Moving files on the storage device is very slow. Can you explain why?

My Cloud OS 3 Personal & Network Attached Storage My Cloud
1

There are similar posts, but some of them are quite old so I started another.
I use a Mac.
I shared a few thousand files to a location. I wanted to move them to another directory on the WD device and noticed a number of things. Any advice appreciated.
I’m doing all this through Finder. It’s impossible to do using any of the WD tools due to performance.

  1. Moving files seems to me to take a long time. 1x file at 1.2MB took several minutes. Try 100 files around the same size and it’s taking 5 hours and counting.

  2. When moving files, more files than selected display in the finder status bar. E.g. I selected 1 file and the status bar said “preparing to move 2 items”. 67 files resulted in “preparing to move 103 items”.

  3. Logging on to the device takes ages too. Several minutes after selecting the mounted device the shares are actually displayed. And MUCH longer again to display the directory list. 30 minutes to actually show the files in the directory, longer still to display thumbnails.

The list goes on, but would appreciate any advice even if it’s to manage my expectations. I can work with dropbox much quicker. Wondering if I just go back to that as this experience is not fun.

2

Those “old posts” often explain the issue, and nothing has changed. If you want fast copying or moving of files WITHIN the My Cloud or from a USB drive attached to the My Cloud, you generally have several basic options (there may be others).

  1. Use the WD My Cloud Dashboard, My Cloud mobile apps (for iOS and Android.
  2. Use SSH and issue the copy/move commands from one location to another through SSH.
  3. Use the MyCloud.com web portal to move/copy the data. (Within the portal, right click on the file and choose Copy or Move.)

The reason why using the Mac Finder or Windows File Explorer to move files between Shares/Folders within the My Cloud or from a USB drive attached to the My Cloud is because apparently the data will flow from the folder on the My Cloud (or USB drive), over your local network, then through YOUR computer, then back over the local network, into the new folder on the My Cloud. Couple that with using WiFi and you can see WHY the copying or moving of files can be slow for some people.