How To Upgrade WD My Cloud From 1TB to 2TB Drive

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Warning: The problem will be trying to authenticate and fail. Need to Hard Reset the unit – unplug – use a paperclip push the reset button – plug the power back – keep holding the button for 40 seconds. This will reset the unit and we can re-install the software. Do NOT upgrade to V4 automatically. Turn it off so you don’t have to downgrade.

Follow the instructions here.

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I bought my first cloud server WD My Cloud 1TB for $70 when it’s on sale. I knew that I would upgrade it to 2TB since I have a few in my HTPCs (now they’re obsoleted), although the device is brand new, but after reading the “how to unbrick…”, I decided to try it, the worst scenario is I would be out of $70. I do trust WD quality. For people who don’t have WD 2TB+ laying around, it’s cheaper and more efficient to buy units with 2TB-4TB, the price increments are actually very minimal. Don’t do this unless you have WD drive, NOT any other brand. I used the Samsung 2TB and it didn’t work, wasting a few nights trying.

You need to remove the drive from the case. Regardless on how I read the how to on youtube, I still broke all the lock taps. If you do it carefully, you can still open without breaking anything. There are 4 lock taps and they’re not at the same heights, so look at the pictures, lift the tap and slide the case forward to remove, it’s tight but doable.

I removed one of the lock guides to remove the drive easier.

 

Now it’s the software part, the best is to create an image of the original drive. Original means no users, no data, nothing… I did the quick factory restored from the dashboard, make sure none of important data is on it.

Reboot and login as admin, not creating any user. Turn on SSH. I reverted the firmware V4 back to V3 to make sure.

I used Windows 8, so I need to download Putty_exe_download.

– Type in device ip address to connect – use user name=root and password=welc0me (zero not o).

dd if=/dev/sda of=/DataVolume/shares/Public/mycloud1tb.img bs=1M count=5000

This will create an image “mycloud1tb.img” in the Public folder. 

– Now copy the “mycloud1tb.img” to an 8GB USB flash drive if you don’t have a Mac and use PC to do the restoration.

– The Mac OS X is more reliable, although it takes longer. I had 2 drives that failed after restoring using systemrescuecd and usb flash drive. They’re fine with Yosemite restoration.

– For the Mac, I use the USB external device to connect my 2TB hard drive for the commands in the terminal. It does take a lot longer to restore compare to the PC way which is less than 5 minutes.

sudo dd if=/mycloud1tb.img of=/dev/disk2

– When it’s done, need to use gparted to extend the EXT4 partition from 1TB to 2TB.

– Plug into the main-board and test to make sure everything works before putting it back in the case.

 

 

How to put back the drive to the case when done.

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