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Product Name: | ibi - The Smart Photo Manager - Collect, Organize and Privately Share Photos & Videos from Smartphones, Cloud and Social Media Accounts - US Version |
Manufacturer: | Western Digital Technologies, Inc. |
Model Number: | WDBNHE0010BWT-HESN |
Product SKU: | B07Y9CH817 |
UPC: | 718037865058 |
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Unfortunately most of the reviews are brutal.
Previous thread with very mixed comments - https://slickdeals.net/f/14894125-1tb-ibi-the-smart-photo-manager-40-free-curbside-pickup
According to https://www.meetibi.com/tech_specs
1TB 5400 RPM HDD
1 GB DDR3L (1600) RAM
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https://support-en.wd.com/app/ans...a_id/49933
You will need to use either the iOS, Android app or web interface. There is also the option for local (only) network access.
https://support-en.wd.com/app/ans..._id/34991/
Got 2x delivered from WD today. It's super tiny like imagine a can of 16 oz soda side almost. Plugging it in you can hear the drive spin up so most likely a laptop 2.5" drive inside.
Setup was challenging on iPhone because you have to answer each prompt to give it access to everything.
Approve access to bluetooth.
Approve access to All photos.
Approve location access.
Connect to your wifi network.
Turn on auto-backup in the app
Setup a WD account - invite people you want to have access
Here's the kicker it must have downloaded a firmware update without telling me. It rebooted itself during setup causing the initial setup to fail! So I had to quit the app a few times and give it time to finish and finally it completed. Apparently there was a Roku and AppleTV app that they discontinued but no big deal I bought this thing so I can offload my photos and free up space on my iPhone 128 GB without forking over $10 a MONTH to Apple for 2 TB of cloud storage. This thing pays for itself in 2.5 months.
1. Was obviously used and someone returned it to Amazon without a box. There is an obvious sign of a label being put on the original box... Which is a horrible way to ship an HDD. It was DOA. LED kept blinking non-stop and did not boot at all. App could not find the device at all.
2. Seemed to work at first. This one was obviously brand new. Got the set up step to enter my wifi details, but it would not finish setup after more than three attempts. After that it showed the same rapid blinking LED as the first.
My guess is the HDDs were toast in both of them from being shipped in barely padded boxes... Or in the case of the first, being shipped in original packaging at some point. Amazon even had the gall to put a "new" sticker on the obviously used one.
What's more, taking these things apart is super easy. There are no screws in the plastic housing. If you squeeze the housing around the middle portion it creates a gap. If you go gentle on it, you can pry open the clips in a few seconds without damaging it. The inside little computer with mounted HDD just slides out. The HDD is screwed into the motherboard with two long screws in the back on the underside. The four screws on the sides are just keeping the plastic side panels on, which it uses as sleds to slide into the plastic enclosure.
Inside is a 1tb white label SATA HDD, probably a commercial/non-retail sale WD Blue drive. I tried connecting them to my PC with no success via external adapter and enclosure. I think this is due to the drives being dead more than any kind of formatting. The drives are recognized as being plugged in, but they do not show up in file explorer. It does seem like they have a ton of partitions that are attempting to mount, but don't. Same scenario in both Windows and Ubuntu Linux. When removed from linux after a half hour of waiting, it shows an error in gparted stating some failure to mount /dev/sdk24, which tells me it's got a ton of partitions on it.
Replacing the drive with a known working Seagate 2tb makes the LED blink like with the dead drives. I think it is looking for firmware or something else on the drive. Maybe the drive has to be formatted correctly. I doubt the brand of the drive matters, but who knows. I originally wanted to image the 1tb drives and try to place those images onto larger drives to see if that would work. But the drives just do not mount or do anything when plugged in. They are just not usable due to whatever happened to them during shipping.
I was unable to find any recovery images for these IBI devices anywhere, which is sad. I did find the source code downloads for the opensource software used in it, you can find it here:
https://support-en.wd.com/app/pro...web/p/8715
And there is a guide on how to get shell access via the UART header which I have not attempted: https://ccoff.github.io/art-of-finding-uart
That guide is a bit outdated because Sandisk did change the OS on the ibi from Android to Linux in a recent-ish update. So it might be more usable than what that guide says.
So all in all, a waste of time. I did order replacements to see if maybe I can get a working one because I am interested in running one of these for fun. I will try to get shell access via UART when I get a working one. I do have little faith in Amazon shipping hard drives with the proper amount of padding that they require....
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1. Was obviously used and someone returned it to Amazon without a box. There is an obvious sign of a label being put on the original box... Which is a horrible way to ship an HDD. It was DOA. LED kept blinking non-stop and did not boot at all. App could not find the device at all.
2. Seemed to work at first. This one was obviously brand new. Got the set up step to enter my wifi details, but it would not finish setup after more than three attempts. After that it showed the same rapid blinking LED as the first.
My guess is the HDDs were toast in both of them from being shipped in barely padded boxes... Or in the case of the first, being shipped in original packaging at some point. Amazon even had the gall to put a "new" sticker on the obviously used one.
What's more, taking these things apart is super easy. There are no screws in the plastic housing. If you squeeze the housing around the middle portion it creates a gap. If you go gentle on it, you can pry open the clips in a few seconds without damaging it. The inside little computer with mounted HDD just slides out. The HDD is screwed into the motherboard with two long screws in the back on the underside. The four screws on the sides are just keeping the plastic side panels on, which it uses as sleds to slide into the plastic enclosure.
Inside is a 1tb white label SATA HDD, probably a commercial/non-retail sale WD Blue drive. I tried connecting them to my PC with no success via external adapter and enclosure. I think this is due to the drives being dead more than any kind of formatting. The drives are recognized as being plugged in, but they do not show up in file explorer. It does seem like they have a ton of partitions that are attempting to mount, but don't. Same scenario in both Windows and Ubuntu Linux. When removed from linux after a half hour of waiting, it shows an error in gparted stating some failure to mount /dev/sdk24, which tells me it's got a ton of partitions on it.
Replacing the drive with a known working Seagate 2tb makes the LED blink like with the dead drives. I think it is looking for firmware or something else on the drive. Maybe the drive has to be formatted correctly. I doubt the brand of the drive matters, but who knows. I originally wanted to image the 1tb drives and try to place those images onto larger drives to see if that would work. But the drives just do not mount or do anything when plugged in. They are just not usable due to whatever happened to them during shipping.
I was unable to find any recovery images for these IBI devices anywhere, which is sad. I did find the source code downloads for the opensource software used in it, you can find it here:
https://support-en.wd.com/app/pro...web/p/8715 [wd.com]
And there is a guide on how to get shell access via the UART header which I have not attempted: https://ccoff.github.io/art-of-finding-uart
That guide is a bit outdated because Sandisk did change the OS on the ibi from Android to Linux in a recent-ish update. So it might be more usable than what that guide says.
So all in all, a waste of time. I did order replacements to see if maybe I can get a working one because I am interested in running one of these for fun. I will try to get shell access via UART when I get a working one. I do have little faith in Amazon shipping hard drives with the proper amount of padding that they require....
all i care about is not having a spinning device, i rather just get a 2TB SSD or even swap it with a 1TB SSD.
all i care about is not having a spinning device, i rather just get a 2TB SSD or even swap it with a 1TB SSD.
It should be, but mine were both DOA with drives that weren't usable with any OS I tried. I'm going to try when I get replacements.
If anyone wants the original case for any testing, I have mine carefully removed, only leaves one small trace of black mark when I pry open it. PM me for details.
1. Was obviously used and someone returned it to Amazon without a box. There is an obvious sign of a label being put on the original box... Which is a horrible way to ship an HDD. It was DOA. LED kept blinking non-stop and did not boot at all. App could not find the device at all.
2. Seemed to work at first. This one was obviously brand new. Got the set up step to enter my wifi details, but it would not finish setup after more than three attempts. After that it showed the same rapid blinking LED as the first.
My guess is the HDDs were toast in both of them from being shipped in barely padded boxes... Or in the case of the first, being shipped in original packaging at some point. Amazon even had the gall to put a "new" sticker on the obviously used one.
What's more, taking these things apart is super easy. There are no screws in the plastic housing. If you squeeze the housing around the middle portion it creates a gap. If you go gentle on it, you can pry open the clips in a few seconds without damaging it. The inside little computer with mounted HDD just slides out. The HDD is screwed into the motherboard with two long screws in the back on the underside. The four screws on the sides are just keeping the plastic side panels on, which it uses as sleds to slide into the plastic enclosure.
Inside is a 1tb white label SATA HDD, probably a commercial/non-retail sale WD Blue drive. I tried connecting them to my PC with no success via external adapter and enclosure. I think this is due to the drives being dead more than any kind of formatting. The drives are recognized as being plugged in, but they do not show up in file explorer. It does seem like they have a ton of partitions that are attempting to mount, but don't. Same scenario in both Windows and Ubuntu Linux. When removed from linux after a half hour of waiting, it shows an error in gparted stating some failure to mount /dev/sdk24, which tells me it's got a ton of partitions on it.
Replacing the drive with a known working Seagate 2tb makes the LED blink like with the dead drives. I think it is looking for firmware or something else on the drive. Maybe the drive has to be formatted correctly. I doubt the brand of the drive matters, but who knows. I originally wanted to image the 1tb drives and try to place those images onto larger drives to see if that would work. But the drives just do not mount or do anything when plugged in. They are just not usable due to whatever happened to them during shipping.
I was unable to find any recovery images for these IBI devices anywhere, which is sad. I did find the source code downloads for the opensource software used in it, you can find it here:
https://support-en.wd.com/app/pro...web/p/8715
And there is a guide on how to get shell access via the UART header which I have not attempted: https://ccoff.github.io/art-of-finding-uart
That guide is a bit outdated because Sandisk did change the OS on the ibi from Android to Linux in a recent-ish update. So it might be more usable than what that guide says.
So all in all, a waste of time. I did order replacements to see if maybe I can get a working one because I am interested in running one of these for fun. I will try to get shell access via UART when I get a working one. I do have little faith in Amazon shipping hard drives with the proper amount of padding that they require....
I got the IBI dead on arrival 2 months ago and I had to spend about an hour each week following up with them to actually get the RMA done. It took about two hours to go through the troubleshooting with an agent, where I was asked me to press and hold the reset button for various lengths of time over and over. Once the agent finally gave up, I was told that someone else would follow up with me by phone. It took about a week to get that call and it was pretty much "does the product still not work". The answer was yes and I waited another week to get an email asking for a bunch of information. Two weeks after that I got an email with a shipping label and sent it out. The package arrived a few days later, but the status didn't change on their RMA portal. I followed up 8 days later and they told me that I needed to wait 7 days from the time it arrived (I already waited 8 days.) I followed up 3 days in a row and finally got a tracking number. The RMA device finally showed up on 4/3/23 and now I can't even use it because Western Digitals servers got hacked. I have been legitimately scammed out of hundreds of dollars online before and have felt less annoyed than I do by this situation. I should have just returned it, but I thought the RMA is going to be easy.
I'm definitely glad that I never got it set up because there is now this whole issue: https://www.techradar.c