I received mine new last week. I loaded it with four 3TB RED WD NASWare drives in a RAID 5 configuration with hot spare. The NAS is being used for storing/playing videos on a laptop hooked up to the TV. It worked great until this morning, when the player came up with a lot of file play errors, and I couldn’t log into the NAS or browse the file folders on the network. I checked the machine physically and noted no errors on the LCD display. None of the drive lights blinked, although it did when playing files. I tried to shut it down, but the shut down sequence message ran for a half hour and it never shut down. I ended up puling the power. When I hooked the power back up, the system booted up normally. I logged into the unit and looked at the errors icon. It stated no errors, the system was healthy and no problems were found. After about a half hour operation I found icon data starting to disappear and when i logged out of the unit, I couldn’t log back in. A short time after, access to the drive folders stopped working. I’ve tried this several times and it appears the unit locks up anywhere between 15 minutes to an hour, and I’ve noted a half dozen lockups in the few hours. The system is in a room with a full server, and a couple of other NAS units on a managed Gigabit switch and a server UPS, and it’s the only unit showing problems. Does anyone have any ideas on what I can do? The firmware is up to date, and I can’t find anything online about this problem. The drives are all new as well. I would hate thinking this needs to be sent back as an RMA already, it barely had any use on it. I’ve gone through the Network settings to make sure that wasn’t the problem. I changed it from Adaptive Balancing to Active Fallback, to see if the network interface wasn’t causing the problem. The IP is static.
Did you happen to notice the CPU usage during the time it was accessible from the dashboard?
Did you also notice the processes that were running and how much cpu was being used and by which processes?
Verify if it is not the process that generates thumbnails for the uploaded media that might be eating up the resources making the device run at peak CPU.
I had this long post complete with information taken from the unit (after rebooting), but it seems to have been eaten. Let me try again:
Capacity 2.59 TB FREE
Device Diagnostics Healthy
Firmware 1.02.08
The CPU is running between 99% and 100% with twonkyserver taking up most of that, running between 45 - 99% CPU in a 5 minute period. This is after 20 minutes of operation:
Device Activity The list below indicates all the system activities and processes that are running on your WD My Cloud EX4 device.
CPU 100%
Memory 46.60%
Network 0.00MB Tx,0.00MB Rx
Process 54 Diagnostics
Displays a snapshot of system components indicating overall health of your WD My Cloud EX4 device.
Temperature Normal
Fan Speed 780 RPM
Drive Status Healthy
RAID Status Healthy
It seems the form ate my formatting.
Just received an EX4 16TB version yesterday. Got it set up, copied over a bunch of files. Put the computer to sleep like I do every night. This morning, the EX4 lights are on, the WD MyCloud software sees it, but I can’t connect to it. Tried rebooting and nothing happens. It’s there, it’s on, but I can’t connect.
I then tried pressing and holding the power on/off button on the EX4, it says it’s shutting down on the LCD and has been saying that for the last 10 minutes, but nothing’s happening.
So, apparently the EX4 is totally locked up. I guess I’ll unplug it and try again, but this is very disturbing, seeing as how it’s the very first time I used it! Any suggestions?
Looks like maybe after a certain amount of time the EX4 goes to sleep, but then doesn’t wake up? How do I fix that?
Thanks…
That’s pretty much what happened to me, except mine ran pretty good for a week. After trying several things, I finally unplugged it for the night. I’ll plug it back in tomorrow and see what happens.
The problem with new toys is that sometimes they have bugs that need to be addressed, and we’re the Beta testers, it seems.
I ended up pulling the power, then starting it up again. Took a long time until I got the “Name: WDMyCloudEX4” on the LCD. Seems to be running now, EXCEPT, now I have a warning message that the fan has failed!
There’s a button in the browser manager to send a support report, which I did. There’s also a button I found that saves some log files, I looked through that and had a bunch of errors, which is apparently why it locked up.
I deactivated the “sleep” function and set it to turn on 6 am to 10 pm for 7 days a week, we’ll see how that works.
So far, I’m disappointed it’s giving me trouble…doesn’t bode well for the future. Hoping WD reads these forums? We’ll see also if I get support from the automated support request…
RK924 wrote:
I ended up pulling the power, then starting it up again. Took a long time until I got the “Name: WDMyCloudEX4” on the LCD. Seems to be running now, EXCEPT, now I have a warning message that the fan has failed!
There’s a button in the browser manager to send a support report, which I did. There’s also a button I found that saves some log files, I looked through that and had a bunch of errors, which is apparently why it locked up.
I deactivated the “sleep” function and set it to turn on 6 am to 10 pm for 7 days a week, we’ll see how that works.
So far, I’m disappointed it’s giving me trouble…doesn’t bode well for the future. Hoping WD reads these forums? We’ll see also if I get support from the automated support request…
We do read the forums.
However, if you are looking for a direct response from support is best to contact them directly.
To contact support:
Right now, I have mine running through a thorough diagnostic. It’s been running for about 5 hours, but I can already tell it’s crashing as all the details are missing when i log into the unit to get the updated status. That’s the first sign that it’s heading South.
Well, that’s it. It locked up again. I submitted a case to WD to see if they have any suggestions before I open an RMA on the unit.
Just wanted to follow up on this, it locked up again, don’t know why. It was running fine this morning, then I went to open the EX4 drive via Windows Explorer, and Explorer couldn’t find it. the WD MyCloud dashboard won’t start because it lost the connection also.
The EX4 LCD indicates everything is ok, but the blue lights are on solid, not blinking. I pressed and held the power button on the EX4 and it says “System is shutting down”, but nothing has happened after 15 minutes, so I guess I’ll pull the plug again.
The solution I received from my ticket is as follows:
I apologize for the confusion. I’ve looked for the correct information about your My Cloud EX4 NAS drive. You can perform a System Restore to the unit and the data will remain in the drives. Please click on the link below for instructions: Title: Reference Page 132 Link: http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/UM/ENG/4779-705113.pdf
Originally I was provided system restore information for the single drive MyCloud units, which included wiping all the data on the drives, but the instructions for the MyCloud EX4 restores the settings to factory default without wiping all the data.
It took awhile to wipe and reconfigure my EX4 settings, and it’s been running for about… 6 days 21 hours 14 minutes without problems. However, I have put no load on it other than occasionally accessing the settings and playing a file to make sure I can. Previously I was playing a continual stream of media to my TV from a playlist, and the EX4 started having problems avuter about a week. I relagated the streaming to a different brand 4-drive NAS I had upgraded the drives in.
RK - Where are the settings to deactivate the sleep function and set the cloud to turn on @ a specific time period? Thanks!
Well, it started acting up again after about 8 days. It’ll intermittently become unresponsive until you pull the plug and reset the thing, then run for a random period of time before acting up again. That was even after the new update that came out.
I contacted WD about it and was told to return it to the vendor for replacement. I would rather send it into WD for replacement since it’s under warranty until January 2016.
JmcoX3, you can find the sleep settings under settings → General - Energy Saver - Power Schedule. I hope that helps.
I’ve had a 16TB EX-4 since just before Xmas and I’m seriously thinking of returning it to Amazon. I raised a case with WD Support this morning. Initially it needed several reboots before I had a few days of stability. I copied around 2TB of data over to it and I could connect from PC, phone and tablet. Now I can barely get a few minutes of service out of it before it can no longer be reached on the network. Things seemed to go downhill following the issue of the last software update a few days ago. I have tried doing a system restore but this does not seem to remove the update. Currently the system is unusable - I must have done at least eight reboots today. Matthew
I’m having the same issues as you have described. I’m really disappointed as the 16tb version cost me a pretty penny and I had such high hopes for this system. Thinking I’ll return it as well.
Just a shot in the dark… the My Cloud had some problems similar to this I think.
Would you turn Off the “Cloud Access” and see if that helps? It should be under Settings in the UI.
It’s worth a shot, although that kind of defeats part of the purpose of buying the EX4 in the first place. I turned off Cloud access and I’ll see what happens.
Thanks for the tip Chaos311. I turned off cloud and the device has been usable for 24 hours and continuing. I’ve been copying data that whole time because I’m likely to be returning the EX4 in the next few days. Will make a final decision mid-week. This is an expensive item (16TB). I’m drawn to returning to my previous very reliable way of working - large hard disks in the PC and backing them up to inexpensive USB external drives. I’ve had more hassle with the EX4 in three weeks than with all my computing in the last 10 years.
I happen to have a home-built server running Windows Home Server 2011 and several BlackArmor NAS units. I bought the EX4 to see if I could have a unit I could access files easily from the road, which is why turnng off the Cloud feature defeats the purpose. When I tested that feature during the working moments, it seemed to work pretty well. But I can’t reset the EX4 when I’m on the road.
I spoke too soon. After 28 hours of copying the EX-4 became unreachable and so had to be rebooted. I’m definitely sending it back this coming week. Worst piece of IT I’ve ever purchased.
