THIS IS NOT FOR TROUBLESHOOTING REMOTE CONNECTIVITY. FOR THAT CONSULT TonyPH12345’s excellent guide here http://community.wd.com/t5/WD-My-Cloud/HOW-TO-Troubleshooting-Remote-Connectivity-Issues/td-p/617261
Hopefully this guide will help with the many common questions and resolve many misunderstandings.
When you say cannot access my NAS drive or my NAS is disconnecting the first thing you should do is
- Ping the NAS drive IP address. Open a command line window and type “ping /?” to learn about it.
Mostly if you type for example “ping ” or even “ping wdmycloud” , for example if my IP address is 192.168.1.100 then I do “ping 192.168.1.116”. Or " ping wdmycloud"; You will get something like:
ping 192.168.1.110
Pinging 192.168.1.110 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.1.110: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.110: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.110: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.110: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
All is good, otherwise you will get something like:
ping 192.168.1.120
Pinging 192.168.1.120 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.1.120: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.1.120: Destination host unreachable.
or some other errors; which is not good and also means that your NAS drive lost connection. In this check the drive and your router.
You can check connectivity as mentioned here:
http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/UM/ENG/4779-705103.pdf
Search for “Checking the Front Panel LEDs”.
Also, search for “Check Back Panel (Network) LEDs”
The manual answers a lot of common questions.
When you install WD software it also installs a link on your desktop (link to learning centre) which explains many other configurations such as configuring most common routers etc.
Alternatively, go to your router (read the manual how to access your router) and find out if the device is connected. Somewhere in your router there is a table and you should see currently connected devices.
- Make sure your NAS drive has a static IP address. You can do that in the router in 2 ways:
- if you router supports IP reservation (most modern routers will do) then use that. Use any IP address not associated with any other device.
- If your router does not support IP reservation then assign an IP address from outside the range of the DHCP scope. Your router acts as a DHCP server and has a range of IP addresses that it will use to assign address to connecting devices. Example
Here you can see the router is being used as DHCP server and the range is from 192.168.1.2 (192.168.1.1 being the router address) to 192.168.1.254.
Because I have IP reservation feature I kept it as it is, if you do not have this feature, reduce the range (depending on how many devices you have) but let us say we change 192.168.1.254 to 192.168.1.100. This will allow the server to use 99 IP dynamic addresses.
The addresses beyond 192.168.1.100 are the one you can use for static IP addresses for your NAS. Again check your router manual. You will need the MAC address of your NAS. If you do not know it, it is written on the bottom of the drive in the form of xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx.
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Another way is to set the NAS to static IP address is from the dashboard. Give it the same IP address you reserved in the router. In theory the DHCP server (per the RFC recommendation) should honour the request and use that IP address (some may not choose to honour). If you are paranoid like me, I set it the same ip address in the reservation and the dashboard. It is up to you.
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OBVIOUSLY IF YOUR WDMYCLOUD CANNOT CONNECT AT ALL, NO MATTER WHAT THEN PROBABLY IT IS FAULTY AND BEST TO CONTACT WD SUPPORT.
Mapping shares:
Having made sure that the NAS is connected then you are half way there. Now you can map your shares. I am assuming you already know how to map shares. I will concentrate here on why you lose your shares (which is wrongly blamed on wdmycloud in many cases).
1. Steps:
a. Open “My Computer”
b. Click on “Tools” and then select “Map Network Driver”
c. input the \ipaddressofserver\sharename to give the path of the share
d. Check “Reconnect at logon” <<<---- IMPORTANT
e. Drive gets mapped
f. Double click on the drive to check.
- You lose your shares every time you reboot and you have to login to that share. The best method I found is to use Windows Credential Manager. You can do that by:
- go to control panel → user Accounts and Family Safety → Credential Manager. If it already contains shares, take note of them and delete them. recreate the shares as follows: \wdmycloud<share name> then add username and password for that user. User name and password are the one you set for your shares.
NOTE: The double back slashes “\” at the beginning are important. It is what makes the connection persistent even after you log out or reboot. In credential manager there is an edit option, click on that and it will tell you whether it is persistent or not.
- Sometimes Windows 7 and 8 gives you a message that it was unable to reconnect all drives. This s is just a notification (it 99% of the cases has nothing to do with the NAS) because it could not connect before the network has started (believe it or not some network chips are faster than others. My laptop takes a minute to connect to the network at which time Windows gives up on reconnecting but is fine after words; while my PC almost instant).
Make sure your Windows is connected to the network and click on the share and it should connect again.
- Programs may be unable to access some network locations after you turn on User Account Control in Windows Vista or newer operating systems. Here is the link for the Microsoft KB: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/937624. At the bottom is the workaround: In a command line window type:
net use \<computer name><share name> /user:<username> Another way is to create shares by using the IP address instead of wdmycloud. ex: \192.168.1.100<share name>
General tip: Make sure your Windows clock and wdmycloud clock are properly synchronised and correct. This can cause a lot of connectivity and weird problems.
For USB connectivity problems, I find the USB 98% in wdmycloud reliable.
- Some device are plainly not fully compatible (it could be the USB server in wdmycloud or the connecting device and this is very common in the field as more than you think). Examples:
- In my experience, if I connect my Canon 60D DSLR camera to the USB port on wdmycloud it brings down the whole USB server on wdmycloud. I mean totally dead and I have to reboot (makes no difference if I disconnect safely first from the icon on the first page of the dashboard or not).
- Another problem is sleeping. Obviously you do not want your external USB drive spinning fulltime. It gets hot and shorten its life. Many people have problem with mybook series, and this issue in my opinion is compatibility issue.
- Another case, I bought this USB docking station and 3TB drive:
One of the docking stations does not honour the “go to sleep” command from wdmycloud (yes I first thought it was wdmycloud’ problem). After investigation and testing it in different PCs I found out that it is faulty. However, it is superfast when used as USB 3.0 but it is very fussy where it connects to. For example it will not show up on my router USB port. So much for backward compatibility…
In contrast, another brand works perfect, it is fast, and the drive goes to sleep. wdmycloud will never wake up the external USB drive unless it is doing backup. Furthermore, wdmycloud goes to sleep when it is not being accessed.
Finally, of course there are exceptional cases. Feel free to ask a question or add to this guide.
For the WD moderator, please create a sub forum or a link where all guides are put together. Users can then search or be directed to these guides.
Finally (HONEST) if you have problem and posting on the forum please give as much details about your setup as you can. It will speed up responses and avoid being ignored or delays. These forums are user<->user. There is a wealth of knowledge on this forum and I am sure someone will help you.
