I’ve been watching these forums for a few days now, and was really hoping that the new firmware would solve the problems the previous firmware seemed to create for so many people. Alas, that doesn’t seem to be the case.
The firmware install itself went smoothly. …If you consider that in order to do the install at all I had to connect my 4TB My Cloud directly to my Mac, that is.
This is because the only way I could get any access to the drive after the previous FW update was to connect it directly to my PowerBook’s ethernet port. Doing that, I had every feature working smoothly – except for the actual network/Cloud features, which kind of defeated the purpose of having the drive in the first place.
After the FW install, I left it hooked up to the Mac for a while, transferred some files, played with the MyCloud software and the Dashboard UI, and when I felt things were looking up and running smoothly, I shut down the drive via the Dashboard and hooked it up to my network as intended.
Things worked fine. Great, in fact.
For a while.
My gf and I watched a movie on the MyCloud drive, via my Mac, streamed to AppleTV. Almost imperceptible lag, but maybe a handful of times in two hours, and very impressive considering the route everything traveled to get to my TV. For a while, MyCloud was a beautiful thing. I could see the drive in the Finder. I could browse my files, transfer my files, access my files. The Dashboard loaded quickly and all the information was there. The desktop software (though not particularly useful to me) worked smoothly and quickly.
Then, with no warning that I was aware of, it all went to **bleep**.
At some point, the drive went back to its previous-firmware bad habits… It would disappear and reappear and disappear repeatedly from the Finder. “Not found.” You’d see the drive, try to connect to it, and then suddenly it wouldn’t be there anymore.
The Dashboard also stopped working…it wouldn’t load at all, whether initiated directly or via QuickView.
And the MyCloud desktop software would usually identify the drive as connected to my network, but then it wouldn’t load beyond the “Sit back and let us connect…etc.” screen.
I am extremely disappointed and, as someone else said in another thread, I wish I’d done more research before spending money on this thing. I had planned to take it back to the store a week after I bought it, but I let life get in the way and missed the return deadline.
So now I’m stuck with this thing, hoping beyond hope that WD has yet another firmware update to un-screw what is apparently so very screwed up with these devices.
I have read that some people have re-installed the FW, in hopes of an improvement. I’ve just done that, but as it is now almost 3 in the morning here, I will let you know later if this somehow fixed things.
Also, FWIW, I don’t have the option of doing any command-line stuff. Frankly, I shouldn’t have to fix this with tinkering anyway. I’m glad this method seems to have been successful for those who’ve done it, but in my opinion, this is WD’s mess to clean up. They need to step up, continue to work on it, and fix the problem. I hope they do.
BTW, this is my first experience with a WD drive. If this issue isn’t fixed for everyone, it will be my last. I’m pretty sure that doesn’t mean much.
