I use my MyCloud mIainly for storing all my photo’s, video’s and some documents. I recently downloaded WD Sync on to my desktop and laptop to make uloading files simpler but did not realise that the default settings would auto sync between the ‘document’ & ‘pictures’ folders on the three devices.
Having uploaded some files of photo’s from my laptop I then deleted the files from the laptop, which had the effect of removing these files from the MyCloud giving the impression they are lost.
Accessing the devce with the MyCloud UI, I saw that photo’s occupy 6.8Gb, Videos 43Gb but there is also 550Gb listed as ‘other’ and shown as a grey band on the pie chart.
If I use the MyCloud app from a browser, on inspection it appears that there are many files and or individual photo’s that are no longer there, but if I use the smart TV to access the device across my home network I am able to see all of my ‘lost’ photo’s.
It is therefore apparent to me that the file system seems to have been corrupted and the ‘lost’ files/photo’s are in the 550Gb ‘other’ data on the Mycloud.
Is there a utility that is available to rebuild the file index system? If not, how can I access the ‘lost’ files? I managed to find most if not all of the lost files in the recycle bin of the desktop PC and have transferred these to the desktop of the PC, but am reluctant to now copy these to MyCloud in case they cause further data loss and also because this will probably increase the amount of ‘other’ data, unnecessarily wasting storage space.
I can access the device using File Explorer on my laptop on the same network but the file structure is not the same as I see through My Cloud app. It appears to be seeing a previous version of the file system with some additional files there and some that are via the app not there.
This is what leads me to think that the mystery 500GB of “other” files, shown as light blue in the pie chart on the dashboard is actually a collection of earlier versions of the file structure before I made various amendments to it by sub-grouping some of the pictures under new or revised headings.
The pie chart shows the actual space occupied by videos & photos to be only 49.3GB
The Other Files are files the firmware finds that are not Music, Pictures or Video files. For example for me it shows 2TB of Other files which are a mixture of archived software files, Acronis backup files, and MS Office, PDF, etc. documents. Sometimes the chart shown on the Dashboard is incorrect or shows the wrong values depending on when it last scanned the files, or if one disables the firmware scanning modules to fix the My Cloud inability to sleep issue.
Note that when you us a DLNA player, like those on most SmartTV’s you will see a different structure and will ONLY see the supported media files the DLNA media server (Twonky) finds on the My Cloud (when a Share has Media Serving Enabled).
Generally when using the administrator account to access the My Cloud using Windows File Explorer one should see all the files (except the hidden WD Sync backup files) on the My Cloud. This assumes one has granted the administrator account access to all Private Shares. WD Sync creates a hidden directory (viewable using SSH) that stores backups of all files it syncs.
One could use SSH to access the My Cloud at the root firmware level to view what user files are on the device. Using WinSCP (https://winscp.net/eng/index.php) makes it easy to click through the various folders at the firmware level. Not sure about the second gen v2.x firmware My Cloud’s but on the first gen v4.x firmware My Cloud, the user Shares are located in the /DataVolume/shares folder.
Thanks for this, Bennor.
I have downloaded WinSCP and after a few false starts managed to get access to the MyCloud files. I now see what has happened and managed to tidy up the file structure and will now start to re-populate some of the folders with the data recovered from the recycle bin on my desktop PC.
WinSCP will be very useful for future file management.
Once again, many thanks!
Sorry for the delay in responding but I have not had a chance to del with it recently.
Basically, having downloaded WinSCP and examined the files on the MyCloud with it I found that where I had renamed some of the folders, although only the renamed folder appeared when viewing through the MyCloud GUI, the old image was still actually present on the MyCloud drive. Some of these still held the original contents, which were not in the renamed folder.
Once I had got rid of those old folders, I was then able to check the contents and replace the missing images/videos which had been accidentally lost when using WDSync, not realising it was a two-way sync process. These were found in the recycle bin.
In essence, I have concluded that the MyCloud GUI is frankly not fit for purpose due to what I describe above and also a couple of other quirks which I have put up with, namely that when you access the drive you do not see a list of folders for one of the users unless you sweep the mouse over where they should be, and when selecting a sub-folder, if its contents are less than the one you had just been viewing, there is a good chance it will appear to be empty as the cursor does not automatically move to the topmost entry in the folder.
I shall therefore in future use WinSCP to manage the contents as it is not ambiguous in any way, unlike the native application.
I have a similar problem to the OP in this thread. I have a My Cloud Home device with several different folders on it. On Friday I was re-naming some of the videos in one folder. Everything was fine for the first 100 or so videos but then I clicked “rename” for another video, the screen went blank and the parent folder re-loaded…the problem is that now the folder that I was working in is no longer visible. It is a big folder with lots of unique videos that I really need to get access to again if at all possible.
I am using a Mac and the iPhone app and I can’t see the file in either the app or the website interface. I have started a support request but I haven’t heard anything back from WD and I am hoping that somebody on here might be able to help point me in the right direction?
The My Cloud Home is not the same as a My Cloud device. It has a different set of features/options and uses a different operating system. If you haven’t done so already, see the dedicated My Cloud Home subforum where users more familiar with that device may be able to assist.
