My Cloud Gen 2 vs Gen 1

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

My Local Best Buy only has My Cloud 4TB Gen 1 on the shelf now, but they are getting new units (probably Gen 2) soon.

I’ve read here that the Gen 2 has a 25% faster uP and more RAM.

  1. Would the Gen 2 have faster file transfer write speeds?
  2. Does Gen 2 fix the spin down/sleep problems I’ve read about here?
  3. Any other advantage to Gen 2 worth waiting for? - such as faster USB 3 write speeds?
2

Hello there,

I have not tried this unit yet so i do not have this information, lets see if another user can share some information or tips on this matter.

3

You can do a search on the forum for My Cloud Gen2 and find all sorts of info

https://community.wd.com/t/difference-between-mycloud-gen1-and-gen2/161761

https://community.wd.com/t/unable-to-create-a-backup-from-one-my-cloud-gen2-to-another-identical-my-cloud/150820

https://community.wd.com/t/usb-backup-ver2-x-gen2/148741

4

Like the pervious poster indicated, do a subforum search. There are several threads that detail the differences between the older v3.x/4.x My Cloud’s and the newer v2.x My Clouds and even more threads that discuss the sleep issue(s). There is some brief general bench marking information at the following thread/post:

https://community.wd.com/t/new-release-firmware-release-04-04-02-105-1-27-2016/148441/89

5

Thanks for the links guys. I had read all but the last link, which down near the end does have some read/write rates for a Gen 2 My Cloud.

I was able to get both a 4 TB Gen 1 and 4 TB Gen 2 My Cloud for testing. Updated both to their respective latest firmware. So I was able to also answer some of my own questions used with a Mac Pro. Hope this will help someone else.

  1. Would the Gen 2 have faster file transfer write speeds?

The write speeds with my Mac Pro were disappointing with the Gen 1 device. I got about 35 MB/s with AFP and about 55 MB/s with SMB. The Gen 2 device was much better with about 65 MB/s using AFP and 95-100 MB/s using SMB. Read speeds with the Gen 2 My Cloud were actually better with AFP at about 95 MB/s vs 77 MB/s with SMB.

  1. Does Gen 2 fix the spin down/sleep problems I’ve read about here?

I read all (?) the threads on the sleep/spin down issues. Nothing I could do with the My Cloud Web Interface, Twonky, or SSH could get the Gen 1 device to spin down or sleep. Nothing worked. The Gen 2 device spins down and sleeps like it should. The only thing I did to it was set the Twonky rescan interval to 0, but I don’t know if that was even necessary (I didn’t check it set to -1). I didn’t even have to disable the NTP (time) service. So it appears the Sleep is fixed on the Gen 2.

  1. Any other advantage to Gen 2 worth waiting for? - such as faster USB 3 write speeds?

Unfortunately I didn’t check the Gen 1 USB 3 interface before I became frustrated with its sleep problem and took it back. Besides a few obvious differences that can be gleaned from the Gen1 and Gen 2 User Manuals, the Gen 2 is much faster rebooting, which was welcome. I didn’t have time to discover other differences.

6

There are both hardware and firmware differences between the two single bay My Cloud generations. Don’t know if there is a difference between the type’s of hard drive used in the gen 2 My Cloud’s. Gen 1’s typically have a WD Red hard drive (5400 RPM Class SATA 6 Gb/s 64MB) within the unit. Also don’t know if there is a difference between the NIC or other hardware used between the two versions that might cause the difference in read/write speed between the two generations.

Gen2 (v2.x):
Processor: Marvell armada 370 (2core, 800MHz)
Memory: 512 MB Ram

Gen1 (v3.x/v4.x):
Processor: Mindspeed Comcerto C2000 (2 core, 650MHz)
Memory: 256 MB Ram

The Gen 2 uses a form of Busy Box as the OS while Gen 1 uses a cut down version of Debian.

7

There is full debian wheezy, but in fw v04 - All software rebuilded with “Memory page size = 64kb” (Normal is 4kb).
Full hardware info for Gen1: https://ftp.anionix.ru/WDMyCloud/WDMyCloud-Gen1/Developing/Hardware%20info.txt

Notes for speendown HDD: https://ftp.anionix.ru/WDMyCloud/WDMyCloud-Gen1/HDD%20Spindown%20and%20sleep%20mode.txt