Western Digital MyBookDuo1 – Can’t access data
RMA: [65339057]
Incident # 230412-004666
4/11/2023
Tuesday night before backups, turned on my MyBookDuo and had continuous yellow LED.
4/12/2023
Sent the following email to Tech Support Incident#: 230412-004666
I will try to make this as simple as I can.
I was having issues with my original MyBookDuo in which I was having to rebuild my RAID1 more often that should have been. At least my data was still intact even though the rebuild took almost 10 hours.
I finally gave up and returned my unit, RMA 60251424.
I received the new unit on February 17th 2023 and began using it that same night, no problems whatsoever. I would like to mention that my replacement unit DID NOT have WD RED NAS drives as my original unit did… not sure why.
This MyBookDuo is powered on around 9pm and powered off around 6am the next morning every night. I have had no issues since putting this replacement in use starting the night of February 17th, and Monday night April 10th was no exception, everything was fine.
Last night April 11th, I powered it on at 9:10pm and immediately got a solid yellow LED.
I powered it off, then on again but still not operational. I removed drive 1, powered on no help. I reinserted drive 1 and removed drive 2, powered on no help. I reinserted both drives and ran WD diagnostics and the drive indicated:
RAID Status Cannot Access Data
Drive 1 status Online
Drive 2 status Online
I resolved this issue by having to reformat the RAID1 (NTFS), which caused me to lose almost 2 months of backups in the process.
I assume this will happen again but I will wait for the next occurrence before I submit an RMA. What I would like to know is from the time I powered the unit down around 6am Tuesday and as I can remember the LED was its normal white to the time I powered it on around 9pm Tuesday night when the LED was yellow, HOW CAN THIS HAPPEN!! I couldn’t even access my backups. What’s the purpose of this RAID1 device if I can’t rely on it.
Not a happy customer.
Removed each drive separately and restarted device. No difference
Had to reformat the RAID1 losing all my backups.
Ran Quick Diagnostics and all is good.
4/13/2023
Received email from Tech Support wanting me to perform a lot of procedures.
I replied with the following:
Well, I ran the utilities you suggested. The dashboard short test ran for about 3 minutes and completed successfully. The dashboard long test ran for about a hour but only got to 90% where it sat for more than another hour with little or no CPU utilization, very little memory utilization, and no disk activity. I included snapshots from Task Manager.
I then ran the WD Drive Utilities where the short test ran about 3 minutes and the long test ran for 1 hr 7 minutes but only got to 90%. I let it run for another 45 minutes but it didn’t appear to be doing anything so I cancelled it. I attached a screen shot at 90%. I am NOT going to remove the drives from the unit and attach a SATA cable since I find it hard to believe that both drives quit simultaneously. Preposterous! I can only speculate that the drive enclosure itself (hardware or software) caused this to happen.
As I mentioned in my initial request, I reformatted the RAID1 as NTFS and the unit is working NOW, but for how long. Also remember that this unit was from a previous RMA. I’m guessing that the replacement was a refurb since the drives that were installed in it were NOT WD Red NAS drives as was the case in my initial purchase. I’m kinda getting tired of this whole thing since I have already lost months of backups this time. You might say I really don’t have a reliable backup.
I attached everything I could find including 2 log files in a .ZIP file. (Logs-041023-1230412-004666.zip)
04/17/2023
Haven’t heard back since 4/13/2023
04/18/2023 (about 4pm)
Went to website any updated the incident indicating that I have not heard back from anyone. About 3pm received a call from Jason R, I described my problem… again. He asked me to take photos of the unit’s label, drive 1 and drive 2 and update the website incident with the pictures, which I did. He is going to send me a whole new unit, drives included AT NO COST. We’ll see.
04/19/2023
Received email from Jason R indicating he received the documents I sent. The rest of the email I didn’t really understand but it sounds like it is being worked on.
04/21/2023
Went to website and posted that I did not understand the reply from 4/19/2023.
Jason R. called and said he would create a standard RMA (not an expedited one where they ship the device and when you receive it you then have 30 days to return the bad device.) It will be a refurbished unit with new drives (not WD Red). I received a shipping label. He said it could take up to 10 days to receive the replacement.
04/22/2023 9am
Dropped off the MyBooKDuo to UPS. Receipt is in the drawer in the closet.
4/26/2023 Received at WD.
04/29/2023
RMA still shows Pending return.
When I click on View RMA Details I get this:
05/01/2023
Still haven’t heard back so I called Support 7:00pm. Support was in the process of explaining what the problem was but we got disconnected. I called back at 7:15pm and talked to Max. Apparently there was some type of outage and things got screwed up.
Max said it was straightened out so my replacement drive should ship in 5-7 days? I also received an email from him.
05/03/2023
Received email from Max indicating that the testing of the unit will take 3 to 5 days and that my replacement should here in a few days!!! How is this possible?
05/05/2023
Website still shows RMA status as it was on 04/29/2023
07:43pm RMA status now shows that the received date for the returned item was 5/3/2023 when WD actually received the item on
4/26/2023 1:58pm 7 days later.
05/09/2023
As of 06:54am, RMA status is still received/processing
05/13/2023
As of 05:56am, RMA status is still received/processing
05/15/2023
As of 05:56am, RMA status is still received/processing. Sent complaint using website at 6:37am.
05/17/2023
05:35am
RMA status is still received/processing. The website doesn’t even show the incident number.
The incident # for this RMA is 230412-004666 opened on 4/21/2023. Sent complaint using website at 5:53am
12:00pm
Called customer support at 10:20am. Talked to ??? (couldn’t under him very well), and he said I should receive a tracking ticket
in the next couple of days. He didn’t have an answer when I asked him why it was taking so long. I also received an email, which was the same email I received from Max Ky on 5/3/2023. I DID NOT talk to Max Ky this time.
05/18/2023
10:45am
Have not heard back on either of the complaints I submitted on the website on 5/15 or 5/17.
