Hi all just an update as i solved the problem but it took a while.
The key thing was that finder was hanging due to the WDMYBOOK world having a corrupted boot partition. When you mac finder looks for a mounted drive it will hang if the drive is not there or not readable. Therefore without the drive mounting or booting the finder just hang serching.
So some upfront warning stuff.
- This is a recovery solution using the following - WD Mybook 2tb World Mac version , Mac pro with OSX and Windows installed via bootcamp.
- Note your WD Mybook World NAS will be dead after this so it is entirely your choice and responsiblity if you flush your warranty and data down the drain if you try this. If in doubt contact one of the data recovery people WD recommend in the first case as i found them to be exceptionally helpful.
Symptoms
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The WDMB was stuck on the lower light when powered up and would not boot.
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Ethernet would link but no data would transfer which looked like a boot problem.
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Resetting the passwords and IP information no longer worked
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If left on the harddrive just cycled and got very warm
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The HD was “alive” i.e. spinning. If dead then i think you need to talk to someone whos a specialist as its probably a hardware failure.
Prognosis
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Disc hardware looked ok - still spinning and reading
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Boot up was being impaired - Typical cause boot partition corrupted therefore no mount, and finder looking for a drive that wont mount.
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So boot partition corrupted but disc can be read what are the options…
So what i did was read up on the forums and the following became my closest solution with a bit of trial and error.
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Take the WD apart and there are tutorials you can search for to do this, but it invalidates any warranties. replacement discs etc you may get if you send the disc to WD so be prepare as a last resort.
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Take out HD from WD box and check what file system the discs are using. - The way i did this was to remove a spare disc port in the mac pro tower ( equally you could buy an external 3.5 disc SATA exclosure and add it via USB)
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Boot up your mac , via bootcamp, in windows.
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you will probably not see the drive in your network config but dont worry this is only checking the disc not recovery yet. 5. With the disc installed in a mac environment download the trial version of Raise data recover for XFS here http://www.ufsexplorer.com/rdr_xfs.php. XFS is a linux file system most commonly used to store data on WD drives and may be the file system where you data is stored. Reading up on this i found that most problems occurred with the way the drives set up with different partitions. On my disc there was 1 partition (unreadable), 2 partitions 2-3 EXT2,3,4 and one XFS. The XFS partition in my case held all my data whereby the boot problems are in other sectors in the unreadable partition.
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So in my case i found that the software not only read the drive but could read files and download them. This indicated to me that the disc was ok but the boot up partition was fried.
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So what next.
a) you need somewhere to store your recovered data in a windows environment so you need some external/internal windows/dos formatted HDs.
b) purchase the software its only 20euros and its worth its if all your data is in the XFS partition.
c) then scan the screwed XFS partition showing all your files and folders and there is a function to “copy” data to another drive. Choose all the files and copy to your additional storage you have NOT the drive which is screwed (your gonna reformat that later and use it for other stuff . A 2 tb drive is a 2 TB drive)
d) copy your files across. It takes ages if you have a lot but believe me the relief when you see those files moving outweighs the time
e) do some checks on your files and structures to see if things have moved across ok. Remember also if you have been using this as an Itunes media server and there are purchases you may only be able to see on an authorized machine so they will fail unless you auth the Windows boot your are using or reboot to OSX and then try to access them via your authorized Itunes.
I recovered 100% of my data from disc and when i did an additional rescan for lost /delete files on the disc found a load of stuff i had accidentally deleted but hadn’t noticed so it quite good for just 20 Euros.
As an aside the power switch was screwed as i took out my trusty meter and tested it but the boot partition was also fried. I think though that people who use these drives need to understand the following.
Do not switch on and off at the mains but use the device power off switch. Its all too easy to switch it all off suddenly and corrupt a partition.
No electrical item is infallible so ensure you have enough back up redundancy and capability in your storage design. One NAs + timemachine for a mac isnt cutting it.
If there’s anything ive missed or haven’t explained well let me know as i would like to amend this to help people. I spent almost 6 whole days on recovering my data and i wouldn’t want others to go though the same
