my device is now working properly since about a week without any issues. It was easy to set up, i’m using it for file access and storage only without the cloud features. The other services are stopped, so i could be able to switch on the energy saver mode.
But the question is: Does it make sense?
Inside the box there’s a WD red operating which is intented to be a permanent running hard drive.
What’s your preferred option? Or is this more a “political” question?
There are so many technical advises and suggested reasons for shutting down or keeping it running out there that i’m a bit confused.
My device is working in a different room, so i would never be bothered by any noise from it.
What is the typical wait time if energy saver is enabled until access to it is working?
My situation regarding MyCloud is very similar to yours in that I’ve not enabled any cloud features. I use the energy saving mode and have no difficulties. I find that accessing my 3 TB cloud using either the dashboard or a file browser takes about 30 seconds or so - I’ve not tried to determine if the unit is sleeping or awake, nor if accessing via WIFI causes any of this delay.
Having a safepoint backup scheduled at 3am has also proven successful.
I doubt disabling the front LED via the Dashboard > Settings > General > Energy Saver > LED = OFF has any major impact on energy savings since its an LED. Generally small LED lights like the kind used on the My Cloud tend to consume a negligible amount of power. Turning the front LED off is more for aesthetics purposes for those who don’t want to see a light on the front of their My Cloud.
Now the Drive Sleep option is a whole other issue. There are numerous threads that cover the “sleep” issue that afflict the single bay My Cloud devices. Typically enabling Drive Sleep via the Dashboard > Settings > General > Energy Saver > Drive Sleep = ON is supposed to enable the My Cloud to put the My Cloud hard drive to sleep after 10 minutes of inactivity. In theory, good idea. In reality, it doesn’t work. There are various services running on the My Cloud that cause the My Cloud not to sleep for any serious length of time. To get the My Cloud to sleep for long periods of time one typically has to disable the two indexing services (that may cause certain issues with remote access - searching and file icons): wdmcserverd and wdphotodbmergerd. Further it is recommended to issue the following command as My Cloud boot that seems to help with certain waking issues:
mount -o remount,noatime,nodiratime /dev/root /
Some even stop the restsdk-serverd service.
Many of us v4.x users have resorted to using SSH to edit the “/etc/rc2.d/S98user-start” file on the My Cloud to include the commands to stop the two previously mentioned indexing services and the previous “mount” command. Some go farther and put a series of commands in that “/etc/rc2.d/S98user-start” file on v4.x My Clouds to deal with variety of issues.
Do a forum search, magnifying glass icon upper right, for “sleep” and one can read through the many discussions to find what works for their specific My Cloud. It appears even the v2.x My Clouds may also have sleep problems. There is also a script one user here wrote to try and determine how long a My Cloud (v4.x) is sleeping. It gives the user a good idea on how often their My Cloud actually is waking up and not sleeping. Some may be surprised at how little (or much) their My Cloud actually is sleeping (or awake).
Typically on both Windows 7, Windows 10, using DLNA clients like Roku’s, and using my Android mobile devices it takes approximately 15 to 20 seconds or so for the My Cloud to spin up after being in sleep mode (when it is in sleep mode).
Disabling the LED and having the energy mode enabled are usually two different things.
My device is running 24x7 even if it wouldn’t be necessary.
The energy cost does not matter. It’s very low in all states of the device.
But i’m more concerned if the regular spin down/spin up would case a shorter lifetime of the drive.
Especially the load cycle count can be a source for failures if it’s getting too high.
Others on the other hand say that the fluid of the drives will go away at some point if the device runs all the time.
Both are “rumours” i’ve never seen any evidences to one or the other.
The device itself is running perfect. SMART data is not changing a lot (of course the power-on hours are increasing) and the temperature is stable at 47°
I think i will not change the energy mode.
