WD MyCloud stuck at safe mode

My Cloud OS 3 Personal & Network Attached Storage My Cloud
24

@Bennor

thanks for your detail explanation.

do you know any software can fix the reallocated sectors and the steps to share?

I have read some discussion post and WD article, I do notice there is some hardware different between WD MyCloud and WD myCloud Home. I do saw some people mention it’s no longer consider as NAS, but I don’t understand the software or usage different.

4TB WD Red is sold at around $100 at my country as well, I might wait for sales then.
any chances that my besides the hard drive any problem with my WD mycloud? as I worry the problem not only on the hard drive but on other parts too. if that case, replacing hard drive will not fix the problem.

26

One isn’t “fixing” a bad sector on a hard drive. What one is doing (in simplistic terms) is marking the sector as bad and using a backup/reallocated sector in its place. The issue comes there is a finite number of backup/reallocated sectors and once those are used up replacing bad sectors, the data gets corrupted, SMART throws errors and the drive has problems as additional bad sectors arrise. Like indicated previously trying to reassign bad sectors is a temporary fix at best, the drive is still failing. One can use their favorite internet search engine to search for repairing bad hard drive sectors or removing bad sectors. There are some basic free tools (Windows chkdsk for example) out there along with paid software like HDD Regenerator. Personally while I have recover the use of the drive for a short time, it always fails eventually. Sometimes within hours of running recovery tools, sometimes days or weeks later. But in the end the drive always ends up being replaced.

The My Cloud Home uses a different operating system than the My Cloud line. It has different features and different options. For example no Dashboard and no SSH capability. It’s operating system is, as I understand it, Android. Configuration of the unit is done using (again as I understand it) a mobile app.

If you are worried about the issue being with the My Cloud backplane hardware and not the drive itself one can always take a spare unused bare hard drive and unbrick it to work in the My Cloud. I’ve run drives as small as 250GB in a first gen single bay My Cloud enclosure some may have even run smaller drives. Currently using an old laptop’s 2.5 inch 750GB drive in the single bay My Cloud as its a secondary hardly used NAS device now that I use a larger, more capable, unit from another manufacturer.

It comes down to the issue of time and effort. Sure one can spend hours/days trying to repair a failing hard drive, but in the end you still have a failing drive that could fail completely at any time. Or one can spend some money to simply replace the failing drive by spending a little bit of time (half an hour to an hour) on top of the new drive cost unbricking a brand new (or existing used) hard drive for use in the single bay My Cloud.

27

I agree. . . there is no profit in salvaging a half failed drive. . .sure; you may get a few months use out of it before it fails completely. THEN WHAT?

So then there is the question of tossing a nice new NAS HDD in the existing unit. . . .or doing the American thing and starting over with a fresh unit.

Back in the day. . . the WD MyClouds represented an awesome value for the dollar. I really like my Gen 1 unit; and currently use it sporadically as a standard network drive.

However. . .today. . . one must face the fact that “the handwritting is on the wall” regarding all the OS/3 units (like the Single Bay MyClouds) in terms of firmware support and access using WD Web/phone apps. Firmware support in general is very important if these units are exposed to the internet.

The OS/3 cloud apps. . .I think are on a clock before the WD servers are switched off. WD seems all in on the new OS/5 ecosystem. From what I infer on the OS/5 forums; I suspect the Single Bay myclouds simply don’t have the horsepower to run OS/5.

Unfortunately, you simply can’t get new NAS units at the old Single Bay WD price points. On the plus side; the new units are definitely snappier and more capable in my view to run software like Plex.

So if I was in your shoes. . .
. . . I would consider “playing” with the unit and slapping in a new HDD. (make sure it’s a CMR drive, not a SMR drive)
. . I would SHUN anything from the MyCloud Home line.
. . .I would consider buying a new synology or qnap unit for any “mission critical” work. (All the WD NAS units going forward will be OS/5 - - -and that software is far from “proven” for “mission critical” applications)

28

Hi everyone,

I have a WD My Cloud device, 6Tb, gen 2, and I haven’t found any info about unbrick this unit in particular.

I followed the procedure described at the topic “Success recover my MyCloud 3TB with fast blue blinking light after update firmware!”, but like lot’s of people, I’ve got stuck at safe mode with “Firmware Version: (BLANK)”.

When I tryed to Update the firmware at this point, the progress bar started to move, but no percentage was showing. There was no progress at all.

Before start to try something less conventional, I decided to save my files following the steps at this toppic “My Cloud dead, how to see content on Windows 10?”.

I use the Ubuntu aproach. Downloaded Ubuntu and ran it from a pendrive. The process to create the pendrive is here “Create a bootable USB stick with Rufus on Windows | Ubuntu”.

After save my files, I tryed to move on, without formating my HDD.

THE SOLUTION THAT WORKED FOR ME:

I use the command “mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda3” at telnet to format all the little partitions at the HDD. I just left the big one with all my files. You need to change the “…sda” part to the number of partition, in my case
“mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda3”, than 4, 5, 6 and 7. The partition 1 was the system partition, the 2 where my files.

PS.: You can skip this part! Just for curiosity, when started to format these partition as I sad, I notice that I had a “boot” folder at partition sda3 and sda5. The one at sda3 I must have created while following the procedure at the first topic above… the one was the original. And there were 2 files, named “rescue_fw_version”, I thought it has to be with the "Firmware Version: (BLANK), tryed to copy them to sdb3 partition and erase “boot” folder at sdb5 partition, but it didn’t work.

After formating the partitions, I started to follow the topic “Success recover my MyCloud 3TB with fast blue blinking light after update firmware!” again and voila! Problem Solved!

Another thing, while choosing the firmware file from WD site, I’ve got some errors. The firmware that worked was the .BIN file. .TAR.GZ, .TAR files, didn’t worked out for me.

The system was restored, but it didn’t manage to recover my files. It didn’t show the files I left there. I needed to choose a RAID mode while configuring it and it got formated. So, before move one, you need to save all your files as described at the topic above!

Thats it! Hope to help! I haven’t find any solution at the forum about these "Firmware Version: (BLANK).

André

29

Hi, how did you manage to fix this issue? I’m having the same issue on my WD My Cloud 4TB model. Tried both 4sec and 40 sec reset. Looks like the firmware corrupted when I tried updating it via the dashboard to 5.15.106 and trying to do this via safe mode is also not working. TIA

30

Same here. Device broken after „upgrade” to OS5 from the last Fw2.
No support from WDC

31

HI Jacksiow, I’m stuck in the same problem too. The uploading firmware status is just rotating forever. which managed to help you get thru with it? Hope you can share it with us pls.

BR
visuta

32

Hey there,

I have done the 40 sec. reset properly, but the device doesn’t do anything and it’s still blinking red after 30+ Minutes. I’ve tried the 40 sec. reset many times and in fact even after 60 sec. I can reach the safe mode page and choose a file, in my case My_Cloud_GLCR_2.42.115.bin, and start with the upload.

Bildschirmfoto 2022-06-30 um 20.53.25
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Unfortunately, the upload never ends. Can you please explain what did you do manage to upload the firmware?

Thanks!

33

Did you resolve the issue?

34

I have the same problem, I buy a new wd red 4TB hdd and I try to restore this product, WD MyCloud gen1 (no EX2, it’s a single bay). Could you help me?
I just try to restore other image with dd command and gparted but nothing.
So I attach the old one disk and copy partition table and put manually same data but I’m stuck into safe mode that ask me firmware: 1.01.007.0709.2015 .
I try to upload recovery firmware (rescue_firmware) but nothing.

please help me

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Screenshot_2024-01-24_15-44-04
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on the left original hdd, on the right a failed test

from original drive:
Disk Partition List

Disk Name: HD12:(3726GB) Capacity: 3.6TB Model: SerialNumber: 80113016xxxx
Parameters: 486401 Cylinders 255 Heads 63 Sectors. Total Sectors: 7814037168
Partition Table Style: GPT

Partition List:

Seq. Name System Boot ID Begin.Cyl. Head Sector End.Cyl. Head Sector Size
0 Partition(0) Linux Sw 00 FF 0 32 33 261 53 48 2.0GB
1 Local Disk(P:) EXT4 00 83 261 53 49 391 191 56 1.0GB
2 Local Disk(Q:) EXT4 00 83 391 191 57 522 75 1 1.0GB
3 Local Disk(S:) EXT4 00 83 522 75 2 783 96 17 2.0GB
4 Local Disk(T:) EXT4 00 83 783 96 18 913 234 25 1.0GB
5 Local Disk(U:) EXT4 00 83 913 234 26 1044 117 33 1.0GB
6 Local Disk(V:) EXT4 00 83 1044 117 34 486401 80 30 3.6TB

35

There are various methods to “unbrick” or install a new hard drive to a first generation (P/N # on bottom of unit “=00”) single bay My Cloud running the v4.x firmware. One can find them using the subforum search feature. If one cannot clone the old drive to the new drive due to the old drive beeing dead then one can try using the following method that some have successfully used to install a new hard drive in their first generation single bay My Cloud:

Replace HDD - English.txt: https://wd.hides.su/fox_exe/WDMyCloud-Gen1/Replace%20HDD%20-%20English.txt
Note: Use exact mkpart values from those directions. Do not adjust them to fit the size of your hard drive.

File Repository: https://wd.hides.su/fox_exe/WDMyCloud-Gen1/

original_v03.04.01-230.tar.gz
or
original_v04.01.02-417.tar.gz

The latest v4.x firmware can be downloaded from the WD Support website (see link top of page).

36

thank Bennor, I’m waiting new hdd drive, in few days I will try you solution. But it’s possible to use official image from WD? or recover it from my original hdd? Use a third parties image could be expose to malware/trojan or any others potential malware.

37

There isn’t an “official” image of the single bay My Cloud hard drive that one can publicly obtain from Western Digital.

If the original hard drive still functions one could try to clone that drive to a new hard drive using any number of clone programs. There are various past discussions on using clone programs to try and clone a single bay My Cloud hard drive. For example:

Note that after performing the steps to unbrick that was linked to in the previous post one download and installs the latest WD single bay My Cloud firmware from the WD website.

38

I Bennor unfortunately I try to clone with clonezilla, entire disk to disk, sector by sector, ignoring bad-sector and CRC control, I disable rewrite/adjust boot and any data regarding partition, but after plug-in in WD MyCloud the system start but there isn’t any volume available.
So I try to initialize disk with JBOD (I have only this option available, I found other hidden in html page).
Now the system work fine, update the firmware to latest release, but any previous data was lost.
Fortunately I had already recovered the data on another disk.
In total for this operation I buy another NAS and another disk… 1 disk for replace, 1disk for data recovery, and many many time!.. but now all work.

Great, thank you