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I have a 6TB MyCloudHome which stopped working a few months back. After searching several forums I found that the way to recover my data from it is to buy a docking station and use a linux operating system to be able to access it, so I did that.

I have a docking station and an Ubuntu bootable which I access directly from the USB. First thing I tried was to recover my data with testdisk, but it was moving too slowly, at about one sequence every 12 hours. After that I tried ddrescue but get error that I don't have space to create the image or log.

To mention is that I don't have any other HDD to match the capacity of this one, the biggest one I have is a 3TB one. Also, the Disks application from ubuntu has a message on the WD NasWare stating that the drive will fail soon.

The drive is seen in Windows with about 24 partitions and asks me to format them when it manages to access them. I tried using testdisk in Windows as well but it ran out of space on C, while generating a 50GB log file at about 10% of the scan.

I would really like to recover a part of the data from that 6GB drive (mostly childhood and family photos), so my question is: what is the best way to do this? Can I use ddrescue to create on chunks of 2TB, recover from that image, then create a new 2TB image and so on? Can I do this on the Windows OS? or do I really need a bigger capacity HDD to make a single image (which would not be optimal since I can't afford an 8TB drive)?

Edit: Is there a way to use a cloud service to save the image directly from ddrescue?

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  • Stop. Unplug this disk. If it's broken, each time you use it (or attempt to use it) you increase the chance that it will die irretrievably Commented Feb 21, 2021 at 12:10
  • @roaima Not sure of the operating system. The website mentions only OS 4 support-en.wd.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/7758 Commented Feb 21, 2021 at 13:26
  • Oh I see. The marketing department has used the word "Cloud" when they actually mean NAS. Commented Feb 21, 2021 at 14:33
  • @roaima So, just to make sure I understood correctly, I really need to put my hand on a storage device larger than my NAS, right? Commented Feb 21, 2021 at 16:59

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My suggestion is this

  1. Obtain another 6TB disk (or larger).
  2. Use ddrescue in the form ddrescue -v /dev/source /dev/destination /path/to/logfile to clone the dying disk as best as is possible. It doesn't really matter whether you clone the disk to another disk or to an image on another disk as long as there's space.
  3. identify the filesystem(s) or logical volume(s) used to make up the copy.
  4. work out how to assemble the various part(s) to regenerate the filesystem.
  5. If you did #4 then copy the files off to somewhere safe.
  6. If you didn't do #4 then use something like photorec or testdisk to try and grab data off the disk.
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  • Is there a way to use a cloud service to save the image directly? Commented Feb 21, 2021 at 18:48
  • If I understand the product description properly then it's nothing to do with the Cloud whatsoever. It's a NAS-in-a-box Commented Feb 21, 2021 at 21:07
  • Something like that, yes. But that's not what I was asking above. I have some 10TB of free space on a cloud service. Since I currently don't have a physical device large enough to save the image, I was asking if I can create the image directly on the cloud space (instead of /dev/destination to have a server address or something like that). Commented Feb 23, 2021 at 6:24
  • Can you write to the cloud service as a file echo hello >/path/to/cloudservice/hello.txt? Commented Feb 23, 2021 at 8:57

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