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NDR / Manufacturers / WD My Cloud

My Cloud · Mirror · EX2 · EX4 · PR4100 · My Cloud Home · My Book Live

WD My Cloud data recovery. A red light usually means the drive or the boot, not the photographs.

Western Digital's network drives run from a single-bay My Cloud and the older My Book Live through the two-bay Mirror and EX2 to the four-bay EX4, PR4100 and DL4100, with the My Cloud Home a separate design behind an app. Most of them run ext4 over Linux RAID and fail the ordinary ways: a firmware update that did not finish, most often the forced move to OS 5 after OS 3 support ended on 15 April 2022; a drive with bad sectors; a power cut; a RAID member lost. Two events are the brand's own: the remote reset of My Book Live units on 23–24 June 2021, and WD's network security incident that took My Cloud services offline for most of April 2023 without touching a drive. A single-bay My Cloud, My Cloud Home or My Book Live is £300 + VAT; an EX2, Mirror, PR or DL set is £500 + VAT upwards, in writing after the free look.

Free first lookOne fixed figure in writingNo data, no bill on most jobsReturn postage paid

Rather talk it through? An engineer answers the bench line
0800 6890668

Power it down. Label each drive with its bay number. Do not rebuild, repair, initialise, reinstall or reset. A rebuild reads every sector of every surviving drive, and on a set with a second weak member it finishes what the first failure began. Nothing on the drives gets worse while the unit is off.

Models we see, family by family.

Which kind of unit is it →
Family Models Bays, OS, file system and layout
Single-bayMy Cloud 2–8TB, My Book Live1 drive · ext4 · the Live on a 64K block size
Two-bayMy Cloud Mirror, EX2, EX2 Ultra, PR2100, DL2100, My Book Live Duo, My Cloud Home DuoRAID 0 or 1 · ext4 on mdadm
Four-bayEX4, EX4100, PR4100, DL4100RAID 5 or 10 · ext4 on mdadm
My Cloud HomeHome 2–8TB, Home Duoext4 'cloud' volume · content IDs · SQLite index
SentinelDX4000, DS5100Windows Storage Server; recovered with the RAID site

What tends to go wrong on a WD My Cloud.

My Book Live reset, 23–24 June 2021Attackers used CVE-2018-18472, unpatched on a line WD had stopped updating in 2015, and CVE-2021-35941, an administrator function that ran a factory restore without a password. The reset re-created the file system and left the data blocks; units left alone recovered well.
OS 3 end of support, 15 April 2022WD ended OS 3 and pushed OS 5 to the units that could take it. Interrupted or failed, the update leaves a red light and an untouched data volume. WD's notice says OS 5 is supported at least until the end of 2026.
WD's network security incident, April 2023Identified on 26 March 2023, disclosed on 2 April, with My Cloud, Home and OS 5 services offline until 13 April. WD called it a network security incident; the drives in people's homes were never touched, and the app's blank screen was the service, not the data.
The My Cloud Home's layoutFiles stored under content IDs in an ext4 volume, with names and folders in a SQLite database on the same drive. A PC sees thousands of coded files; the bench recovers the database and gives every file its name back.

WD My Cloud symptoms, and how long each gives you.

Not listed? Describe it on the form →
One drive light red; shares still thereA degraded set. Copy what matters, then power down. Do not fit a new drive.Do not delay
The pool reads crashed, unmounted or not activeTwo members lost, or the file system damaged. Power down.Do not delay
The unit will not boot after an updateThe system, not the data. The arrays are assembled without it.Everyday job
A drive clicks when the unit startsThe drive, and the set. Power down; two jobs.Do not delay
Ransom note on the login pagePull the network cable, then power down. No update, no reset.Do not delay
Packing it and posting it: power the unit down, write the bay number on each drive with a marker before it comes out, and send every drive from the set, including any SSD cache. Each drive travels in an anti-static bag inside its own padding, in a box with nothing able to move; the unit itself comes too if it holds an encryption key or a proprietary layout, and its power supply with it. Insure the parcel for what the files are worth rather than the price of the drives, and use a tracked service. The posting address is not printed anywhere on this site; it arrives by email in reply to the form, with a booking sheet to print; the sheet inside the parcel is what matches it to your enquiry when it is opened. Or hand the sealed parcel in at the nearest of ten drop-off points, your name on the outside and the sheet inside; say where you are on the form and it comes by email. We pay the postage home either way. The whole of it is written up on the guide to packing and posting.

What the message means on a WD My Cloud.

Describe yours to us →
What you see The usual reason Where that leaves you
Solid red lightBoot failure, usually a failed updateDrive imaged; volume mounted from the image
Content unavailableData volume not mountedMounted from the image; no reset
Drive shows coded filenames in a PCMy Cloud Home content IDsIndex recovered; names restored
My Book Live empty overnightThe 2021 resetOld file system reconstructed on the image
Pool or volume degradedOne member lost; still readableCopy critical files; power down; no rebuild
Pool or volume crashed / unmounted / not activeToo many members lost, or file system damageEvery member imaged; assembled from the superblocks
Unit will not boot after an updateSystem partition or boot flash; data intactData arrays assembled without the OS
Drives shown as new in another unitForeign layout; the unit offers to installSay no; the order is read from the metadata

From the box arriving to your files going back.

Work we have closed →
01

Logged the day it lands, and the first look costs nothing Free

A case number goes on the parcel and a number on every drive the day it is opened, and an engineer settles what has actually happened before anything spins. The unit is examined on its own; each drive is assessed on our own equipment, never in a NAS that will try to rebuild. Back to you come two things together: a straight note of what is liftable and what is not, plus one figure, fixed and written down. Accept it, or decline and owe us nothing.

Nothing to pay for lookingA single figure, put in writingNo rebuilds, no repairs, no resets
02

The unit, and the drives, apart

The box and the disks are two different jobs. The unit is tested separately, because a dead power supply, a failed board or a bricked boot flash leaves the drives untouched more often than not. Each drive is then read on the bench: the ones that answer at full speed, and the weak or failed ones in clean air where they need head work. On units that hold an encryption key or a layout of their own, the unit is part of the data and is kept with it.

Unit and disks assessed separatelyFailing members to the clean bench
03

Every member imaged, once

Nothing is worked on live and nothing is rebuilt on the originals. Every drive in the set is imaged sector by sector, the weak ones head by head with the bad areas last, and the SSD cache with them where there is one. From then on the originals are not touched again.

Every drive, including the cacheWeak areas last
04

The set put back together, from the images

Order, chunk size, parity rotation and the reshape point are read from the drives' own metadata and the array is reassembled in software: mdadm and LVM under SHR, X-RAID and QTS pools; a ZFS pool imported read-only; Drobo's BeyondRAID zones reconstructed. The file system, Btrfs, ext4, XFS or ZFS, is repaired on the virtual volume, and encrypted volumes are unlocked there with the key you supply. Never on the originals.

Rebuilt in software, from imagesThe file system repaired on the virtual volume
05

You see the file list before you pay

What was recovered is listed for you first, and only then does a bill exist. Approve the list and it is invoiced; turn it down and it is not — and where nothing has come back, most jobs carry no charge at all. Recovered data travels home on fresh media bought in for your job, with the postage at our end. Your case is not closed until you have opened the files on a machine of your own.

No charge until you accept the figureFresh media, supplied with the job3–4 days at the bench for one drive

From the bench

  • Do not factory reset. It re-creates the system partitions and, on some models, the data volume. The bench does not need the operating system to recover the data.
  • Check WD's status page before assuming the worst on a My Cloud Home. The service went dark for weeks in April 2023 and nothing on the drives changed.
  • The My Book Live's 64K-block ext4 defeats PC tools, which is one reason owners think the data is gone. It mounts from the image on the bench without difficulty.
  • Linux, mdadm, LVM and a file system. The maker's names for the layout sit on the kernel's own RAID, and every layer writes its description on every drive. The bench reads it from the images and needs nothing from the unit but its key.
  • A rebuild reads every sector of every survivor. On drives that have aged together it is where the second failure is found. The bench does the same arithmetic on images, which cannot drop out.
  • Label the bays. The metadata usually gives the order; the label makes it certain, and a set whose drives were swapped and initialised is a harder job.

One job, followed all the way through.

UK · NDR-2026-0526JOB LOGGED ✓

A My Cloud Home 6TB, dead after a power cut, with a decade of photographs and no other copy

The unit would not start and the app showed nothing. The drive was imaged, the ext4 cloud volume mounted from the image, and the SQLite index recovered intact, so that every content-ID file came back under its own name in its own folder.

100% of it recovered4 days here, and back by post
Illustrative example — replace with a genuine case

What helps, and what harms.

Do this much first

  • Power down and label the bays
  • Send every drive, the unit and its supply
  • Tell us the OS version, the RAID mode and what was clicked
  • Find the encryption key if one was set

What sets us back

  • Rebuilding, repairing or resyncing
  • Reinstalling the OS or factory resetting
  • Moving the drives to another unit
  • Initialising drives the unit shows as new

Questions answered before you commit.

Can you recover My Cloud Home folder names?

Yes, if the SQLite index on the drive survives, which it usually does. Without it, files come back sorted by type.

Is My Cloud OS 5 still supported?

WD's notice says OS 5 is supported at least until the end of 2026; after that, unless extended, the units enter end of support and the cloud side stops. The data on the drives is unaffected either way.

My My Book Live was wiped in 2021. Is anything left?

Usually most of it. The reset rewrote the file system's structures, not the files. The less written to it since, the more comes back.

Does WD recover data?

No. WD offered recovery to My Book Live victims in July 2021 and otherwise points to partners. The free look here costs nothing.

What does it cost?

£300 + VAT for a single-bay My Cloud, Home or My Book Live; an EX, PR, DL or Duo set is £500 + VAT upwards.

Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.

WD My Cloud red light →My Book Live wiped →Cloud appliances →Single-bay NAS →

Nothing gets worse while it is powered down.

Looking at it is free. Back comes a list of what opened and what did not, together with a single price to finish, set down in writing while you are still free to say no. On most jobs an invoice only follows the data. Until that list reaches you, leave the unit off and the drives in their bays.

0800 6890668

Price my jobPacking and posting