Connected USB 3 device is very slow

Alexander_Neumann · December 12, 2015, 1:50pm

Hello guys,

so after I managed that my 4TB My Cloud is working again I plugged in my 3TB My Book:

Well unfortunately the connected USB 3 device is very slow… It takes hours until it displays the content of a folder

Copying files is okay but it takes a few minutes after this has finnished

the data rate is about 30MB/s

When I plug the device directly into my PC everything is fine.

On my My Cloud it does not take time for calculation or something it starts immediatly with writing the data with a constant rate. The writing rate rate is about 36MB/s and reading about 60MB/s… I am not quite happy with that because it should be faster or not?
On my PC I have a SSD there I have a writing rate of about 450MB/s.

Cheers
Alex

rac8006 · December 12, 2015, 2:33pm

Try accessing the folder with the view set to details rather than icon. In the icon view it has to download each thumbnail. Which can take a long time.

RAC

Bennor · December 12, 2015, 5:50pm

On the issue of copying speed being slow when transferring files between a USB drive connected to the My Cloud and a Share on the My Cloud. Its a well known complaint with many threads discussing it.

If your going to move files from the USB drive attached to the My Cloud the better way (and generally faster way) is to use the WD My Cloud Desktop program to move the files. Or use the WD My Cloud mobile app for Android or iOS to copy the files. Or use SSH to connect to the My Cloud (after activating the SSH option via the My Cloud Dashboard) and issue a copy command to copy files from the attached USB drive.

The reason why the copy is slow when using Windows File Explorer or Mac Finder when copying files from a USB drive attached to the My Cloud to a Share on the My Cloud is the data apparently is flowing from the USB drive through the My Cloud, to your computer then it flows back to the My Cloud to the Share folder on the My Cloud. If your attempting to trigger this copy via WiFi it will further result in slower speeds when using Explorer or Finder.

The other option when transferring a large amount of files from a USB drive to the My Cloud is to connect the USB drive to the computer, connect the computer via Ethernet cable to the same router/gateway the My Cloud is connected to, then use Windows File Explorer or Mac Finder to copy the files.

There is much more on copying speeds at the following thread.

https://community.wd.com/t/before-you-pack-up-your-wd-and-return-it-lets-talk-about-copying-speeds/91887

Alexander_Neumann · December 12, 2015, 5:51pm

Ah okay thank you I will try that.

mike27oct · December 13, 2015, 8:43am

Great point, and for those of you not having a gigabit router, you can connect this stuff together via an inexpensive gigabit network switch and get same high speeds as you would get through a gigabit router.

I know this works because my Win 8 PC, and WD NAS are connected to the same gigabit switch, and also to my wired gigabit router. If I disconnect the router cable from switch (internet naturally is gone but), speeds between PC and NAS stay the same.

Bennor · December 13, 2015, 2:15pm

One further option. If one doesn’t have a “gigabit” switch, hub or router/gateway but their computer does have a gigabit networking port one could, provided they configure the WD My Clouds IP address to be in the same IP subnet range as the IP address used by their computer’s gigabit networking port, connect the My Cloud directly to their computer. This way they could transfer the content from a USB drive connected to their computer straight to the My Cloud device.