Time Machine backups are gone after firmware update

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

I recently updated the firmware on my WD Mycloud, and when I tried to access the time Machine backups there was nothing there…this is really upsetting as there are files I need to restore.
Any way I can retrieve the lost info?

I am using a 13 mac book pro

2

The files and the full Time Machine file and folder tree is still there, the firmware update didn’t delete anything. Have you updated to El Capitan inbetween?

3

The files and the full Time Machine file and folder tree is still there, the firmware update didn’t delete anything

How can you make such an assertive statement without actually accessing this person’s device? Have you done that?

If you said ‘the files and full Time Machine file [etc] should still be there’, you might be correct.

There are lots of things that the MyCloud should do, but doesn’t. Even the MyCloud manual says you should back up all files before doing some operations that shouldn’t destroy files, so it’s clear that it doesn’t always work like it should.

Given some of your recent comments, Joerg, I get the impression you’re a WD employee. Is that correct? If so, could you identify your posts as such, please.

4

Correct, I am in Munich office. My intention here is to help wherever I can. But I am not part of support nor the WD staff here in the forum.

How can I make such assertive statements? Because I know what the firmware is doing and what is not done by the firmware, e. g. deleting Time Machine Backups.

If teh manual states to do backups, then it’s because we want to take care that nothing serious may happen. I am in IT for a long time, so I have seen a lot of things happening that are mainly related to work that shouldn’t have been done at this stage or could be avoided with only a little bit of careful work.

Anything to claim against me? A forum like this lives because a lot of people share their experience with others. Icannot see anything bad in this intention.

5

Thanks for the reply… No I did not update to El Capitan in between.
Is there a way to view the time machine tree…all i see now is a “…macbook pro.Sparebundle”
Time machine started to create a new back up last night which I paused.
There is no other file showing in the Time Machine folder…

6

Any Mac user here to help? Sorry but Mac in this depth is definitely not my specialty…

You can access the TimeMachineBackup folder as like any other normal folder, but how to proceed with sparsebundle files is not known to me. I would say, try to open the existing sparsebundle - but I am Windows and Linux dedicated, not Mac.

Any Mac Pro here? Please assist!

7

I guess you are not getting my issue…I do not see any of the older time machine backups…infact when I go into the Time Machine preferences It is showing that no older back ups are present…only the so called spare bundle which has files from the attempted update from last night…non of the older backups are showing up any where…what other ways if any are there for me to see all the files on the drive?

8

That’s good; we can do with more help from knowledgeable WD staff.

How can I make such assertive statements? Because I know what the firmware is doing and what is not done by the firmware

Again, it’s good to have someone who understands how the firmware works.

But, again, I’d encourage you to look around the forum, where you’ll find plenty of examples of where the firmware quite clearly doesn’t behave as intended (unless the intention was utterly mad).

Did you write the design specification?
Did you write the Linux OS and packages the firmware relies on?
Did you write some of the code?
Did you write all the code?
Did you test all of the code in all possible configurations, with all possible environments?

If you didn’t, then you can only state with any certainty what the firmware was intended to do, not what it will do. And, even if you did write all the code, in systems as complex as the MyCloud, I think you’d be pretty bold to say you understood every aspect of its operation.

I too have been in engineering for a long time (32 years working as an electronic engineer for the research division of an international electronics company), and I would never say with that degree of certainty what my designs will do. I would only ever say what ‘they should do…’. And, despite that long experience, I sometimes struggle to understand how the WD apps are supposed to work. Which isn’t helped by the Help not being updated to reflect the changes for OS3. So heaven help those who don’t have my technical experience.

If teh manual states to do backups, then it’s because we want to take
care that nothing serious may happen. I am in IT for a long time, so I
have seen a lot of things happening that are mainly related to work that shouldn’t have been done

This appears to be an acceptance of what I’ve just said; things can go wrong. Folders can disappear. Folder permissions can be set incorrectly. The Twonky ‘integration’ is a good example of where I’m sure no-one actually designed it to interact so poorly with MyCloud; that’s just how it came out with the limited engineering effort available to do the half-arsed integration job.

Maybe it’s a language issue, but bold statements of fact such as ‘the folders have not disappeared’ when you have no evidence to support this, other than what should have happened, rather irritate me; it comes across as arrogance: “you stupid user; how could that possibly happen?” And I’m sure you don’t want to give that impression to your customers. Do you?

1 Like
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Hello Bassam…

They should be on your My Cloud with the name " .sparsebundle

Map your “My Cloud” to your Mac using “Go” “Connect to Server” as you normally do.

Make sure that your Time Machine Preference “Show Time Machine in menu bar” is checked, so that you can hold down the “option key” when clicking on Time Machine icon to choose “Browse Other Backup Disks”. You should see your selection choice of your cloud.

“Use Selected Disk”

I hope this works for you.

10

Yes I agree with you that they should work …but unfortunately it’s not the case. :frowning:
I connect to the My Cloud/Time Machine/…MacBook Pro Backup.sparsebundle…
But when I try to open the file “…MacBook Pro” I get a warning dialog box which says “The following disk images couldn’t be opened”
Image “…MacBook Pro.sparsebundle” , Reason “Resource temporarily unavailable”.

This is so frustrating…WD should not claim that their products are 100% Mac compatible when they are clearly not…this is not the only issue I am having with this drive…

11

Same issue here, all Time Machine backups are gone (after firmware update), I’m at the point to give up after not receiving any useful answer for two weeks - WD My Cloud EX2 - Time Machine backup missing (Share and all Files gone)

So, let’s assume, the files are there, WD MyCloud just doesn’t find them because there is no reason why it would be deleted. The problem is that the Time Machine Backup share is completely gone so even if the files and virtual folder is there, it’s nowhere to find. I even tried to mount the HDD and locate the missing files but being a NAS drive, it isn’t readable outside the MyCloud hardware. It’s a dead-end without WD help.

The fix is to provide a solution for a lower level access to locate the Time Machine Sparse Image Bundle (.sparsebundle or similar) and mount it, copy it, access it somehow.

12

Open Finder and in the Finder menu (top left of your main screen) select

  • Go > Connect to Server…

  • smb://mycloudex2ultra is your server address

  • press Connect

  • in the list you should have P2P, Public, YOUR_USER, ETC and TimeMachineBackup folder (that’s where your Time Machine backups are) and that’s what’s missing

1598×1200 143 KB

13

After a bit deeper research, here is the temporary solution (you won’t be happy):

  • take a deep breath and deal with the fact that WD MyCloud is a new, still unreliable technology and while WDStaff will do their best to help, more than likely it’s going to be a waste of everyone’s time. Likely, the “corresponding teams” will stay on hold until you give up. And even if the don’t, at the end you may have to send your hardware in for professional file-recovery (based on my experiences with WD, it’s likely they will help) so that’s only an option if you must have those files back, no matter what. In our case it’s development records of a fairly known software and some test results that are very important but we decided we can live without them. My solution is a drive format and sending it back (WD at least is very good in that part, refund/replacement) and getting a MyBook Duo until end of 2017. Hopefully, these “bugs” will be fixed until then.

Not being sarcastic, this is the only way if you don’t want to pull your hair for weeks. Get a hot tea and a new drive, WD drives are really good, this MyCloud thing is just not as reliable as it will be one day :wink:

SOLUTION 1: Let it go
SOLUTION 2: Send it to WD
SOLUTION 3: not ruling out a solution from WDStaff it’s just very unlikely at the moment

15

Did not help with the TM backup but some errors will be fixed by http://mycloudex2ultra.local > Scan Disk