provide one of two options:

  1. FREE Software that lets me use my current setup, at least within my network and be able to access those files from outside the network, if possible, OR
  2. Provide a device that replaces my current setup so that I can place simply place my hard drives into it.

Most software/hardware companies IMPROVE their products by adding additional features as the software develops through the years; and end of life lasts at least a decade before ending support, and even then the device/software still operates (just no updates or security fixes). You are critically hampering a product that was by no means inexpensive. A 20% coupon is not acceptable for a product that is 2 to 4 times the cost without many additional features. Plus there is the hassle of transferring from one item to the other.
PLEASE, rethink and delay your end of life for the mycloudmirror products and supply a FAIR and very affordable alternative.
Thank you,
William

So, I have a 6TB EX2. You’re telling me, that to continue to use it, you are kindly offering me a 20% discount on a new drive BUT, the smallest/least expensive option is a 16TB drive??? I’m expected to be happy with that? I’ve been buying WD products for several years. I currently own 4 dual drives for RAIDED drives, 2 portable external drives, and 1 other external drives… ALL WD! One of my dual drives is/was a My Book Live Duo (which is still in the RMA/Discount code process – another SNAFU entirely). So, that was strike one. This joke of an offer (EX2) is strike 2. I’m not sure I’m going to give you a strike 3 opportunity. I’ve been a loyal customer, but you’re not showing ANY loyalty back! 20% off a $700+ drive is not an acceptable replacement for my 6TB EX2!!! Especially since there is absolutely nothing wrong with my current drive except the fact that you have decided to discontinue support. This only comes off as a ploy to sell more product! Well, in my case, your ploy has backfired since, when it comes time to buy another drive, I’ll definitely be looking elsewhere!

I’ve been puzzled a lot of the time, thanks to everyone

If I read the articles correctly, you will be able to access your EX2 after MyCloud goes away as local network access remains. You just can’t access it any more from outside your local network.

Correct. Unfortunately, most people want remote access from their NAS drives - that’s why they bought them!

yes, it indeed is very disappointing that WD is abandoning this EX2 product line. Perhaps they’re not able to provide security given some hardware/firmware limitation they can’t work around, but that’s probably being too kind. They’re just forcing obsolescence, I’m guessing. Surely means that I, for one, will never buy their products again and that feeling extends beyond their NAS products. There are other hard disk providers, too that I will migrate to for my new NAS once I decide which one I’ll buy to replace my own EX2.

Nah, they could update if they wanted to. They’re just too cheap. Time to get Sinology replacements!

Correct. Some of the existing security known issues have been there for long time without fixes just because WD did not decide to fix them, being , for example, a critical one fix just a change in a line.

Unfortunately their FW is not open source so remediation requires changing the file and restarting httpd service after every reboot. This is an example of the vulnerabilities the NAS may be exposed to, if they are opened to the internet.

Recommendations:

1- Close all open connections, including MyCloud of course (never a good idea to remain the service without 2FA), considering all the existing known vulnerabilities without patches for years now.

2 - Do not ever buy a device to WD relying on SW like a NAS (I had more than 6 NAS from the company along the years, including two WD EX2 8TB at the time they were brand new released… they lost me as a customer long ago when they just did not provide any proper answer to security related questions… )

I have an EX4 device. I am so disappointed in being utterly abandoned by WD. I rely on remotely accessing my device. Can anyone recommend another more reliable NAS brand that is not Western Digital??

Hello,

Recently I got from my friend an old WD MyCloud Gen 1, WDBCTL0040HWT-00. It has a broken 4TB drive. I put it in Linux Mint PC and I was able to mount the whole drive. I can see all partitions and I was also able to mount the virtual RAID and browse across the folders and see the files. But I cannot copy it, it always say input/output error. So I ran R-linux and when trying to scan the drive, the finishing time was 1 month and 22 days. So we left the recovery process and started to focus on setting up a new drive.

So I picked an older 2TB WD Green HDD, downloaded the 2TB image file that I found somewhere on the internet called WDMyCloud2RBBVDI.img and used BalenaEtcher tool to image the HDD.

All went smooth and MyCloud comes back alive. By the way I found out that it probably already was RMAed before because the MAC address on the bottom of the shassis and the actual MAC that I saw in my router were a bit different. Never mind that, the point is it work.

The image was an old v03.00.03-413 : Core F/W. It found 04.06.00-111but the web update isnt wrking anymore probably because of EOL of this device. Manual update also didnt work sice the file says “not enought space”… So I downloaded another firmware from 2019 (sq-040500-334-20190221.deb) and this time the manual update worked. From this one then the last v04.06.00-111 was successfully downloaded and updated to. So here we are with a working 2TB Gen1 MyCloud!

Now, is there a way to install some torrent client? Is there a compatible app that can handle torrenting on this device at all within this official operating system? And if not, then is there some alternative OS with web GUI to use…? I am now learning SSH to be able at least deploy some stuff…

Regards, George