Need Help - WD My Cloud

I have had a WD My Cloud personal Cloud device for several years. For some reason it has stopped working and I can no longer access the drive. I removed the hard drive from the enclosure, and it is a WD Red 4 TB, but it has a proprietary software on it that won't let me format the hard drive to use outside of the My Cloud Enclosure.

I put the hard drive into an enclosure, and Apple Disk Utility app can see the drive, but won't let me do anything to it, can't delete partitions, can erase..nothing!

The drive has been sorted into 7 different partitions and are labeled disk4s1 - disk4s7.

Anyone know of a way, or app, that will let me wipe the hard drive so I can use it outside of WD My Cloud?

I've attached a screen shot of the Disk Utility.

Thank you in advance!

https://support.wdc.co​m …base/answer.asp​x?ID=11866 may be worth investigating.

I can't do that because My Cloud is not connecting to the internet, and my computer doesn't find it. I've already pulled the HD out, I just want to format it, and use it in another enclosure.

In disk utilities, go to the menu at the top of the page and select view, Show All Devices. The physical drive name should show up with the Volumes listed underneath. Select the physical drive name and you should be able to reformat the drive for use in an external enclosure.

Did this happen right after a Windows 10 update ?

I tried that, but Disk Utility gives an error every time.

No, I'm using Mac OS.

ShotByTom wrote in post #18554080
No, I'm using Mac OS.

One more reason I'm not crazy about Mac. See if the thread at https://community.wd.c​om/t/re-format-hd/136802 is of any help.

Similar problem in http://www.tomshardwar​e.co.uk …b-remove-disk-format.html

Take the drive to Windows PC and try the disk management tool there.

Other option is a Linux machine.

Even if you don't have access to a computer with a different operating system Linux could be your answer. There are a number of Linux distributions around that can be put on a USB memory stick, and run from there. Linux is usually pretty good at low level disk management.

I used to regularly use a Linux install disk to get access to the partioning tools back in the days of Win 95 to sort out some drive problems.

Alan

Thank you both, I'm going to try Windows first, hopefully it will work!

ShotByTom wrote in post #18553761
I have had a WD My Cloud personal Cloud device for several years. For some reason it has stopped working and I can no longer access the drive. I removed the hard drive from the enclosure, and it is a WD Red 4 TB, but it has a proprietary software on it that won't let me format the hard drive to use outside of the My Cloud Enclosure.

I put the hard drive into an enclosure, and Apple Disk Utility app can see the drive, but won't let me do anything to it, can't delete partitions, can erase..nothing!

Hosted photo: posted by ShotByTom in
./showthread.php?p=185​53761&i=i55871687
forum: Computers

I'm curious, after you removed the HD from the My Cloud enclosure then placed it in another enclousure, were you able to access the files on the HD? I assume you had photos stored on the drive.

The idea of having proprietary software on the HD makes me uneasy. Although these storage/backup devices are popular and handy, I'd rather use a bare HD and docking station.

No, I am not able to view anything on the drives. Fortunately, these drives were used for remote access to photos and not a part of my back up process. That was a huge concern when I found out I couldn't access anything on them. I will not be using these again!

I'd try Nuke & Boot a try to wipe the drive then start from scratch.

If the drive is several years old and you don't care about the data, and it has already failed once, I would not trust this drive any more even if you manage to re-format. For $130 you can get a new drive.