WD ShareSpace NAS: Installing a New Hard Drive

   The WD ShareSpace NAS (Network Attached Storage) will only work with Western Digital SATA hard drives.  I recently installed a couple of 1TB Western Digital hard drives that were previously used on a Windows 7 machine and was a bit bummed that the NAS unit would not configure them properly.

   The lights on the unit were: Power = solid green, Hard Drives = solid orange, Network = randomly blinking green.  The power button would not work either, I had to unplug the power cable to turn the unit off.

   The reason for this is Windows has it's own file system (FAT/FAT32/NTFS) and WD uses a different one (EXT3).  You also can't access the admin interface of the NAS unit because it has to copy it's operating system from it's firmware onto one of the installed drives.  Resetting the unit with the reset button on the back of the unit doesn't work either.  Western Digital's support team's solution, is to ship it back to WD for a replacement drive (you've got to be kidding me).


Here's what I did to get it working:

1)  Install the WD drive you plan to use in the NAS unit into a Windows computer as a secondary drive and make a back up of any data on the WD drive you want to save or you will lose it in step 6.

2)  Download and install WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows.

3) Run WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostic program and accept the agreement.

4) Right-click the correct WD drive (to be used in the NAS unit) and select "Run Diagnostics".

5) Select "Write Zeros" and hit "Start".













6)  Click "OK", then "Yes", and "Yes" again, on the warning boxes.

WARNING: You are completely erasing data and will not be able to recover it, so make sure you selected the correct drive in step 4.

 7) Choose "Quick Erase" to write only the first and last sectors of the drive and hit "OK".

8)  Once that finishes click "Close" and remove the WD drive from your PC and install it in Slot 1 of your WD ShareSpace NAS unit by itself (there should not be any other drives installed, if there are, remove them).







9)  Power on the NAS unit and let it do it's thing (~3-5 min.)  The lights on the unit should blink randomly and eventually turn solid green.  (The unit should be copying the file system from it's firmware onto the new drive and installing the admin interface)

10)  After all the lights turn solid green, you can try accessing it from a PC by running WD Link to find it or typing in the IP address of the NAS unit into a browser to bring up the admin interface. (Note: the default username AND password are both "admin")

11)  If you have other drives you need to prep for your NAS unit, repeat steps 3 thru 10.

Have a problem, question or comment ? Let me know below.