How to connect old WD My Cloud directly to PC

The old version of WD My Cloud (Purchased around 2015) does not receive customer support beyond April of 2022. When I got an email notice about it, I understood this to mean that I can't use the device via Wifi beyond April of 2015. I hadn't used it for at least three years. I wanted to retrieve data from the device. I also wanted to use it if possible by directly connecting it to my PC.

I submitted a question ticket at WD website .  After a couple of email exchanges, a support staff member called me to help me with the following steps.  I'm typing this up one day after the call, so there may be some errors.

  1. Connect the device to PC via. an Ethernet cable (I got it from Amazon).

  1. Find a pen hole in the back of the device (right next to the USB port) and press it for five seconds using a needle (I had the pin that came with my Android phone; see below, but any small pin would work)

Do you see the pen hole on the right side of the USB port below?

  1. Wait until the front LED becomes solid blue (five to 10 minutes). PC will recognize the device eventually (you will see two icons in Network; double click one of them associated with the one in Storage section to find the IP address).

 

Right-click the screen and create a short-cut and type in a IP address (but start it with double backward slashes).

When you click on the WD MyCloud Icon in the storage section, you will get this kind of window (You may get a different one if you haven't set a password, etc. yet).

You may get something like this instead if you haven't set your password yet (but I am not sure). I believe you click on Users and then create a password (I already had one user already created about five years ago; I needed to assign a password to it).

I don't know what would happen if I forget my password.