I have the 1TB model and keep being told I am running out of space. There should only be only around 700GB of video files on there and a few MB of images, however the dashboard tells me there’s over 40GB of music on there and over 200GB of ‘other’. There aren’t any music files on it and I don’t know how to get the chart on the dashboard to show an accurate account of what’s on the drive.
I have tried leaving it 48hrs to sort itself out and the Refresh option in the settings but to no avail.
I need to claim this 240GB+ back so it’s usable.
Are you using WD Sync or any other WD Software like Smartware?
WD Sync creates a hidden folder and stores version histories of files it syncs in it. Over time users have found this hidden folder using up all the free space on the My Cloud.
Other suggestions beyond using Windows File Explorer / Mac Finder to look through the various Shares to find the files potentially taking up space is to use SSH and access the My Cloud at the firmware level to search *using Linux commands like: du -sh /*) and find out which folders are taking up the most space.
WD Sync is installed although I use Windows Explorer to transfer and manage files.
Can I uninstall WD Sync if its not needed? Where is the hidden folder that I need to delete?
I have a .wdsync file in C:\Users\User\My Cloud, but its size is 0KB
If you do not need to sync files then you can uninstall WD Sync. The following post details how one user found the hidden WD Sync folder location and removed it to free up some space.
If you do need to sync content from your PC to the My Cloud one can use a third party sync program. Free File Sync (https://freefilesync.org/) is one such program some of us use to sync or backup content to/from a My Cloud.
Start by looking in the /DataVolume folder since that is where your user files/data is stored. Check to see what each of the folders in /DataVolume are consuming. Be careful what you delete there as you may end up deleting your user data.
You will have to see which folders in the /DataVolume are consuming the most space then look in each of those folders to see what if anything can be deleted.
I was having the same issue with my 4tb 4100ex model for over a year, but I was finally able to figure out what was causing the problem, and now the “other category” is not taking up any space on my device. The problem lies with the syncing application itself. The application is flawed. It syncs as it suppose to, but it’s constantly re-syncing the same data over and over again throughout the day and month which is wrong. The re-syncing of data goes to the “other category” that builds over time and take up space. So, here’s how I fix it. I only connect my syncing application once a month or whenever, and when my media (movies, pictures) are done syncing then I immediately disconnect the application.
Where to go from here: unfortunately, you will need to do a clean system restored and re-sync, and then you’ll be able to follow the steps I mention above. Hope this helps.
Found solution !!! Disclaimer: I am not an IT guy. I used part commands given to me by WD support (semi useless) and part commands from dicking around with those commands using commands (rm -r) from the Linus web pages. This worked for me.
putty into your NAS
login as: sshd
sshd@'s password: for your NAS
Optional: to see what’s going on in your NAS
enter cd /mnt/HD/HD_a2 du -h --max-depth=1 (WD support)
This will take a while, but you will see that something in /mnt/HD/HD_a2/.systemfile is taking up TBs of disk space. This is the dir /clamav
To see what is in that dir,
enter du /mnt/HD/HD_a2/.systemfile/clamav
You will see it’s a few dirs all containing a butt load of .tmp files and ONLY tmp files
The fix: Erase those tmp files by erasing the /clamav dir (irreversible, do you trust me?)
enter rm -r /mnt/HD/HD_a2/.systemfile/clamav/
This will also take a while, but not as long as the first command. You will see that all your missing storage space is now available again. I gained back over 1.5 TB of missing storage.
