Before you pack up your WD and return it, let's talk about Copying Speeds!

[mchalep]

Hi Ralphael,

I do have one or two concerns though, which showed up this morning. You mention about these problems in your article, which I have also experienced like others. I discovered that the drive seems to have gone into a sleep mode, even though I have ‘sleep mode turned off’.  Usually the drive L.E.D, is blue in colour, but has now changed to whitish yellow. The only way I could get this up and running was to do a power cycle. Your article mentions about ssh access and how to fix this but it is a concern that users should have to do this.

On another note, adding an external hard drive, with “non media” on it appears to cause the WD MyCloud device to go offline and stop media streaming. The WD MyCloud appears to go into frantic disk activity (indexing?) for many many hours.The only way I could get the MyCloud device back to being able to do Media streaming (DLNA), was to remove the external hard drive and restart the MyCloud device.  The USB hard drive was a USB 2 device admittedly, but this shouldn’t have killed the Media streaming capability of the WDMyCloud device should it?. I left it overnight and it was still thrashing the disk in the morning with no media streaming available on a media player (it was still offline).

This problem can also be fixed by coping data from the network onto a newly formatted USB drive, I will use a USB 3 device later on, when I can find one, but I hope the designers can work towards a fix for these issues. I am an I.T Professional but others are not and these issues will cause non technical people to reconsider taking the drive back despite the availability of interim technical solutions.

Cheers

Patrick

[Ralphael]

I totally agree on an average user not having to SSH into the device as a fix although the SSH fix does show that WD is getting close but has to iron out the last few remaining bugs.

I hate to tell you mchalep but your device did not go to sleep as sleep is indicated by a slow cycling of on/off blue light. Your light turn whitish which means that it has gone offline and disconnected. The whitish light also inidicates that your device is not in the ready mode. 

Now I take it that when you did your power cycle since the device no longer responds, you must have pulled the plug. I did that too when my device was thrashing. This means that the device needed to do a fsck (checkdisk) at the begining of the bootup as you could have corrupted the drive. There isn’t any other choice when the device doesn’t respond to you other then pulling the plug.

Now if you had plugged in a USB drive just shortly after booting up, I’ve found that the device will thrash again; I also had to pull the plug on mine too.

I had posted up a final words on rebooting with an attached USB, and that is

‘Do not reboot with an attached USB’

Although I love my devices as I watch the forum fill with troubled users, it is difficult to recommend this great device without SSH’ing and I really wish WD would come up with a new firmware that fixes ‘at minimum’ the USB connection thrashing and the device slowdown due to indexing.  Until then, I think I will remain quiet… unless I come up with more solutions.

[Pacific_Dollars]

Hello, Bullzeye,

You said " Share files/folders with strangers. You just can’t do that."

Yes you can and I am going to tell how you do that.

Create a new Email address and a password somewhere, with hotmail, outlook, any online mail program.

Then keep the pass word of the email address to yourself and not give it to the person you are going to share a share with.

You can share the Public share with somebody for example. Put any files in it they need  or like or can copy there.

Create an account and share like Guest1, Guest2 or anything you like in the My Cloud Dashboard.

All they have to do is log in on www.wd2go.com in a browser. Preferably in IE but Chrome can do it too.

Give them the Email to log in for example “guestmycloud@outlook.com” or another email you have designed etc etc.

Give them the pass word you have created in the My Cloud dashboard and give them the share guest1, guest2, and/or a temp folder as well the public folder etc and voila they can log in on their own and access the MyCloud all by themselves while you share everything with them.

They cannot reset the pass word because they have no access to the email account but only to the private share and the privacy you have set it and not to the other personal shares of others and of yourself. If they want to change the password, they have to contact you as the administrator of the My Cloud. Enjoy ;-) 

I can testify that that works because I have tested that extensively with some people. You just have to know how to “kill the cat”

[Pacific_Dollars]

@ Ralphael,

You said " ‘Do not reboot with an attached USB’"

 

The right way to reboot the My Cloud or shut down is…

First use the Safely Remove the USB drive in the Dashboard of the My Cloud, when that is done then shut the USB drive down. Then reboot or shut down the My Cloud and when the My Cloud is back up again or rebooted with the blue light steady. Then put the USB HDD back on again and switch it on or plug it in. Voila. No trashing, but nicely working.

PS this only works ofcourse when the My Cloud is approachable from the Network to access the IP address of Dashboard that is.

[Ralphael]

@Pacific_Dollars

Thank you for the “killing the cat” solutions :P 

[matt6789]

This was a phenomenal post.  I happened upon your post at the right time.  It would definitely stop me from returning the unit right away.  However, after reading this I don’t know if I want to buy one.

Just this morning, I was whittling my list of NASes down to 2 or 3 to order a unit this week.  I had decided the ex4 was more than I need and was going to go with another brand 2-bay unit.  I stumbled on the My Cloud ex2…yes, there is now a ex2…TODAY it was announced.  Immediately I thought “GREAT timing.  I would have kicked myself if I had bought that Syn… or Qn… and before it arrives the ex2 comes out.”

Now I’m concerned about getting the ex2.

1.  That I have to go through WD servers to access MY NAS unit.

-----This is a big minus for me.

2.  There’s a problem with sharing?  I thought that what the My Cloud was all about?

-----One commenter suggested something about making a email for others to access the unit.  That is more overhead than I want.  Not just for me, but for family that I want to share things with.

Am I wrong on these two points?  Did I misunderstand something somwhere and get the wrong idea about how the My Cloud works?

[Ralphael]

hello matt6789, welcome to the forum. 

Just read about the ex2 and that really makes more sense as a NAS-Raid and mirroring is probably the best option as a Raid as you are protected if either one of the drives fails or if the device fails, you can remove either drive and pop it in a linux box to access your files immediately. The ability to pop out the drives makes this an instant winner.

Of course you would want the 8TB version which costs $570

To answer your questions

1. no, I did not have to sign up with the Cloud servers and am using the Cloud app on my iphone and ipad to access all my files without any problems. However if you need to send a link to a file to a friend, then yes, all access to that file goes through the cloud server using your registered ID to link back to your device. To get all the benefits of the Cloud you will probably need to go through the servers, but for just general access I have managed to avoid it.

2. for your family all you need to do create a code for each cloud device (iphone, android, etc) that links you back to your cloud.  

There are a lot of growing pains with WD products, however in comparison with all the NAS/Raid devices out there, WD is a very strong contender simply for the fact that they are fast, cheap and cloudy (meaning that you can get at your files like a shared dropbox). Perhaps not for the ex2 for cheapness since it has just been announced, but comparitively most of WD cloud devices are almost free when compared with the price of their bare bone hard drive.

However the growing pains does include total drive lockups, system slowdowns and the lack of sleep. For the moment you can get around the drive lockups as well as the system slowdowns and of course a NAS should never sleep. If you are ready to pull up your sleeve, an ex2 sounds like a good choice.

[matt6789]

Ralphael

Thanks for helping.  I want to make sure I understand how the WD works before I get it.  That way there are no surprises and disappointments.  Nothing like a bad experience to ruin it.

With other brands of NASes, there are apps/extensions/packages available.  I see that WD MyCloud ex2 is pretty much the same and has these things that provide the added functions, like streamin music/video, file access, management, etc.  There is also the sharing part, allowing others access to specific files or portions of the unit.

The other brands have mobile apps(iOS and android) and desktop packages that provide the interface straight to the unit.

—Am I right in understanding that with the WD unit the access isn’t straight to the unit?

------By going through WD, they are aware of/privy to all traffic to any specific unit?

------WD(servers or what have you) must be operating to access the WD unit?

—Is there an option in the unit software to skip WD playing a middleman?

—What about regular old broweser access?

-----I thought that was an option I saw in the manual, with a user having a login name/password.

-----If using browser access, does the unit limit a user unneedingly?

This is what really scares me:

“However the growing pains does include total drive lockups, system slowdowns and the lack of sleep. For the moment you can get around the drive lockups as well as the system slowdowns and of course a NAS should never sleep. If you are ready to pull up your sleeve, an ex2 sounds like a good choice.”

I really like the ex4 and ex2 as they are promoted.  Really nice bundled package.  I don’t have to figure out twonky, donkey, and bonky to stream music and movies.  Really nice looking.  Decent speeds.

But if there are regular lockups and this requires alot of overhead in getting it to work somewhat properly (but never fully there), why should I go with it?  Seems to me that it is more like the MGB I used to own.  Fun to drive, but constant tuning and tweaking.  I spent too much time keeping it tuned than was worth it.  It took all the fun out of it.

Yes, all the questions above are serious.  I haven’t decided against it.  I just need some more understanding.

[Ralphael]

Well matt6789,

I would suggest that you start up a new post so that the users who are familiar with the other aspects of the device can post up their experiences.

Mine are limited to how I started with WD and that was with their WD live device that I bought 2 years ago, then upgraded recently to their 4TB WD Cloud and 4TB WD MyBook that plugged into the USB 3.0 port.

The reason that I mention my WD roots is that I don’t use their sign on services. This sign-on services is new and I bypassed it when my MyCloud ask me to create an account.  

I do use their iphone/ipad cloud app and by creating an access code generated directly from my cloud device, I can log on directly to my device; no 3rd party server.

On my home PC and Mac, I map my WD Drivess directly as a NAS unit and did not bother installing any WD software.

Now they do include programs that you can install on your PC and Mac that theorectically allows you to map using WEBDAV access to your devices. I don’t use this and this is the part where you do have to ask the folks that do use it, how user friendly and how much WD server does it require.

Although I may like WD and my justifications are mainly price, when you are talking $570 plus tax for the ex2, this is getting into the league of QNAP TS-220 2 bay price range of $200 plus another $400 for Red drives of which you might be getting a better server since you get a Marvel 1.6GHZ cpu and 512MB ram.  For the price of $600, yes you might be better off going with Qnap.

In the case of my 4TB WD Cloud, I bought mine for $190 at futureshop priced matched with NCIX when they had their sale. The bare bone WD Red drives are selling for $219.

[matt6789]

Ralphael

Again, thanks for your help.   I’m glad to hear that the WD software is not required.  I really like the idea of managing the unit without having to install more stuff on my PC.

I’ll go ahead and start a new post with the questions.

[bigstorage]

I spoke to WD Support today and he indicated that these two processes are related to the PHOTO indexing and snapshot-creation only and are not related to the DLNA sharing:

wdmcserverd
wdphotodbmergerd

DLNA is handled by Twonky server (you’ll see the twonkyserver process running if you enable DNLA). When you enable it then twonkyserver surveys the shares where Media sharing is enabled and indexes the files.

You can enable which shares are indexed in the Dashboard, Shares, Media Serving option.

Also, if you browse directly to the Twonky web UI, you can disable directories from scanning, how often they are rescanned or monitored for changes, and control other advanced settings like what kind of media will be available from different directories, etc.

http://ipaddressofyourwdmycould:9000

9000 is the port of the twonky server.

Good luck!

[Ralphael]

bigstorage wrote:

 

I spoke to WD Support today and he indicated that these two processes are related to the PHOTO indexing and snapshot-creation only and are not related to the DLNA sharing:

 

wdmcserverd
wdphotodbmergerd

 

DLNA is handled by Twonky server (you’ll see the twonkyserver process running if you enable DNLA). When you enable it then twonkyserver surveys the shares where Media sharing is enabled and indexes the files.

 

You can enable which shares are indexed in the Dashboard, Shares, Media Serving option.

 

Also, if you browse directly to the Twonky web UI, you can disable directories from scanning, how often they are rescanned or monitored for changes, and control other advanced settings like what kind of media will be available from different directories, etc.

 

http://ipaddressofyourwdmycould:9000

 

9000 is the port of the twonky server.

 

Good luck!

 

 

Thank you Bigstorage for the info!  Good thing I don’t use DLNA, thus no twonky services needed.

However I do use Cloud services which seems to need wdmcserver as well as the .wdmc hidden directory for photo thumbnails. So at the moment I cannot stream because wdmcserver has been stopped. kinda sad really because I really don’t want my million photos, mp3’s and movies scanned and indexed.

[mlped]

Thanks for taking the time to explain your process, and I guess the potential traps “My Clouding” can drop one into. 

I am still confused by one (actually probably a whole lot more), but . . . … as a sit here weighing the benefits of picking up another drive, and the choice between a “simple” solution, i.e. just get a 4TB MyBook (no NAS, no Cloud) USB 3.0 connected device vs. try the My Cloud option - should I understand that connecting a MyCloud drive directly, via it’s USB port to one’s desktop or laptop computer is something that (a) possibly CAN NOT be done; or (b) even if it could be done, to “directly” transfer files vis UsB 3.0 to USB3.0 port on the MyCloud device, is to be emphatically discouraged because it will totally mess up proper drive indexing etc. for Cloud/Network use and access? 

Thanks for any insights.  Cheers

[bmszabo]

Raphael, thanks for the detailed guide; I do have one more question (maybe a bit off-topic?):

As I use Chromebooks at home and at work I cannot access my MyCloud through the web (Java not allowed on Chromebooks). At home, ftp acccess works, but it IS very unhandy, clamsy.

So I am thinking about setting up a REAL cloud server (without Java) for my MyCloud; my home desktop PC is a Linux OS (Linux Mint 13). Could You help me, advise me wich web server solution (for Linux!) would be the best in my situation?

I have read about Pydio, Owncloud (also mentioned in this thread, both of them not tried yet) and Tonido (which I have tried, but it does not support network drives as my MyCloud)…

Any help/ advice would be welcome; I hope You can help me on this!

[bobreevewd]

Great post Raphael, many thanks.

Unfortunately it misses the point, which is many users (probably most) dont buy devices to have to play around with the software et al to get it to work acceptably. If this was a professional device for IT persons use then perhaps but not for Joe Public. Also begs the question why is this information not available from WD support themselves? And why dont they say upfront that transferring data will take days not hours? Because then they wouldn’t sell any.

Sorry but mine is back in the box on the way to Amazon. I just dont have the time, incination or skills to play around with this device when I expected, and was led to expect, that it would just work. i only want to be able to access the family photos from a central storage device. I can’t. It’s not fit for purpose.

If and when WD get this device right then i might reconsider getting one (and what about a setting on it for just local network use to simplify it?) but I doubt it. When just under half the reviews on amazon give it 3 stars or less then there’s just something wrong and WD need to address it.

But again, thanks for your time and effort. If only WD Support were as professional perhaps the consumer might be more forgiving.

Signing out forever,

Bob

[jdeviney]

from the original post:

======================================================================

Workarounds

I have two other posts that solves these problems (for myself). If you are uncomfortable about voiding your warranty because they do involve SSH’ing into the device and making software changes, then don’t attempt these suggestions.

My workarounds is very simple and that is to disable the two processes immediately after plugging in your device and as soon as you can ssh into the device. Otherwise the scanning will resume and your device will soon disconnect shortly after.

/etc/init.d/wdmcserverd stop

/etc/init.d/wdphotodbmergerd stop

update-rc.d wdphotodbmergerd disable

update-rc.d wdmcserverd disable

===================================================================================

Ralphael, great write up and I wish I had read your post first.  I’m still dealing with WD scanning software adversely impacting my file transfer performance.  Is the “fix” above permanent or is it something I would have to run every time I reboot my WD My Cloud?  I am looking for a permanent fix to this problem. 

BTW … contrary to what others have posted in this thread - disabling media serving per share does not address this problem.  Nor does disabling Twonky, iTunes or remote cloud access.  The scanning, indexing and thumbnail conversion software still runs and it doesn’t care where on the drive … it looks at the entire drive.

Thanks.

[Ralphael]

update-rc.d wdphotodbmergerd disable

update-rc.d wdmcserverd disable

I’m not sure if they have changed the service names on the latest firmware update but be sure to omit the # sign at the front of the above two statements. These two will disable the scans permanantly until the next firmware update of which you will have to re-issue the above two commands asap as the device boots up and you are able to SSH into the device, otherwise the scans will start and the device may lock up due to the incessant activities.

One other thing. If you have a USB drive attached to the Cloud, always un-mount the USB drive before rebooting the Cloud. WD claims to have fixed this in the last firmware update but I hate being the beta tester and I especially hate the White light which occurs when you do an improper shut-down of the Cloud by pulling the power suddenly (which you would do when you don’t get a response from the WD cloud device). 

[jdeviney]

Ralphael wrote:

update-rc.d wdphotodbmergerd disable

update-rc.d wdmcserverd disable

 

I’m not sure if they have changed the service names on the latest firmware update but be sure to omit the # sign at the front of the above two statements. These two will disable the scans permanantly until the next firmware update of which you will have to re-issue the above two commands asap as the device boots up and you are able to SSH into the device, otherwise the scans will start and the device may lock up due to the incessant activities.

 

One other thing. If you have a USB drive attached to the Cloud, always un-mount the USB drive before rebooting the Cloud. WD claims to have fixed this in the last firmware update but I hate being the beta tester and I especially hate the White light which occurs when you do an improper shut-down of the Cloud by pulling the power suddenly (which you would do when you don’t get a response from the WD cloud device). 

Ralphael, thanks again.  This worked for me.  I have the latest 4.0xxx firmware.  I tried a reboot after running those commands to verify that wdphotodbmergerd and wdmcserverd are not running; they stayed GONE.

I performed another file transfer test (I have done many of these over the last several weeks) over WIFI n and I am pleased with the results.  3 iterations of the same test showed consistent writes as well as reads with no degredation in performance.  Snapshot of the results included below.  With WD scanning enabled I would see write speeds quickly degrade into the 1-5MB/s range over the same WIFI n network.

I received no word back from WD support today and I did expect to hear something, anything.  It was either this fix or the drive was going back to Best Buy for a refund.  WD can thank Ralphael and others on this forum for not having to eat the cost of yet another returned My Cloud.  I will say that given I have not heard back from WD support on a resolution to this specific problem, this is my last WD product.  I will not buy another WD off the shelf product again.  Are you listening WD?

[navossoc]

Same here @ jdeviney…

I have disabled by the dashboard:

• Cloud Access → Remote Access

• Mac Backups → Time Machine

• DLNA Media Server → Media Streaming

• iTunes → iTunes Server

• No safepoints

• No cloud access

• No media share on any share

I have enabled:

Network Services → SSH

top command shows me that “wdmcserver” is eating all my cpu resources.

So I typed:

/etc/init.d/wdmcserverd stop

Solved my problem for now…

Now tell me, access the SSH and stop a process void my warranty? I didn’t changed anything related to the OS.

Just stopped a annoying process that not should be running.

This is a problem with firmware 4.x? (I have not used any other version, so I dont know)

I’m new here, I like the product, but this stuff about thumbnails and caching stuff is really annoying.

PS: I bought this product because I believe in the good quality of WD hard drives.

's

[jdeviney]

navossoc wrote:

Same here @ jdeviney…

 

I have disabled by the dashboard:

 

• Cloud Access → Remote Access

• Mac Backups → Time Machine

• DLNA Media Server → Media Streaming

• iTunes → iTunes Server

• No safepoints

• No cloud access

• No media share on any share

 

I have enabled:

Network Services → SSH

 

top command shows me that “wdmcserver” is eating all my cpu resources.

 

So I typed:

/etc/init.d/wdmcserverd stop

 

Solved my problem for now…

 

Now tell me, access the SSH and stop a process void my warranty? I didn’t changed anything related to the OS.

Just stopped a annoying process that not should be running.

 

This is a problem with firmware 4.x? (I have not used any other version, so I dont know)

 

I’m new here, I like the product, but this stuff about thumbnails and caching stuff is really annoying.

 

PS: I bought this product because I believe in the good quality of WD hard drives.

 

's

Technically speaking I was told it does void the warranty unless WD tech support is walking you through it.  WD tech support would not walk me through this particular “work around” even though they know it is being used by other users on this forum.  From what I have read on this forum this problem is more prevalent on v4 firmware but it sounds like performance on v3 does take somewhat of a hit over totally disabling the scanning daemons.  That said, others have reported downgrading to v3 firmware and seeing performance improve considerably.   I bought WD My Cloud for the same reason and from a majority of reviews on Best Buy you wouldn’t know it was a piece of junk.  Funny isn’t it?  You void your warranty simply by disabling a piece of software that makes the product unusable in the first place.  Complete BS IMO.  WD support wanted to continue working with me (as level2 support) on my performance issues but after 4 calls and many many hours I’d had enough.   Sorry folks but by now WD support has a real good handle on what’s broken in v4.  Now all we need is for the product team to come up with a new hopefully better quality release.  Think it will happen?