delete
I’ve got one 12 TB drive that contains 5,000 MP4 (iTunes Library) and 25,000 JPG (iPhoto Library) connected DIRECTLY to a late model iMac. No other network devices. The MyCloud has been chattering constantly for 8 weeks and cannot stream a movie to the iMac without stuttering.
This thread seems to address the problem precisely.
I think I’m left with one of two possibilities; either the 97% Processing problem or the Thumbnail problem described by Raphael.
WD has been very little help. I won’t be “sharing” this media, so I’d like to try to stop the two processes described here.
Can you please provide more detail as to how the SSH access to the drive works? Can I access the command line interface through the WD dashboard, or do I have to use direct addressing to the drive and then “fool it” somehow?
Thanks,
Lee
Hi Lee
You can use Putty to connect to your box using SSH, is a free download, just google it 
You will need the IP address of your MyCloud as well as the admin username and password.
JohnB
I’d avoid this product like the plague , as they simply do not perform as advertised. Concept - awesome, but unfortunately, it’s _apparently _just a theory, and out of the box you’ll find out it’s patch after patch as WD stuggles to try and slap enough bandaids on the poor thing before it bleeds to death.
I posted earlier in this thread and while a complete factory restore help for a while (month or two), it was still hit and miss. Every time I went to access it on the network, I’d realize it was offline…go downstair…white light (or blue and supposedly working, but inaccessible), so unplug, wait about 5-10 mins (a reboot is never the advertized couple of minutes)…sometimes blue light, sometimes red so reset again…sometimes red, sometimes blue…etc…a complete joke.
Today, went to use it (it’s been about a week), white light. Pulled plug…after an hour of chatter, white light. Pulled plug and tried to reset, but after 40 seconds on the reset button…no flashing light to indicate a reset. Tried again, holding reset for a couple of minutes…nothing. White light. Spinning up, seems to be accessing, but according to everything I’m reading, white light and inability to reset or access = bricked. Nice, really nice.
So you’re right CiccioB - this topic shouldn’t be about packing up - it should be about advocating not to unpack in the first place.
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I am really trying to stay from WD products,
I’ve had some issues with warranty returns on raw hdds, and now this thing. Although I’m not buying any WD or WD-owned company products, I will say that as since I stopped plugging anything into the USB port, the device has been stable,
It took me a long time to figure out that it was a USB problem.
I recently picked up 3 pogoplugs and they are a much more civilized solution.
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RockDocU3O8 wrote:
I’d avoid this product like the plague , as they simply do not perform as advertised. Concept - awesome, but unfortunately, it’s _apparently _just a theory, and out of the box you’ll find out it’s patch after patch as WD stuggles to try and slap enough bandaids on the poor thing before it bleeds to death.
I posted earlier in this thread and while a complete factory restore help for a while (month or two), it was still hit and miss. Every time I went to access it on the network, I’d realize it was offline…go downstair…white light (or blue and supposedly working, but inaccessible), so unplug, wait about 5-10 mins (a reboot is never the advertized couple of minutes)…sometimes blue light, sometimes red so reset again…sometimes red, sometimes blue…etc…a complete joke.
Today, went to use it (it’s been about a week), white light. Pulled plug…after an hour of chatter, white light. Pulled plug and tried to reset, but after 40 seconds on the reset button…no flashing light to indicate a reset. Tried again, holding reset for a couple of minutes…nothing. White light. Spinning up, seems to be accessing, but according to everything I’m reading, white light and inability to reset or access = bricked. Nice, really nice.
So you’re right CiccioB - this topic shouldn’t be about packing up - it should be about advocating not to unpack in the first place.
I have no idea what patches Wd has made that has worked … lol They are certainly NOT addressing security, performance, or the ability to use the device as advertised. I have truely given up on this thing. I have one My Cloud that may, or may not, shutdown using the dashboard. (Besides plenty of other issues) All you ever get is “Did you try to reset the device?”, If I have to constantly reset the devices doesn’t that raise a “RED” flag that something is wrong?
It’s been over a month since the last firmware, which has done more harm than good, and no “Words” of when, what, or even “If” they are planning anything else.
I totally agree with you … " I’d avoid this product like the plague". As I have mentioned in another thread my Son-In-Law asked if I would recommend him buying one, as he knows and seen both of mine and I had to tell him “No” … they just do not work without a ton-of-tinkering to shut everything off just to hope you can use the device. After that … and maybe … just maybe it will work for awhile, but NEVER for the intentions that you originally bought it for or advertised to do. 
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My tweaks compilation, with much thanks to those who posted instructions, and some new useless services discovered after some research.
Firmware
v03.04.01-230
More useless services disabled for those who only need Samba and LAN. (no cloud or USB). Renaming the service from S### to K### in /etc/rc2.d is the easiest way, I’ve discovered. No messing about with CHMOD or stopping services manually.
Disable IPV6
You can disable it from /etc/sysctl.conf with these lines:
net.ipv6.conf.eth0.disable_ipv6=1
net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6=1
net.ipv6.conf.default.disable_ipv6=1
net.ipv6.conf.lo.disable_ipv6=1
I have now upgraded to the latest firmware but the peformance with smaller files does not seem to improve.
I have just tested copying lots of smaller header files (like 10k) of boost library over SSH (sftp).
AN ORDER OF MAGNITUDE FASTER than the Afp/Smb solutions!!! Wifi has nothing to do with it!
What could be the problem? I do not have time to figure out. but I hope somebody will.
“The surprise was the network speed of 40MB/s write and 70MB/s reads off the WD MyBook connected via the USB 3.0 port”
I have never seen a speed like that on Internet. Is that possible? the speeds are between 100-150 MB/s. Of course in which condition parameters values you have done this measurement.is important. If this was the case, why should anybody buy a my book drive?
"this topic shouldn’t be about packing up - it should be about advocating not to unpack in the first place."
I have to agree.
The device is being sold as a cloud solution and to an average (not so tekky) user it looks like an attractive proposition for them to watch their films on their phones, share the occasional file with a friend or listen to music from their collection on the go.
Can you imagine their HORROR when they`ve paid such a large amount of money for a product to read all the SSH “fixes” , “disable this” , “disable that” , “puTTY into the operating system and alter this” solutions they see here when they google for help just to get it to do something USEFUL… i.e WORK?
and their further horror to find out that many of the fixes actually risk voiding any warranty?
Now Ive been using PCs for many many years and some of the fixes here are foreign even to me, unless youre a coder or network trained, Im guessing they`ll be foreign to the majority of people who have bought this device with the assumption that they could just plug it in and USE IT.
I had the misfortune of being extremely busy with work just after buying the unit and mislaying my receipt or mine would have been sent back LONG ago, and for my trouble I`ve had more stress and head scratching than any person should have to go through in a lifetime.
so my advice is this :-
if it`s NOT working to your satisfaction , do EXACTLY that - send it back.
RockDocU3O8 wrote:
Excellent post - really too bad it doesn’t come from the folks at WD (or better yet, that months later, a fix hasn’t been made). Not sure if you’re still crawling around the forums here, but I was hoping for insight on two items:
- As far as the services you’re disabling to make things work…what is being impacted in terms of functionality? Is the indexing only being performed for the media servers? Will I be sacrificing any other functions?
- I’m assuming this was all done with previous firmware (based on the vintage of the post). Have you used the most recent firmware release (4.00.00-607 as of 7/9/2014) - one would think the known issues would be corrected, but they have not. Recent firmware claims:
- Resolved issue of device losing connection to the network.
- Updated device read and write performance.
…though I’m calling complete “BS” on both, as I just bought a 3Tb drive and after a week of trials and tribulations, I still can’t get my data on. On the first drive (yes, there have been two - I returned the first one that bricked with a red light after a day), I managed to copy about half of my paltry 99GB of photos before the connection was lost, and the drive froze. On restart it went to white, then red light, and no reset would work
On the replacement drive, same issue (unbelievably!!), but the hard reset pulled it back from the red light abyss. After that, all the photos made it over (at about 3-4 MB/s), and I thought I was set, but now I can’t move movies, music, etc without it freezing up again and again (so I’m thinking of trying to stop those services you indicated).
As far as speed, my new PC and router will provide gigabit speeds (once I replace the household cat5 cable with cat5e), but regardless, the copying of data to the My Cloud device will have to suffer along at 100mb since my source machine is older. However, data is still only moving at 1-3 MB/s, which I deem to be unacceptable (99GB took 22 hours). My first move will be to try and roll back firmware, as from what I’ve read elsewhere, this more recent update has caused everyone’s speeds to suffer significantly and not increase!!!
Any insight (or advice from others)? I’ve wavering on SSHing in (if it might not work), because I don’t want to void anything - as of right now, this second one I have could still go back to the store if I decide to say “enough” with WD (which is REALLY too bad, because the supposed features and functionality are exactly what I’m after!)
The thubnail deamon is not needed, twonky will create tumbnails when needed. osx and windows will create tumbnails when needed.
I don’t see it as a solution where Twonky indexing is needed. Any extra processing demands are turned off on mine and have been since I replaced my last one. In my current configure the 3tb is working quite well. Not to worry these are likely to go EOL real soon imho. Lifecycle wise isn’t it time for a refresh?
@RockDocU3O8 and anyone else that has been reading my gushing WD post from a year and a half ago…
@WD
If WD would send me a matching pair of 6TB Cloud and 6TB My Book to keep, I would test and trace down the USB attachment problem for them and post up the results.
One of the reasons that I don’t participate in this thread anymore is that I haven’t updated my Firmware since 3.04. It was a pain and terror to update from 3.0x to 3.04, of which the white light took three hours to complete and during that time I must have reset the device at least 3 or 4 times at which I decided to leave the device alone in which it finally turned blue. Everytime I reboot (only twice in the last year or so), I am reminded of that white light scenario.
When the device works (without updates) it sits quietly on the shelf awaiting my access. Once that I had decided that I won’t update, I had had no problems with the device.
Of the two main services that I disable, I have not seen any major problems except for no thumbnails or photo images in my Cloud app on my iphone/ipad and I do use the Cloud App to watch movies from the Gym, download ebooks from my ebook library.
If you don’t want to SSH into the device and are having problems, return the devices immediately for a refund. Even for a hard core programmer and IT specialist, this device had me pulling at my hair.
The main problem is that it doesn’t have a screen or keyboard and if the device locks you out from SSH’ing into it, the only other alternative is to remove the drive from the enclosure and mount it on a real linux box to refresh the image.
Thus everytime it goes White light on you and it won’t allow you to SSH into it, you get the feeling that it is locked up forever.
Here are some problems that we know how to resolve…
-
connecting a drive via USB. Don’t connect the USB drive when rebooting or upgrading the firmware. Something causes the Cloud to lock at startup and the cloud will go offline. Connect the USB drive after the cloud has booted up (let’s say 5 minutes).
-
do ssh into the device if you can after each reboot and disable the two main jobs that has been causing our troubles for the last year and a half.
/etc/init.d/wdphotodbmergerd stop
/etc/init.d/wdmcserverd stop
-
make sure you are using an ethernet gigabit cable CAT6 or CAT5e. Don’t keep testing and complaining on WIFI connection since disconnection with WIFI it could be anything from your neighbors microwave to the fact that you might be using a WIFI G on a WIFI N only network etc. etc.
-
once you have done 1, 2 and 3 and if your cloud keeps disappearing from your network, then disconnect the usb and work only with the cloud (i.e. don’t keep rebooting with the USB attached). Work with trying to establish a solid connection to the cloud first then when that works out, then connect the USB drive afterwards.
-
Use a static IP. There are many instructions in this forum on how to set a static IP for your Cloud; make sure it is outside the range of the assignable DHCP range. Why do you have to do this when none of your other devices have to? because you are accessing your cloud and so you have to know its IP and not the other way around. (E.G. your laptop accesses the internet and not the internet accesses your laptop). or perhaps a better example is that you have to know that Girl/Boy’s phone number from the bar in order to phone them. Check your time on both the router and cloud. Unsync time could be the cause of expired IPs.
-
use proper mapping between your PC/Mac and the Cloud (read my first page); don’t use the software provided by WD. WEBDEV access is only good when you are on the road.
-
If your cloud keeps dropping off the network and those two services from above have been stopped, then try buying and using (temporarily) a new router. It could be the router, really, seriously. Yeah I know, all your other equipment is working with your current router and only the WD is new so it must be the new device right? Change your router to see if that makes a difference. New router might work better with your New Cloud…
-
lastly… the Cloud is a linux device so pulling the plug on it repeatedly is not a good idea (I myself have been guilty) as I repeatedly pulled the plug until I read on the forum to wait. Yes, after 3 hours my Cloud finally turned on the blue light.
There are two reasons that I bought the Cloud. Firstly the price. My 4TB cloud was priced at $192 on sale. Compared with other more robust NAS on the market, you are looking at $300 or more just for the enclosure without a hard drive.
The second reason that I had no problems with my WD Live drive that I bought 4 years ago; until I filled it up with photos, mp3s and movies; which is the reason you shut down those two programs that scans and index your drive.
With normal operation given that the latest firmware is not the cause of the many problems, it is a wonderful device.
If anyone that has the latest firmware can answer the following, it would be appreciated. It would give me an idea of whether or not to upgrade to the latest firmware.
Questionable firmware problems:
-
USB connection dropouts
-
Cloud dropouts and disappears from network
-
slower access speeds
Thanks…
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Is there no way to just hook up the WDMycloud and an external HDD directly to a PC and copy the contents at normal speed ?
Harold
Harjac wrote:
Is there no way to just hook up the WDMycloud and an external HDD directly to a PC and copy the contents at normal speed ?
Harold
and the answer to that question is “yes”
Apparently you just plug a normal ethernet cable directly to the Cloud and the other end directly to your PC. Since you are using the only ethernet plug on your PC, you won’t get internet but apparently upon boot up, this gives you direct network access to your Cloud.
You still have to map the drives to your PC, but this is as close as you will get to directly plug it to your PC. Yeah I know, you were thinking straight USB to Cloud connection (I’m sure this will be the next generation of the WD cloud).
Normal speed for the Cloud is not USB 3 speeds but roughly 80MB/s reads and 40MB/s writes.
well, that’s a good question, if you give the WD a static IP, it might work … I don’t see why not. A definite maybe.
Good evening Raphael,
Thanks for the speedy ( very unlike WDcloud) reply!
I have my Cloud attached to my router and an external HDD attached directly to the Cloud and… speed reads 604Kb/sec.
My 1TB of data is going to take 10 days or more to get transfered…
So I just wanted to p^lug the cloud into my PC and transfer directly from my PC.
Will this help ?
Best regards
Harold
Harjac wrote:
Good evening Raphael,
Thanks for the speedy ( very unlike WDcloud) reply!
I have my Cloud attached to my router and an external HDD attached directly to the Cloud and… speed reads 604Kb/sec.
My 1TB of data is going to take 10 days or more to get transfered…
So I just wanted to p^lug the cloud into my PC and transfer directly from my PC.
Will this help ?
Best regards
Harold
Good Morning Harjac
There are not too many times that connecting directly to your PC gives you any additional benefits.
If you are using wifi and cannot connect via ethernet to your PC, or if your router doesn’t have gigabit ports, it makes sense to connect directly to the PC and do a mass file copy and be done with it. Then afterwards small file copies, read and writes are relatively quick regardless of using wifi or 100MB routers.
The only other exception is to test whether you are losing connection because of the cloud itself or not getting the optimal speed thus bypassing the router completely.
One thing to note is that whenever I do the initial massive data transfers (every few years when I buy a new NAS), I do them in blocks of files rather than doing it ALL in one go. If the copy fails, I hate determining where and how to restart.
Now remember all small file copies are terrible no matter if you are connected optimally, they are just terrible. I mean files like photos, mp3, ebooks, documents… yeah I just named all the files that we normally copy. They all drop down to 2-3 MB/s copies because each file has to find room on the directory list, allocate a block of hard disk space and so on. It is like picking up peas from the floor, one at a time.
Movie files are fairly quick and you usually get the 40MB/s to 45MB/s writes.
So before you start changing how you are connected, test the speed of copying a large movie file of 800MB. If you get about 30 to 40MB/s copy speed, then there is no other speedier method than what you have.
Regards too
