I have a WD My Cloud device containing a 4TB WD Red drive from 2016 when I first got it. Recently, it started struggling to spin up where it will start spinning up then give up and just keep on repeating that cycle. Eventually it would reach full speed and work perfectly until the very next time the drive would spin down again. I changed the setting on the My Cloud so that it would not automatically spin down the drive and it worked perfectly for the last month or so, but now somehow it spun down again and as of yesterday, I cannot get it to get even close to reaching full speed. How on earth am I going to get my data off there? There is data that is only on that drive and nowhere else.

How is the My Cloud powered? If it uses a 12V adaptor, then perhaps the adaptor is "tired" and shuts off due to the initial current demand.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Nothing to do with the power supply. The power supply works perfectly as the light on the front stays on. It is the drive inside that isn’t spinning up fully. All sectors appear to be intact.

Let's say that the adaptor's output dips to 10V during spin-up. The drive will see this as a power supply failure, but the adaptor might still be happy.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

If this were the case I would assume the light on the front of the My Cloud would be turning off and on. The power supply is connected to a UPS unit.

The LED might be directly connected to the output via a resistor, in which case it would remain lit if the voltage were to sag. You are assuming that the LED is driven by the adaptor's POK circuit, assuming it has one. That's not normally the case.

Here is an example:

https://powersupply33.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Switching-power-supply-12-V-2-A.jpg

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Fzabkar, I admire your patience

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I just plugged in a different power supply and now it works again!