The My Cloud OS5 4TB Gen 2 device I have seems to drop off the network after 2/3 minutes since the most recent October firmware update.
It’s similar symptoms I have had with indexing or Twonky impacting resources, but I have disabled cloud access, uninstalled all apps and still it lasts no more than 2/3 minutes before it runs into problems. There seems to be a CPU spike around the3 minute mark around when this problem occurs, but I can’t figure what is causing it.
What are the LEDs doing, both front and back? Do you have a static IP address for your device? When you think it has dropped from the network have you checked its status on your Router? See example image from mine below.
For the LEDs, it blinks blue on boot and turns to solid blue thereafter. For ethernet, it is active blinking with hard drive activity, but after the ‘freeze’ seems to be inactive and the ethernet light just gives a little pulse every second or so. Though I can still ping the IP from cmd, so it is still ‘active’ in some way.
For the IP it was set to DHCP but I changed it to static to troubleshoot, but made no difference.
Though on my router dashboard, it shows the device well and connected, though it still does not appear in Windows (ping in cmd aside)
The only ‘odd’ clue is that, trying a network feature, like the firmware update options gives a “check network connection” message … but I can only see this message over my working network connection … and certainly the server is working on the WD end, so it is not handling network connections well for some reason
I download the update, place the file on my desktop, and then go back to the dashboard to perform the manual update selecting the file on my desktop when it says to. See example image below. Click on, tap, or activate image to enlarge it.
@cat0w - For the firmware update, I can get as far as here, but then it seems to hang permanently on this ‘upgrading’ screen with no movement on the progress bar.
@Cerberus - So I did just have enough time for the connection to be live to get an output from the SSH … it is as follows.
The output is worse than I thought though still could be worse, and certainly all worked perfectly until the day of the update. I gues si didn’t check before now as the dashboard SMART readout has everything as being fine. (Ignore the slightly low temperature, I put it in a cooler spot, just incase of CPU throttling with it hitting the 100%)
It can’t be indexing though, can it? Cloud services are off. The dashboard made no mention of indexing percentages, just ‘connected’ or ‘disabled’ depending on my setting. It could be wrong though… is there another way to check if indexing is occurring?
Hello, My 40TB EX4100 w/ FW@ 5.26.300 does same. My open incidents, dating from 22 October 2023 with ‘WD Support’ (apparently an oxymoron) remain unresolved with assertion that RAID 5 data is corrupted. However, all drives check healthy and LEDs are solid blue. Despite those facts Support directed a manual FW update to 5.27.157. Any attempt gets bogus msg ‘Unable to contact firmware update server.’ I have ~175 40GB files or ~6TB of video I am trying to move off the device but due to the constant timeout/dropoff I am having little luck getting it copied anywhere. Any insight into how to recover the data or knowledge of how your problem was resolved is appreciated.
Thx, good suggestion. I did search there and unless I missed something all are pretty old from 2020 and none come close to matching my EX4100’s behavior. Only @Eire12’s post describes what I’m seeing. Especially the consistently predictable ‘device locks-up’ and ‘drops off-line’ death spiral syndrome.
My 4 big problems are:
[1] Can’t successfully complete Manual Firmware Update. These steps were taken: (1) Down load file ‘WDMyCloudEX4100_5.27.157_prod.bin’ from support page using Safari browser to Mac. (2) Select update button. Open file and observe histogram for download reaches 100%. (3) Receive Msg ‘Firmware file not found. Please Try Again’
[2] Can’t Check for Updates; Receive Msg ‘Unable to connect to the firmware update server. Please check the network connection and try again.’
[3] Can’t Enable Auto Update. Receive Msg ‘Unable to connect to the firmware update server. Please check the network connection and try again.’
[4] Can’t Perform 40 second reset
Steps followed:
Remove power cord from the device.
Press and hold reset while reconnecting power cord.
While holding reset press and release power-on button
Curious as to how can a file issue can hamper the NAS’ ability to connect with WD FW Update Server?
Forgot to mention current tact is to sign into ssd and run diagnostics… will report findings as soon as I determine why I can’t login even though I carefully enter pwd that I made up?
okay… meanwhile, should 'smartctl -a -d at a /dev/sda, sdb, sdc, sdd be used instead for SATA drives; how can drive-type be confirmed through dashboard or SSH?
Agree. Thus far ‘no joy’ from attempts to update FW. have examined html source for page in attempt to understand where device thinks the update server is or should be… no luck there.
Have strenuously requested to speak with domestic WD expert on firmware update and nothing but ‘crickets.’
Can reference tables or meta data (i.e., firmware update server URL) be ascertained via SSH layer commands?
Is there a debug mode whereby I can step through the execution logic used to manually retrieve and install the FW?
Early in my IT career as an IBM OS MVS Systems Programmer I spent many hours reading ‘core dumps’ and setting traps using S/370 instruction step mode to track down memory corruption caused by errant routines operating in privileged state (i.e., root level).
Thank you for helping find potential diagnostics needed to identify and confirm the root cause of this problem.
2023-11-01T04:00:00Z; Yes, I have a spare albeit smaller capacity SATA drive. I conclude capacity is irrelevant to the proscribed text case and will proceed in the morning (late night now on the East Coast). Continued thanks and appreciation for diagnostic guidance and analysis. 2023-11-03T04:00:00Z I was unable to re-format my spare HD on MAC PC so decided to order cheapest SATA device available. [clarification on MAC. Apparently it see’s and mounts NTFS formatted drives ‘Read Only.’ I no longer have a working WinTel box so I decided to try alternate approach] Meanwhile, I ran Dashboard ScanDisk utility and as expected it failed. However, on a lark tried the manual firmware update and to my surprise it worked. I re-ran ScanDisk and it failed.
Not deterred I tried to copy another 42GB file off the device and after ~15 mins CPU spiked @100%. I tried to display offending process(s) but display would not cooperate and after about 15 mins I’m disappointed to report the device went offline leaving ~160 40+GB files that I need to copy.
Consequently, I’m left to wonder what will happen when I insert the one new hard drive; what difference might it make?
Thank you for additional diagnostic recommendations.
P.S. WD Support reply to SSH scandisk (i.e., df -i and df -h) report details in block quote:
A question or two comes mind. First, why they are consistently mute regarding the device locking up and going offline, a critical issue IMO and second, why do they assert the files are corrupted given the SMARTCTL diagnostics show NO ERRORS?
Blockquote
Hello TIM,
Thank you for your reply.
I got the case reviewed by the engineering team and this is what could be done:
You could try running the command “dmesg” over putty and will be able to see the errors.
2023-10-28T16:14:51.134628-04:00 di=b2cj7JZ1ei warning kernel: [ 124.578329] EXT4-fs (md1): warning: mounting fs with errors, running e2fsck is recommended
2023-10-28T16:14:51.134628-04:00 di=b2cj7JZ1ei warning kernel: [ 124.578329] EXT4-fs (md1): warning: mounting fs with errors, running e2fsck is recommended
2023-10-28T16:20:09.778070-04:00 di=b2cj7JZ1ei err kernel: [ 443.235401] inconsistent data on disk
2023-10-28T16:20:09.778081-04:00 di=b2cj7JZ1ei err kernel: [ 443.239124] EXT4-fs: ext4_free_blocks:4838: aborting transaction: IO failure in __ext4_forget
Also you could try these steps mentioned:
Run File system check and below is the link with the steps:
My Cloud: Scan Disk File System Check and Repair My Cloud: Scan Disk File System Check and Repair
If no error, try performing a system only restore from dashboard
My Cloud: System, Quick and Full Restore a EX4100 My Cloud: System, Quick and Full Restore a EX4100
If issue still persists or if there are any errors reported in file system check then take a complete backup of data and perform full factory restore.
My Cloud: File System Check Failed or Has Detected Errors My Cloud: File System Check Failed or Has Detected Errors
If you have any further questions, please reply to this email and we will be happy to assist you further.
Sincerely,
George D
Western Digital Customer Service and Support
My back is against the wall. I get it’s not a ‘good idea’ to copy the data, however, I need to copy my data to a more stable and higher capacity PR4100 NAS
The sales pablum had me believing RAID 5 would enable me to recover any and all data across a drive failure. I inferred that file system issues could also be recoverable through a similar mechanism. Now it seems the only way to recover is a full backup of the entire 40Tb EX4100 device. This is not a viable option due to the fact the device constantly locks up and goes off-line.
Is there any way to put EX4100 drives into PR4100 solely to copy off the files I need to recover?
The Dashboard ‘Sandisk’ appears to repair nothing. No matter how many times I run it, thus far the results never vary. It doesn’t report what it finds, and it doesn’t repair anything. What am I missing?
Consequently, I examined and tried to run ‘e2fsck’ -p -f -C 0 /dev/sda, and for devices … /sdb, /sdc, and /sdd.
Should e2fsck also be run against /dev/md1?
Perhaps I don’t understand the proper syntax or have not properly conditioned the environment (i.e., assure device is not checking drive health). I sign into SSH as soon as possible due to the lock-up and timeout issue because I don’t know how long the scan/repair operation will take.
