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Problem
I bought brand new WD Caviar Green hard disks and put them into My Book World Edition II White Light case but… surprisingly it doesn’t work or even start! Only top LED is blinking/flashing and MBWE doesn’t appear in my network environment! Similar situation is with WD My Book World Edition I White Light or with my previously working disk that stopped working.
How to recover or rebuild firmware of bricked WD My Book World Edition White Light or install/replace brand new hard disk(s)?
Also following questions will find here their answers:
- Which disk to buy for WD My Book World Edition White Light?
- How to increase/upgrade WD My Book World Edition White Light capacity to 3TB (MBWE I) or 6TB (MBWE II)?
- How to downgrade WD My Book World Edition White Light firmware version?
- How to clean personal data (completely erase to the factory defaults) WD My Book World Edition White Light in purpose of sale?
What’s going on?
If suddenly your MBWE stopped working, firstly decode your MBWE situation by LEDs state/action and refer to the My Book World Edition User Manual on page 10 (LED Indicators). Maybe nothing serious happened there but only something unusual.
Anyway, MBWE is booting from NAS OS written on disk, so you can’t start MBWE:
- with brand new clean disk(s) or
- when your current disk(s) has broken boot partition or master boot record (MBR).
There is no user procedure provided by Western Digital to repair MBWE or start brand new disks. You can only return complete MBWE (with disk(s)) to Western Digital to recieve new one, if you have void warranty (for warranty conditions see: support.wdc.com).
I couldn’t agree with this, so I’ve decided to make it on my own and here it is…
What’s this?
This is linux bash script solution to restore MBWE White Light (install firmware once again) with a FACTORY STATE and CLEAN DISK:
- Works with both MBWE White Light (I and II) with any size of disk (even 3TB HDD)! but only WD Caviar Green!
Be aware also that not all WD Caviar Green drives may be MBWE compatible! (see WARNING below for details).
- Designed to auto download & install always the latest MBWE firmware directly from wdc.com (manually available here and fw revision info is here). But you can also install any firmware since & including ver. 01.02.06, that I’ve tested on 2011-04-20. If you encounter any problems with the latest version, just pick ver. 01.02.06 and then upgrade to the latest firmware using native MBWE management interface any time you want.
- Full install takes less than 1 minute! excluding firmware download.
- In MBWE II only 1 disk needs to be prepared! – the second one (clean) will be adopted by MBWE itself.
- Config with only 4 lines to adjust: disk label, serial number, model type, MAC address.
- 1 script to fire! and little wizard will guide you.
WARNING !!!
This solution WILL ERASE ALL YOUR DISK DATA, if you connect your old disk!!!
If you want to rescue data on bricked MBWE, contact Western Digital on wdc.custhelp.com or find DIY solution on mybookworld.wikidot.com. You can also boot Ubuntu from CD and try to make your data copy before this operation (4th partition is DataVolume partition) and move them back to your „new” MBWE. This should be possible if you got MBWE I or MBWE II with RAID 1 (mirror) or JBOD disk configuration. In other case, you shoudn’t do anything but call Western Digital if you care your data and you don’t know what to do.
Don’t buy new WD Caviar Green disk without being sure this model works with your MBWE!
As Western Digital online customer support says, Advanced Format Drives are not compatible with MBWE but they don’t say which one particularly is advanced/incompatible (more about Advanced Format Technology). Particular WD Caviar Green disk models with MBWE compatibility statuses are (for specs go to wdc.com or Specs Sheet):
- EADS, EAVS, EACS (SATA II 3Gb/s) are definitly compatible as WD says.
- EARS (SATA II 3Gb/s) are compatible as tested on my own and by the community.
EARX (SATA III 6Gb/s) compatibility varies as community report successes (1 case) as well as failures (1 case). WD support hints it may or may not work due to relatively older MBWE SATA II interface. Try different jumper settings as a last hope (see pic).
- EZRX (SATA III 6Gb/s) is compatible as tested by the community (here is the proof of 2x3TB WD30EZRX).
- EADX, EZRSDTL (SATA III 6Gb/s) compatibility unknown yet.
REMEMBER: If you buy new disks to your MBWE II, always take both disks of the same type and the same part (production series) due to RAID performance and conformance. Therefore, you should buy both disks from the same retailer at once (at the same time).
Quick How-To
- 1 Boot Ubuntu
from CD/CDRW/PenDrive/HDD. How-To on: Download Ubuntu.
NOTICE:
If you have problems with other linux distributions/versions simply use Ubuntu 10.10, because I’ve tested it.
DO NOT USE ANY VIRTUAL MACHINE – it can cause many additional issues. - 2 Wire your computer
to the Internet (wireless connection is often not possible due to lack of many Ubuntu CD WiFi drivers and it’s not our goal to play with it here). - 3 Extract mbwe.tar.gz
(right click and choose Extract Here) on Desktop (all files should be placed in folder mbwe – if not, correct this). If you pre-downloaded firmware image manually, place it in mbwe folder and rename it to fw.img - 4 Connect your hard disk
directly to the computer, using SATA-to-USB adapter (or any other hot plug way). - 5 Edit mbwe-config.sh file
in folder mbwe and type your disk parameters (DISK_LABEL,MBWE_TYPE,MBWE_SERIALandMAC_ADDRS) according comments. - 6 Open Terminal
(CTRL+ALT+T) and type:
cd Desktop/mbwe
sudo bash ./mbwe-install.sh - 7 Listen carefully
what is Terminal asking you and obey his commands. If you need some screenshot hints go to the Polish version. - 8 After Safe Remove disk
using Disk Utility (click Safe Removal button), place it in MBWE bay (any bay in MBWE II). Remember to unplug MBWE from the wall (electricity) before. - 9 Plug MBWE to the wall
and wait 3 minutes then go through first start procedure in MBWE web GUI (log in as admin/admin). - 10 For MBWE I that’s all.
For MBWE II go further:
- 11 Shutdown MBWE
by holding Power for 3 seconds and wait untill all LEDs are off, then unplug from the wall and put your second clean disk in an empty bay. If your second disk contains any data or structure (isn’t brand new), you must completely clean it before (unallocated space = no partitions, unformatted). This can be done using Disk Utility. - 12 Power MBWE on
and voilà.
That’s all folks
If this saved your life, you can express your happiness by your little donation.
Thanks in advance!
Regardless you had issues or not, please leave your feedback:
- Your MBWE version?: MBWE I or MBWE II.
- Your hard disk description?: WD Caviar Green WD20EARS or other.
- Your linux distro/version?: Ubuntu 10.10 Live CD or other.
- Your firmware?: installed automatically by script or downloaded manually ver.01.02.06-010411.
This will help maintain script validity and help people to resolve their issues.
Hi… I’ve tried a couple of ways to do this but the .img file is not at the linked web page. I download the .img at the link on the webpage, which is not recognized by the script at all…
I’ve also downloaded the freeware .gz directly from WD and tried to run that by renaming it fw.img.
Either way it doesn’t work.
Am I missing something??
Please help!
K
Did you try to let the script download it for you?
Anyway, you can reach fw ver. 01.02.06-010411 (tested) at fileape.com or filedude.com and finally update to the latest through MBWE user interface. The latest you can always get through websupport.wdc.com (and click upgrade file) (not tested).
Rename downloaded file to fw.img and copy it to the extracted mbwe folder in step 3.
So, eventually it worked. But when I started to set up my WBE it crashed again with same error it had in first place.
I’ve tried this remedy one more time, but now it identifies my WD Disk as a „Initio INIC-1610P”. It does nothing in the WBE case on my network… just sits there with the first 4 LEDs lit up.
I’m wondering if the HD is just dead?? I’ve bought a replacement disk to try, but I’m afraid that it will get mis-labelled and not work either…
Any thoughts???
No more thoughts than you should take your hard disk out of MBWE and check it with some „disk doctor” before any new operation. It is possible that your hdd is physically corupted at boot sectors, but also possible is that MBWE case could be broken. So, first check HDD. If broken, put brand new. If still problem persist, this must be MBWE case fault. What exactly HDD do you have? Is it WD Caviar Green?
Ended up replacing with new 2tb caviar green HD. Works like new! Now I have to find a backup solution!
Thanks for the help
Ken
Excellent!
Your procedure worked like a charm for me on a WD-MBWE2. All I had to do was get the new firmware, no surprises there, of course, et Voilà..
Many thanks… I will archive all these details an tid-bits as I suspect that I will probably brick it again..
Many thanks and Regards,
Michel
Good to hear that. Thanks for your feedback – I’ll update this info.
To me there is a new problem: I tried to replace my 1TB-drive in my wd-mbwe with a 2TB-drive (I purchased a new WD caviar green) and followed all your steps and tried many other steps like manually cloning and so on. It simply does not work.
By now I suspect the reason is that my new WD-2TB-drive has different sector-size – 4096 instead of 512 which could make all of the pre-defined partitions useless.
# fdisk -l /dev/sdb
Note: sector size is 4096 (not 512)
Disk /dev/sdb: 2000.4 GB, 2000398934016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30400 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 4096 = 65802240 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0×00000300
I actually tried to partition my harddisk manually (based on the real size of my current drive) and then run your script but skipping the part where it applies rootfs/etc/DSKPART. Looked promising but didnt work out either.
so my questions here:
* is my sector-size a problem or is it something completely else?
* anyone sucessfully put a 2TB-drive with 4096-sectors in a mbwe yet?
* is there a DSKPART-table for 4096B-sectors available somewhere?
* any other tips?
please leave your help here. thnx
thnx,
peter
Your current disk structure doesn’t matter – it is reorganized during script work from firmware file by this line:
# Create partition table from firmware (DSKPART included in FW from version 01.02.06) sfdisk --force /dev/${DISK_LABEL} < ./rootfs/etc/DSKPART 2>/dev/nullYou can’t skip it because it’s cruitial for success.
But you should answer to these questions first:
1) Not so obvious one: Is it MBWE I White Light (1 disk)? I didn’t tested it myself but should work according firmware analysis.
2) Have you provided all parameters in mbwe-config.sh, including: MBWE_MODEL, MBWE_SERIAL? Config contains only examples – fake one.
3) Have you tried to download ver. 01.02.06-010411 instead of downloading the current one by script?
4) Is your disk WD20EARS?
If all your anwers are „yes” then the last thing I can to tell you this time is to uncomment line in mbwe-install.sh:
# mkfs.ext3 /dev/${PART_DATA}
This is the only place where I made some workaround of normal (factory) procedure.
thnx for your quick reply. The answer to all questions is YES and it still doesnt work. (its a MBWE white light 1 disk, parameters all correct, tried this firmware-image, the disk is a WD20EARX-00PASB0)
But:
Please note that the whole geometry of the new 2TB-disk is different than on older disks. It has 4096B-sectors instead of 512B-sectors. To be honest I dont know exactely what this means, but I’ve read that this might cause troubles. Especially partition-geometry changes.
After applying your script (Thnx a lot for the nice work !!) the partition-table of my disk reports the following:
# fdisk -l /dev/sdb
Note: sector size is 4096 (not 512)
Disk /dev/sdb: 2000.4 GB, 2000398934016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30400 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 4096 = 65802240 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0×00000300
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 5 249 15679488 fd Linux raid autodetect
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sdb2 249 280 2055936 fd Linux raid autodetect
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sdb3 280 403 7904000 fd Linux raid autodetect
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sdb4 403 243202 2717318080 fd Linux raid autodetect
You see the error-messages about cylinder-boundaries? This is why I tried (in a previous step) to create the partitions manually and skipping the line you mentioned where sfdisk is invoked. My idea was if I made the partitions just a little bit bigger then the disk-images sure would fit. But it didnt work either.
Probably my 2TB-disk is just to new to fit into the MBWE1
I uploaded the output of running mbwe-install.sh to my server in case this is of interest to any of you:
https://tng.goldfisch.at/temp/mbwe_unbrick_log.txt
thnx a lot !!
p
After few peer tests, final conclusion is that EARX are not supported by MBWE, probably due to 4096 bytes sector size or SATA 6Gb/s speed – I’ve updated info. If the latter is true, other disks as EZRX and AARX are not supported too. Compare EARS (working) with other Caviar Green disks on http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=120#tab11
Thanks for your feedback peer
Hi Krzysztof Przygoda,
when you say that „If the latter is true, other disks as EZRX and AARX are not supported too.” you refer to MBWE or MBWE-II? I read in the guide that EZRX are supported by MBWE-II.
Thank you
It was only a guess based on user peer bad experience with his EARX. Later a user called Alex confirmed EZRX is working with MBWE II, so I’ve corrected introduction text. There is no known reason why MBWE I wouldn’t working with EZRX, but I have no confirmation so far. Maybe you can be the first
Based on peer’s and Alex’es experience we can’t tell if MBWE is definitely compatible with EARX or EZRX. It probably depends on particular MBWE piece and/or disk. „Definitely” we can only say: just try.
Ok, because I have a MBWE-II I understand that I can use two EZRX. I’m user „vatastala” that made you last question here:
http://mybookworld.wikidot.com/forum/t-349378/ultra-fast-install-for-both-my-book-world-editions-i-and-ii
Than thank you for your reply, I think that will be helpful for all.
Bye
OK. Good luck.
But remember: if you want to do backup, do it by copying files normally from MBWE throughout the LAN – DO NOT connect your HDD directly to the PC until your backup is finished.
Hi Krzysztof Przygoda,
I want to inform you that your procedure works!!!
I’m very happy with my new 3TB NAS
Thank you very much!!!
Bye