Ability to turn off background media scanning and transcoding tasks at power-up

@Bill_S, we need a ideas forum in here. Anyway, if you wish to pass this idea along along. Every time the MPW is turned off the media crawlers keep it awake for a long time and the more media there is, the longer it takes for the drive to sleep after power-up. There should be an option in the UI, the iOS app and the Android app to toggle media indexing and thumbnail creation. Just like being able to toggle MyCloud services on NASs. (The MPW is actually a battery powered NAS!)

Why? when I charge the MPW so the battery capacity is at 100%, when I turn my on (with the files that are on it) after about 6 minutes the drive spins down as the media crawlers finish. At that time the charge state of the battery is 90%

That’s 10% of the battery’s charge used just by turning it on.

the idea is that in the UI, iOS app and the Android app there is an option to toggle the media crawlers and media transcoder. Also an option for a start-up (not a database rebuild!) media scan to be initiated on-demand at any time.

This would be a really good first idea for a portable drives ideas forum. :wink:

You can post it here: https://community.wd.com/c/wd-external-drives/external-drive-ideas.

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is there any progres in fixing this problem.
i have a 2 TB wireless drive and filled with 1.80 TB of data video’s images and doc’s.
when i start the drive with 100% power and w8 till it is finally finishd with whatever it is doing my power is dropped till 45 to 50 %.
i have disabled the first one DLNA but the second one has no off switch.
and trying to use the drive while it is still busy with the data crawlers has no point its to slow then.

so is there a quick fix like in a config file or somethign to diasable that stuff because for now its pointless to use the drive on the road.

This is an annoyance. I believe WD’s own craweler is there to accommodate its own apps so thumbnails appear quicker. That crawler also dumps its own sub-solders with the thumbnails everywhere there is any crawlable media and can be seen when connected as a USB external drive to as computer.

@SBrown, could you maybe ask the team who is responsible fort the firm to do one more update where an option to disable the internal WD media crawler is shut-off and then some sort of generic icons can be served to to the WD apps instead of thumbnails?

The only way I can see round this is to charge the drive to full, power it up and leave it on in battery saving mode to be woken-up as and how required. The second is to carry several USB power banks with the necessary capacity to recharge or supplement the battery of the wireless drive.

Why it’s an issue for me at the moment is because I got a LOT of media files on mine and I am considering not using the drive as I intended. I’m considering taking most of the media off it so when powered-up the media crawler has very little work to do and then completes in seconds and not minutes.

Unless… Is there some hidden way to get WD’s media crawlers to omit directories? Like to place a .nomedia 0 byte file which seems to work with some programs?