Since OS5 has been installed, the ability to shutdown My Cloud has completely disappeared. I have been in discussion with Support who suggested pulling power out of the device, or opening my device up to the internet and then using some web app to shut it down. Both suggestions are really not suitable, especially pulling the power out. How come Western Digital can release a software which is so flawed in its design. Anyone have any ideas how to safely shutdown a My Cloud since OS5 installed?
If WD engineers are reading this, then please fix this!
Thanks
This isn’t something that “just” happened. WD removed the “shutdown” My Cloud Dashboard menu link YEARS ago in the v2.x firmware and carried this forward into the OS5 firmware. You can search the OS3 subforum (via the forum search, magnifying glass icon upper right) for the many complaints about the missing shutdown option going back many years. Several requests were made in the OS 3 My Cloud Ideas subforum to bring it back. Such requests fell on def ears. In the OS3 v2.x firmware the shutdown text is there in the Dashboard but hidden. There are various discussions in the OS3 subforum on how to temporarily unhide it so one can click it.
WD engineers know full well about this. They intentionally designed some or all of the My Cloud units without a physical power switch to power on/off the unit. WD intentionally coded the My Cloud Dashboard the way they did. Generally what is typically happening is one is halting/stopping the Linux operating system the My Cloud OS is based on when using the WD approved shutdown/hibernation methods. Once in halt/stop mode, or what WD calls shutdown or hibernation mode one then pulls the power to the My Cloud unit. It’s been like this since the first single bay My Cloud units were introduced. Again this is a well complained about design feature going back many years.
If you don’t want to pull the power cord from the back of the My Cloud after issuing the shutdown/hibernation command, just put the My Cloud power cord (wall wart) on a power strip and turn the unit of that way using the power strip switch.
I am sorry I am not technical at all, however I know in the previous version of OS on My Cloud shutdown was there. I was encouraged to upgrade and now it has gone. This is definitely a downgrade.
Also I do not know what you mean by stopping Linux, I do not know how to do this and what that means. All I know pulling a power cord out when hard disks are working sounds pretty crazy and likely to damage my unit and lose data.
I now kind of regret buying these devices as the software update has really ruined something that was good
On the second generation single bay/single drive My Cloud which shipped with OS3 v2.x firmware, WD removed the Shutdown menu option from the My Cloud Dashboard way back in 2016. Multi bay models may (or may not) have had the shutdown option, but the second gen single bay model lost it many years ago. Here is one such past thread about it:
The WD indicated methods (per the link in my first post above) is the approved ways to “shut down” a My Cloud. Behind the scenes those WD approved shutdown methods generally do not power off the My Cloud, instead just stops the My Cloud operating system. One has to pull the power from the My Cloud after issuing the WD approved method of shutting down the My Cloud.
Thanks for this info. Its weird my My Cloud was only upgraded (maybe downgraded) to OS5 recently and so I have had this shutdown facility upto very recently. I am not even sure I can work out how to now shutdown the My Cloud as I do not know which link to follow. Honestly, this is really rubbish software and I cannot believe any reasonable company would not have a way that a customer can easily shut down their device
