First off - thanks for all the help so far! It is deeply appreciated.
Unfortunately, I have run out of time. Need to catch a flight tonight so things are going to have to wait until I get back.
Most of my data is transferred off of the EX4. Only about 1 TB left to go but… with the slowwww xfer speeds it is taking quite a long time.
EX4 is still acting funny. The system restore actually made things worse in some cases. So, the best I think I can do is to get everything off. Wipe it out and start over.
okay … back from London. Was gone for 5 days with less than 1 TB of data remaining on my EX4. Of that, only about 6k pictures / videos. Most high res off of my Canon cameras… anyway…
CPU still @ 87-100% perpetually.
Out of ideas so I’m transferring everything back and seeing what happens when I start over…
For the three weeks mine was here, the unit was at or near 100% CPU every time I went into the interface. This certainly didn’t seem right for something that you would leave on permanently . Our low spec work PCs do this when its times for virus and patch level checking. But things return to normal as soon as these processes have finished.
Back again folks… and this time with some progress!
So, I finally _ _had time to transfer all of my data back off of the EX4 and decided to try a system reset as has been suggested here and by WD support (yes - they got in touch with me about a week ago). I was on a short trip and now that I’m back, I can try to troubleshoot this thing.
Here are the steps I trudged through so far today:
Deleted all remaining transferred files (I copied this time instead of moved since I lost my local HDD during my last bout of trying to get the EX4 running smoothly)
Cleared the “recycle bin” on the EX4
Performed a system reset. Result: NG … still had consistently high CPU usage with the unlzma process gobbling up huge chunks of CPU power. Anywhere from 20 to 60% at times.
Decided to try converting from RAID 5 to RAID 1. Didn’t take too long but ultimately not where I want to be. I’d prefer to be at RAID 5 but this is just a test.
Results so far: GOOD HDD lights aren’t perpetually blinking, CPU uitilization is hovering near 0 with occasion spikes (to be expected), and the unlzma process has calmed down. It does show up on occasion but with only about 1% utilization.
So… now I’ll head back over to RAID 5 and see what happens. Hopefully these results stick.
Okay - converted back to RAID 5. Things are still looking pretty good. Hovered mostly down towards zero with occasional 100% spikes which again, I believe is normal.
Transferring over a 20gb backup file now. Write speeds are far better than I had in the past (abouti 25MB/s) and the CPU activity seems to be more in line with what I would expect (reminder: I’m far from expert).
The CPU is jumping as the data is being transferred which makes sense. The CPU is no longer pinned near 100 though … so I am hopeful!
There may be a satisfying ending to this whole thing after all.
I should note - the EX4 was configured for RAID 5 when I received the product. Drives were installed. Does this sound normal?
You say for the “three weeks it was here” - did you get rid of it or is everything now good? I was rapidly losing confidence in the device and so got Amazon to pick it up and refund me. Not where I want to be but I’ll investigate this market again in a couple of years.
Great. Glad to hear that WD is addressing this “product-killer” issue and we can expect an update soon.
I have tried all the “fixes” presented here and have reset the device to factory default ad-nauseum with no measureable effect on the CPU utilization issue.
With no coherent or otherwise tangible response from WD on this issue, I am readying myself for the RMA fight I’m sure to endure. It has been a little over a month since I received the blasted thing and I may be beyond my rights to return the slow-beast.
I’ll also be following up at New Egg and elsewhere with my customer product review where I’m sure I’ll join others who are also stymied by this poorly engineered or at the least, poorly QA’d product.
FWIW, I’d like the ability to stop unnecessary services such as wdphotomerger. It doesn’t seem unreasonable.
BTW - I have no intention of using the device to stream media or otherwise act as a media server. I want it as a network accessible, safe, raid configured repository of files, some of which happen to be photos or other media.
A note to WD, if you insist on including the “gee-whiz” media-streaming or advanced cloud access features, you may want to use a multi-core processor or at least provide a way to turn off the bloat that comes along with these bells and whistles.
Basic product QA should have ensured the device was engineered in a fail-safe way for the end-user to maintain at least the core functionality. (eg: The device is reachable via the network and basic file i/o or administrative console access is not de-prioritized for some crappy thumbnail conversion service.)
I’m dealing with this same issue, I have followed the reset change to RAID 1 and back to RAID 5 system ran for about 2 days then when back to near 100% and no access to the Dashboard again. So I hope there is a cure. I sure didn’t have this kind of problem with the NAS 440 although it doesn’t do do all the activities the My Cloud EX4 does…
Mem: 501116K used, 5768K free, 0K shrd, 17212K buff, 315692K cached
CPU: 89.4% usr 9.9% sys 0.0% nic 0.0% idle 0.0% io 0.0% irq 0.5% sirq
Load average: 8.16 8.03 5.44 8/131 14137
PID PPID USER STAT VSZ %VSZ CPU %CPU COMMAND
9597 3030 root R 36140 7.1 0 16.1 php-fpm: pool www
10221 3030 root R 36108 7.1 0 16.1 php-fpm: pool www
10094 3030 root R 36108 7.1 0 15.9 php-fpm: pool www
8821 3030 root R 36140 7.1 0 15.5 php-fpm: pool www
8486 3030 root R 36140 7.1 0 14.9 php-fpm: pool www
3580 1 root S 38384 7.5 0 14.3 /usr/local/wdmcserver/bin/wdmcserver -v:/tmp/Volumes.xml
It is either a faulty process, or a very poorly written one.
I have NOTHING enabled, and only useing as a file server as listed in another thread. Some have had successes resetting the thing to death, but the bottom line remains it will come back until WD fixes it.
Mine took just under 14 days to complete this time. It happened to me before, but as soon as I added more data it began again.
After my 2 hour session with Level 2 yesterday and daily emails for several weeks:
I think my next effort will be contact Amazon and get a return. 22 days is long enough I have other things to do.
I have no warm feeling that this is a useful and secure place to put my data. I have a Seagate NAS 440 that has ran of 1.5 years flawlessly it just isn’t a Cloud device but GREAT for storage and FTP access. Media server is a bit clunky but can be made to work… WD had the sizzle but guess no meat just bone and fat.
I had issues in the beginning, after about 12 days I decided to try my own remedy - since nothing was working.
Unlike what is posted above, I didn’t “reset it to death” but, here is what worked in my case. Keep in mind, I’m not saying you should have to do this and I too was very annoyed… especially since I had lost some data during my transfers back and forth (had a local drive fail on my PC).
ANYWAY … I pulled everything off. It was going to have to happen if I returned it anyway. Since I had all data off and nothing else to lose except for a trip to UPS I gave it a go. I decided to convert to a different raid mode and then back to RAID 5.
After that, it was fine. Transferred 2 TB (with a ton of photos). It did take a little over 2 days to finish the converions but then it went to sleep. Standby mode was finally happening.
Why? No clue. I did receive the NAS with the drives installed and ready to go.
So basically, I started over. Again, not saying that this is okay but I wanted to keep the friggin’ thing since I kinda’ liked it.
1 reset, 2 reformats and I was good-to-go. Not sure it will work for everyone.
Since then my 500 errors went away. Dash has been fine. Etc… Maybe I’m one of the lucky ones. Don’t know… what I do know is what ended up working for me (after quite a bit of initial frustration).
Tony - is this more along what you’d expect to see?
