My PR4100 has been working fine for two years, but in the early hours of August 25th it disappeared from the local network.
Looking at the device itself, no disks are spinning and the only signs of life at all are the drive activity LEDs, which are ominously blinking red in sync with each other. The power LED and the display are off.
No amount of off-and-on-again or 4/40 second resets are having any effect. I’ve tested the power brick and it’s putting out the proper requirements, so the problem doesn’t lie there.
WD Support have said that as my 2 year warranty expired two months ago, they’re not interested in helping me out.
I’ve already followed your USB boot guide (much appreciated, you documenting all of this stuff for the community) although I was in a hurry at the time and only had a Mac to hand, so I formatted the stick as exFAT with an MBR partition scheme - with no joy, the system didn’t respond in any different way at all (flashing red drive LEDs). I’m wondering if the EFI boot routine might have objected to the MBR scheme, or if exFAT isn’t supported.
I’ll try again with a different partition scheme and FAT32 when I can get access to a Windows box and see if I can get the rescue files booted.
Thanks again, and I’ll keep the thread updated with any progress.
Many thanks again for taking the time to post all that info.
A friend of mine has agreed to lend me his PR4100 PSU for a few days, just to test the theory that the problem might lie there - I’ll update here with the results, as it would be good to get a definitive answer as to the cause of the red LEDs flashing error.
In other good news, I received a call from WD yesterday from a nice lady who said she was taking over my support case. WD have agreed to cover my problem as I am only two months out of warranty, which is appreciated. Prior to this, I was very dissatisfied with WD’s handling of the case. If a device is labelled ‘Pro’, one should expect that the manufacturer would at least offer to repair or replace the device for a reasonable cost (which they wouldn’t), rather than simply expecting the user to buy a new one as soon as the warranty has expired.
Thankfully, someone at WD has decided that this is not reasonable, and I am expecting an email from WD with further instructions today.
Well you were absolutely right - as soon as I plugged in the other PSU the whole thing came back to life.
So, for future reference - if all the drive bay LEDs are flashing red in sync and the system won’t boot up at all, the problem is the power brick and nothing to do with the enclosure itself.
