Rescue Procedure

Link to the discussion

Steps of recovery

100% Functional for ALL DISK SIZES in 10 steps.

1. Remove the HDD from MyBook World Edition (PDF Link) and connect it to your PC. In this manual i refer to the disk as /dev/sda1 - usually it is only drive in PC. Check before if your new hdd is really /dev/sda1 or you are risking losing your files. With this manual is completely OK, if you put into your PC just and only HDD which you want to install and remove all others (so you can not lose your data:), you boot from live distribution and have needed files on network or USB…

Fire up your favorite Linux (Knoppix worked well) distribution and type to terminal:

cd ~
su root [enter root passwd]

2. Download & unpack the rescue files from this page's Files section [57 MiB - note, files are only visible to registered users. Download all parts!]

unrar x mybook_we_rescue.part01.rar
cd rescue

2(a)The Mac Address of your MyBook is stored in the non partitioned part of the HD. (OPTIONAL STEP)
Once you do this you wont be able to get it back, instead you will have the Mac Address
00:90:a9:15:99:84. —— use this comands to get the from the Image of your HD the values for your Mac Address
if you dont care or have just One Mybook skip this lines

dd if=/dev/sda bs=1 skip=24064 count=4 | od -x
dd if=/dev/sda bs=1 skip=24462 count=17 | od -c

Post them here if you like so we can figure it out how they were built

I dont know how to write them back, I hope someone edit this lines (Done! see below, J.H.)

2(b) Saving your original MAC address: (OPTIONAL STEP, but - if the original MAC address info is available - re-using it is recommended.)
The MAC address information is coded in the un-allocated portion at the beginning of the disk as noted above - ranging at offset address 0x5E00, and ending at offset address 0x5F9F - a total of 416 bytes of data.

If you copy this 416 byte block of data to a file, you can restore it later, while rebuilding the disk.
(Notice the "dot-slash" - some O/S's get fussy when referencing the current directory.)

dd if=/dev/sda of=./mac.bin bs=1 skip=24064 count=416

This copies the 416 bytes located at 0x5E00 through 0x5F9F to a file called "mac.bin"

3. Zero fill the first 3 GiB of space on disk

STOP! BEWARE!!: Check you are using the right drive letter before running these commands. If you use the wrong letter you could wipe your computer's operating system.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M count=3000

4. Copy the contents of rescue.img to the disk

dd if=rescue.img of=/dev/sda

4(a) Restore the original MAC address saved in step 2(a) (OPTIONAL STEP)

dd if=./mac.bin of=/dev/sda bs=1 seek=24064

This overwrites the 416 bytes located at 0x5E00 through 0x5F9F
with the saved MAC address data from step 2(a).

5. Create the first 3 system partitions

sfdisk /dev/sda < SDA_PTAB

6. Create the last partition at the end of the disk

cfdisk /dev/sda

At the end of the disk there is much free space, create there a PRIMARY partition, set it to be TYPE=fd
This is because this manual is usable for all kind of disks big enough… So you can do this also with a 500G, 750G, 1000G or bigger disk. So the partition at the end is variable size dependent on the disk.

// *begin edit - If you've encountered problems with read-only mounts of /dev/sda4 after this rescue procedure, then redo the whole tutorial. In exchange for TYPE=fd use TYPE=83 within step 5 and you'll be fine!

Some Linux distributions do automounting new partitions… So umount them if possible.

umount /dev/sda1
umount /dev/sda3
umount /dev/sda4

7. Format 4th partition with no space reserved for UID 0

mkfs.ext3 -m 0 /dev/sda4

If you have problem running this program, you are not under root account! Look at step 1.

8. Unpack and copy the contents of the 1., 2. and 3. system partition

bunzip2 < SDA1_IMA.BZ2 > /dev/sda1
bunzip2 < SDA2_IMA.BZ2 > /dev/sda2
bunzip2 < SDA3_IMA.BZ2 > /dev/sda3

9. Turn off fsck for all [NON SWAP] system partitions

tune2fs -c -1 -i 0 /dev/sda1
tune2fs -c -1 -i 0 /dev/sda3
tune2fs -c -1 -i 0 /dev/sda4

10. Created dir, mount and edit /etc/fstab

mkdir sda1
mount -t ext3 /dev/sda1 sda1
nano sda1/etc/fstab

/dev/md4 MUST BE REPLACED BY /dev/sda4!

Save it by pressing CTRL + X, Y, ENTER.
Or use any other editor you like… [Nano is quite simple]

umount sda1

DO NOT FORGET THIS!

** poweroff the computer**

Plug the drive back to MyBook and be happy its running again ;)

PLEASE READ

KNOWN PROBLEMS

  1. The lights go on, but MyBook do not listen on any network address
  2. The DATA partition does not mount automatically
  3. There are problems with RAID on two-disk devices
  4. Lockup/blue light starts flashing a few minutes after reboot after installing a new hdd

1) This problem is because of some coruption in the 3rd partition… Also MyBook shows to be connected only to 100 mbps on gigabit network.

HOW TO FIX —> FOLLOW STEP 8 of the manual above

2) This is because the 4th partition isn't recognized as md4 but as sda4…

HOW TO FIX —> FOLLOW STEP 10 of the manual above
DO NOT FORGET TO UMOUNT THE PARTITION CORRECTLY!

3) This is because the procedure is 100% functional only for one-disk devices.
HOW TO FIX —> I'm in the process of verifying a slightly different approach. Look here for further info:
http://mybookworld.wikidot.com/forum/t-36199/recovering-fstab-for-wd-mybook-we-ii-2tb
I will update this HOWTO, as soon as we can verify that the procedure works.

If you have another problem, start from scratch… This manual at its actual state is 100% OK

4) If you have installed a non-WesternDigital hdd in your MyBook WE, the script 'S15wdc-heat-monitor' located in the '/etc/init.d' folder is incapable of measuring hdd temperatures. It will result in a blue light flashing and an inaccessible device.
HOW TO FIX —> disable (or preferably correct -) this script. Moving the script out of the /etc/init.d folder should probably work just fine.

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