I have a 1st generation 1 bay 3 TB MyCloud device. I have had it for such a long time and it still works pretty well as just a local network file server (I just use it for that and I have a cronjob script on it that regularly backs up the data to a connected USB stick … because I suspect this thing could die any day because it is so old). For security reasons of course I just use it as a local network NAS, so I prevent it from accessing the internet via a firewall rule at my router. I also did a few additional manual tweaks over the years like disabling the indexing service so that I can always access/copy/move/delete my files quickly.
Here is my issue. If I lose power or otherwise reboot the device it takes about 45 minutes to fully boot and connect to my home network. As a result of that, the time according to the device is significantly in the past even if I only lose power for a second (I can’t use internet-hosted NTP because I don’t allow the WDMyCloud to connect the internet).
So, two things. I would like to be able to enable NTP. I tried setting up another one of my machines in my local network as an NTP server and then point the WDMyCloud to it, but that does not seem to work. The other thing is that I would like the thing to boot faster. I suppose one solution to both of these would be to just buy a UPS so that I don’t lose power, but I don’t really want to spend any money toward this WDMyCloud that is so old and could die any day.
If you have any of the media services enabled (Twonky/iTunes), those may be scanning the drive contents at each boot/reboot contributing to the long startup. Try disabling the media servers in the My Cloud Dashboard > Settings along with the media serving option on each Share. A long startup could also be caused by the My Cloud operating system performing a disk check of the hard drive. Check the My Cloud diagnostics, alert/notifications, and perform drive check (under Settings) to see if any alerts or messages indicate problems with the device’s hard drive. If one searches for “sleep” in this OS3 subforum they’ll find a number of past discussions on services to disable that may help with boot time speed in addition to the sleep issue that plagued the OS3 single bay My Cloud issues.
But in short due to the limited hardware (processor and RAM) the units are going to be slow even when booting. If one has filled their hard drive with lots of small files then that will/can contribute to slowing down the boot process as the operating system checks over the file system.
For NTP, if one has blocked the My Cloud from accessing the internet at the router then one can reconfigure the My Cloud to set the time manually without contacting an NTP server. Certain consumer routers may support firmware that has an embedded NTP server. For example I use an Asus router running Asus-Merlin firmware. That firmware supports enabling an NTP server which I point the single bay first gen OS3 My Cloud at so it can set it’s time. If setting up a NTP server on a local network computer, ensure that program isn’t being blocked by the computer’s firewall software and that the My Cloud has access to that computer by making sure both are directly connected using Ethernet to the same network router or switch.
I agree; the old myclouds are a bit old to run a media server these days. (it works fine as a file repository FOR a media server, but not actually running the server).
If occasional power outages are a thing. . .and you value the NAS; you probably should treat yourself to a UPS. Even after THIS NAS dies, your next NAS will appreciate it!
I went through all the aforementioned items. I performed the full diagnostics check under Settings. I saw that was going to take awhile, so I logged out of the GUI and decided to check on it the next morning. The next morning I noticed that while all the network shares were mapped and still accessible to the computers in my network, the WDMyCloud GUI was no longer accessible. An error response was returned about an inability to load the page. I tried different browsers, clearing caches, etc. Eventually I unplugged the WDMyCloud, then plugged it back in. This restored access to the WDMyCloud GUI and everything was working fine. I was hoping that I could find the results somewhere in the GUI from the diagnostics run but there was nothing anywhere to be found. No results, and not even an indication that it ever ran at all in the notifications area. Regardless, everything seems to be working fine. Also, this reboot only took about 15 minutes to fully complete which is better than I have seen before.
I think my NTP problem was that the source of the NTP server was not directly connected to the router via an ethernet cable. Also, my router is too primitive to server as an NTP server, but that was a good idea to check. For reasons I’ll spare you the details of, I don’t want to add another physical connection to the router, so I suppose I will just watch the time on the WDMyCloud and set it manually when it starts to stray.
I was thinking about maybe replacing this device with a Raspberry Pi 4, Model B, using OpenMediaVault and a USB connected external hard drive. Just because that might be fun to do, and I imagine it would perform much better because of the better hardware specs. But I don’t know how secure it would be to use this set up. I am also resistant to changing because of my morbid curiosity about wanting to see how long will this WDMyCloud last. I can’t believe it has lasted so long. I have great confidence in my backup strategy so I have no worries about data loss.
