Unwanted format on EX4100 on 1 drive, lost all shares on all drives

My Cloud OS 5 Personal & Network Attached Storage My Cloud EX Series
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SHORT VERSION: While attempting to encrypt empty volume_2 unit started to format volume_1! Lacking way to cancel, cut power. Now all shares and apps are gone. Desperately need to recover shares on at least volume_4. Long Version follows.

I have contacted Customer Support but have yet to receive a reply. Please help if possible. TY

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LONG VERSION: Had a long working EX4100 with four drives, all unencrypted JBOD (volumes 1-4). Replaced one drive with a higher capacity drive and brought it up fine as unencrypted JBOD (also as volume_4, replacing prior volume_4 on removed drive). Copied all on volumes 2 & 3 onto new shares on volume_4. Deleted everything on volume_2 and tried to convert it to an encrypted drive/volume. Stupidly I did this with drives/volumes 1, 3, and 4 still in the EX4100 at the same time – and things went catastrophically wrong in many ways.

Note, started with all JBOD and wanted all JBOD. In Storage/RAID/RAID Volume clicked Set Up RAID Mode (necessary even when all one wants is JBOD), clicked the padlock icon on volume_2 only and clicked Next. The EX4100 performed a drive test on all four drives. OK, I have seen it do that before. But then it proceeded to format volume_1! Not volume_2! In fact, from the messaging it may have intended to format all four drives/volumes. When I realized it was working on volume_1, rather than volume_2 which is all it should have been working on, I cut the power (there is no cancel button).

When I powered the EX4100 back on ALL my shares were gone, including those on volumes 3 & 4. Checking further, my single app (Twonky Server) is also now missing (oddly may be relevant, see below).

I started with drives 1-4, and replaced #4 (call it “old-4” and the new drive “new-4”), so drives 1-3 and new-4 were in the EX4100 when things went wrong. Here is what I have tried so far, after I pulled all the drives:

Put in only drive 3 and powered up. Storage/RAID/RAID Profile shows no volumes and Storage/Disk Status/Disk Profile shows Healthy and …/System Disks shows Drive3 Good, but Shares and Apps show none.

Put in only drive old-4 and powered up. Storage/RAID/RAID Profile shows volume_4; Storage/Disk Status/Disk Profile shows Healthy and …/System Disks shows Drive4 Good; Shares shows Private4 (as expected); and Apps still shows none.

Put in drive 3 with old-4 and powered up. Got a RAID Roaming window saying “This volume is roaming from another WD My Cloud EX4100 (not created on this system). Click OK to integrate it into your current WD My Cloud EX4100. If you do not integrate it, you risk losing data if your volume becomes degraded. …” Looked safe so I clicked OK, and got an “Updating” msg for a few seconds. Storage/RAID/RAID Profile shows only volume_4 (active and healthy); Storage/Disk Status/Disk Profile shows Healthy but System Disks shows “Please wait…” msg with an animated icon but an hour later no change.

Tried to reinstall Twonky Server and get “Unable to install app. There is not enough storage space in the My Cloud system. Please free up storage space and try again.” This seems significant to me of there being a higher level problem in my EX4100 than just a disk access malfunction.

QUESTIONS:
(1) Under Settings/Utilities/Restore To Default I see choices that may clear up the memory issue. Will using these affect my drive/volume/share recovery options later?
(2) Can shares be restored/remounted etc.
(3) What disk format type does the EX4100 use?
(4) What utility programs / apps can one use on EX4100 disks? Specifically to access what is a hopefully an un-corrupted volume_4 on disk new-4, and to recover whatever is possible from likely corrupted volume_1 on disk 1 (the format got to 8% before I realized it was occurring on the wrong disk and cut power)?

TY in advance.

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UPDATE:

No reply yet from WD Customer Support, but I only contacted them late yesterday.

Desperate so I resorted to other options. There are a lot of data recovery tools. Most have free download options to try out, and that is a good thing because some are total Clownware. Some options (the cheapest) require Linux. I found only one useful post about data recovery specifically on drives from an EX4100. It mentioned UFS Explorer Professional Recovery, but the cheapest license for it is US$650. Digging around on that company’s website I found it has lessor packages, so I DL’ed the free version of its UFS Explorer Standard Recovery (US$70), and tried it. It has you remove the drives from the EX4100 and connect each to another system directly or via a USB port (I used Windows, but MAC and Linux versions are available too). Happy, happy, joy, joy! I could see all my files that were in lost shares (yet to try on the partially formatted drive) and could even copy files under the free version’s 250KB limit. Bought the license for $70 and am now well into recovery.

I am angry at WD for costing me $70, but I bill $385 per hour and it is my time that counts.

Hope this helps others. Plan to try and get what I can off the partially formatted drive too, but that is only old movies and minimally important. Plan to report further.

1 Like
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Got a reply from Customer Service. It blames the customer (me) and it is obvious that my initial communication was not clearly read. CHANGING THE SETTING ON ONE DRIVE SHOULD NOT TRIGGER A FORMAT OF ALL DRIVES, especially when all drives are and are to stay JBOD.

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Update: Have recovered all possible data. UFS Explorer Standard Recovery even restored most of the data from the partially formatted drive! All this has taken ~10 days (4/2x14/22GB drives; 36GB+ populated in JBOD).

Only issue remaining is that I now have 3 Public and 3 TimeMachineBackup shares because of the way the EX4100 allowed me to ‘safely’ add and bring up drives. The One Public share I want to keep is Public_3. One cannot (easily?) remove Public shares, but Customer Support has indicated it will help with that.

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A few things;

  1. Not surprised by the high quality WD support response :wink:

  2. ANOTHER Example of “I have met the enemy, and He is I.” The biggest threat to your data is yourself. Everything in one box is fundamentally Everything in One Box. Theft. Fire. User error. All good reasons for multiple user backups - - -with at least one in a remote location.

  3. I am personally TERRIFIED of playing with NAS volume settings. Last two times I felt the urge to upgrade drives. . . . .I bought a new box and copied the data over. (. . . and now I have one more backup of the data. . . . .) It doesn’t surprise me to find usability and other problems with the software. I would actually EXPECT the system to do something UNEXPECTED.

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Thank you for posting this. I’m going to try that software as well. I have an issue where the web interface shows 0kb free but I know that’s not true. Plus it doesn’t look like it can see the folders or anything that I originally did. I was working with going from one network to the other when I started having the issue. I’m praying that this software or something else works. It’s been over a week since I’ve asked WD support for help but nothing yet.