I have something called “additional files” taking up 3.5 TB of my 4 TB mycloud. How do I get rid of them?
Where are you seeing something called “additional files”? The My Cloud Dashboard? Can you post a screen shot?
Generally for the single bay/single drive My Cloud one can use Windows File Explorer or Mac Finder to locate, delete or add user data files on the My Cloud. In certain cases the WD Sync program may cause problems by filling up the free space of a single bay My Cloud via a hidden folder. One would need to enable SSH to access that hidden folder (at the firmware level) to remove it or it’s contents.
SSH, firmware level, sounds beyond me unless it is simpler than it sounds. Why in the world would WD put out something so hard to manage? In any event, if you or someone could tell me all the steps I would be willing to give it a try!
BTW, I have done the updates to latest firmware and my computer is up to date on software.
@skeeter1 Have you read all of the information under the Help tab? See image below.
Click on, tap or activate image to enlarge it.
I will add this image too. This is from my 4TB My Cloud.
I appreciate your posts. Unfortunately, I still have no idea how to fix my problem. I only have half a TB of data to backup, and my 4TB mycloud says it is full. I have spent many days reading help, searching the community forum, sent un-answered mails to support, and still have no clue what to do. The concept of a personal cloud was very appealing to me. The execution seems to be beyond my capability.
@skeeter1 How long have you owned your My Cloud? Have you backed up any other computers to your My Cloud? Do you have other Users/Shares for your My Cloud? How many copies of backups do you have it set for?
On my 4TB My Cloud I have backed up my Laptop, I have a share named Horace and items in my Public Folder that takes up space on it. Here is how my Dashboard, Home Tab looks.
Had it for couple of years. Yes, have 2 other computers backed up on it. Set for 3 backups to save. As you can see, very little video and music, biggest file is photos, but still only 1.1 GB comparedd to your 61 GB.
@skeeter1 When you click on Diagnosis to see what the warning is about what does it show?
In Settings>Media have you done a Rescan to see what happens?
What Computer and Operating System are you using?
Rescan does nothing because there is nothing in the media files. Warning says I have no free space. Dell laptop with Windows 10
One troubleshooting suggestion. Access the My Cloud Dashboard > Shares page and review each Share to determine which Share has the most files/data. Once you determine which Share has the most user data one can then use Windows File Explorer or Mac Finder to access that Share to see what files are consuming the free space on the My Cloud. An example showing the Share size in the My Cloud Dashboard.
If using the WD software (Smartware or WD Sync), one or both of those programs may have file versioning/history enabled which saves backups of each file backed up or synced. This can quickly consume the free space on a My Cloud. Consult the help for each program to see how to turn off (if possible) the history or file versioning feature of the software.
Also note that depending on how the Smartware program is configured it may be backing up each computer more than once to the My Cloud. This could account for the lack of free space on the My Cloud. Consult the settings for the Smartware program to see how it is backing up the files from the computer to the My Cloud.
What if i just delete all the backups on my cloud and start over with a more user friendly backup software like Acronis? If I want to do that, do I select System only, Quick Restore, or Full Restore?
Just be aware that the problem with a Quick Restore or Full Restore is it will delete all user data on the My Cloud. So any non backup file will be removed as well. A Full Restore will take many hours as it attempts to securely erase the user data from the My Cloud so it cannot (easily) be recovered using consumer data recovery software.
If one can determine where the Smartware backups are being saved (usually in the Smartware Share on the My Cloud) one can remove (using Windows File Explorer or Mac Finder) just the Smartware backups and retain the rest of the user data.
