WD My Cloud impossible to reach (SSH, HTTP, Samba/NFS): How to back up my contents and do a Full Factory Restore?

Question

I own a WD My Cloud (WD My Cloud 4TB Personal Cloud Storage - NAS, model WDBCTL0040HWT-NESN, to be specific). I set it up to allow SSH access, which worked great for months. However, I ran apt-get update; apt-get upgrade, which updated a number of packages (100, as I remember), and rendered the NAS useless: I can no longer access it via HTTP or SSH, and cannot access the Samba/NFS file shares through OS X. FTP does not work either.

When running the WD My Cloud Setup, it gives the following diagnostic message:

Following Western Digital's recommendations, I have tried to "soft reset" (hold the button for 4 seconds, which restarts it), and to perform a "System Restore" (hold it for 40 seconds, which resets the host name etc.). None of this seemed to work. The only way I have been able to access my content is using an app on my iPad, oPlayerHD Lite, which I have used to view my photos and video recordings.

If it can be of any use, I tried to scan the ports on the NAS:

# nmap -p 0-65535 192.168.1.59

PORT      STATE    SERVICE
0/tcp     filtered unknown
111/tcp   open     rpcbind
139/tcp   open     netbios-ssn
445/tcp   open     microsoft-ds
2049/tcp  open     nfs
3689/tcp  open     rendezvous
9000/tcp  open     cslistener
9443/tcp  open     tungsten-https
34071/tcp open     unknown
34255/tcp open     unknown
37564/tcp open     unknown
39550/tcp open     unknown
49153/tcp open     unknown

My questions are:

• How do I recover my data from the device? (I have backups of most of it, but want a complete copy of everything on it before I proceed)
• How do I do perform a Full Factory Restore without using the regular web interface?

Solution 1

This ended up being the solution:

1. Setting up a Windows computer, so I could backup of all of my data (that wasn't for some reason possible on my Mac).
2. Returning the hard drive to WD, stating that it was not reachable after installing updates.
3. Received a replacement drive today.

Thanks for your inputs.

Solution 2

If http, ssh and smb don't work your best bet is to use the same protocol oPlayerHD Lite uses, which may be ftp from what I read in its website. Only you can determine what protocol is actually being used, however.

Comments

[Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007]

Sounds like the OS is permanently munged. Take the drives out and hook them to a computer. Otherwise, did you consider trying what they suggest in the image you posted, and call them for support?

[harrymc]

Try the advice in last entry on each of these 2 pages : page1 and page2.

[Kristian]

Thanks, @harrymc, but both of your links refer to router issues... That is not the case for my question.

[Vinayak]

Does this help? Also, pressing the reset button for 40 seconds re-installs the OS. It doesn't just reset the host name.

[Vinayak]

If all else fails, you could rip it open and connect it directly to your computer over SATA. However, if WD uses a encryption chip like this guy found out the hard way you may be out of luck. I'm not sure whether WD automatically encrypts everything that's written onto the drive or it does so only after you've set up encryption, but if the data is more important to you than the drive, it's worth a shot.

[Kristian]

Thanks, but I also tried FTP, which didn't work. I believe oPlayer HD Lite accesses the WD My Cloud using Samba. But I cannot connect to the file share using OS X.

[meh]

Without further information this is guesswork but did you configure the player with a specific ip address or did it search your network for the device? If the latter is true maybe the device reverted to a default setting after the reset (dhcp?) and now you need to find out its current ip.

[Kristian]

I know that I have the correct IP address. It is connected to the network. I updated my initial post with contents from my port scan.