MBW Blue RIngs so slow to delete files

I have the Blue RIngs 1TB MBW device. I used it to back up my Mac using Memeo. Now I am trying to release space on the drive to repurpose it. So I am using terminal to delete files using the rm command, params -rf

Drive is cable connected to my router, Mac is wireless. And most files go away reasonably fast. But deleting my backup up macmail client’s storgae of gmail is taking over 3 seconds per trivial file. An example pathname is 

/Volumes/PUBLIC/Users Mac Book/user’s Backup/Users/username/Library/Mail/IMAP-user.name@imap.gmail.com/[Google Mail]/All Mail.imapmbox/Messages/.Memeo 63183.partial.emlx.plist

I have probably over 30,000 files in this final directory. Memeo, bless it, creates a dot file for every file anyway.

There is, as you would expect, negligible network traffic during the rm process, so I am viewing this as a drive management problem. I’d appreciate ideas.

Sadly this unit does not support direct connection to the PC so a bit harder to determine if a router or drive issue

besides been slow while deleting, are there any other performance issues?

Do all files have the same problem?

1 Like

The files that have the problem are those where the directory contains a vast number of files. Directories with small file populations go past reasonably fast. 

I suspect that, even if I were able to connect to the drive itself and use its o/s to perform the delete it woudl be slow there too.

The lesson is not to use Memeo to back up your email, I suppose.

With regard to it’s being a network or a router problem, I’m as sure as I can be without running exhaustive diagmostics that the drive is the culprit here.

Interestingly the creation of the backup was not fast either. I put that down to software implementation.

It’s fascinating, in the same way that looking at a car crash is fascinating, to see the rm accelerate gently as the population of files in the directory is gradually eaten through. I think I may now be deleting at the rate of one file every 1.5 seconds. 

Another thing that appears to help is rebooting the drive and firing the rm command off again after successful remount. It then takes half the first chapter of War and Peace to find out where it ought to be before starting the rm process and starts slightly faster than it ends up, degrading gradually until it hits rock bottom, before bumping alomng the bottom like an achor that is dragging on foul ground. But one can only reboot so often in a day or the law of diminishing returns applies.

Amused to tell you the answer. There is ‘something’ involved in the network interface, potentially the WD one to the router. These blue rings drives are pretty poor, because the only way of enabling SSH is to hack them. If you feel brave, here’s the hack:  http://martin.hinner.info/mybook/sshaccess.php 

The same rm syntax issued directly on the drive deleted everything that was on track for a few more weeks in under 20 minutes.

Nice to see I have been the main contributor to this thread! Go me!

BlueRingsBoy wrote:

Amused to tell you the answer. There is ‘something’ involved in the network interface, potentially the WD one to the router. These blue rings drives are pretty poor, because the only way of enabling SSH is to hack them. If you feel brave, here’s the hack:  http://martin.hinner.info/mybook/sshaccess.php 

 

The same rm syntax issued directly on the drive deleted everything that was on track for a few more weeks in under 20 minutes.

 

Nice to see I have been the main contributor to this thread! Go me!

thanks for sharing this info

The hack is simple to use, but it takes nerve if you are an ordinary user, After all it is unknown territory for most of us, me included. The instructions are well documented, and the new firmware may be downoaded to be read before use if that is desired. I chose to trust it, sight unseen, your approach may differ.