My Cloud Mirror can't backup to USB

I attach an external USB HD (3T) to My Cloud Mirror 3T, I have set up a backup job from NAS to USB, whenever I select “Backups” and run the job, the backup status bar just shows 0% for a long period of time.  

After I come back few hours later, the job was cancelled by itself.  Then I check the contents of the USB drive, the folders that I selected from from the backkup job were created succesfully, but each folder is empty.

I also notice that when a backup job is running, the CPU of the NAS always runs at high percentage; almost 100%. I found two rsync processes are running, each consumes about 42% of CPU usage.

I never get a backup job successfully.  Please help.

Many thanks in advance. 

Hello,

The WD My Cloud Mirror device supports the following formats for externally attached USB
drives:

 FAT/FAT32
 NTFS (read and write capability)
 HFS+J
 Linux Ext2, Ext3/Ext4
 XFS

Please see page 71 of the user manual to make sure that all the settings are correct.

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/UM/ENG/4779-705122.pdf

I am having exactly the same issue. I have been trying to work with support via emai, but to be honest, their recommendations are not very good. Below is what they suggested. I did all of these things multiple times and my backup still cancel’s itself after a while. I also have 2 to 3 rsync processes running when it is trying to do a backup.


We apologize for the inconvenience. Since you are having issues with your “Backup” to your USB external hard drive, we recommend you to reset the My Cloud EX2, then make sure that the firmware on the unit is up to date, if not, please update the firmware to the latest version. Also we recommend you to perform a System Diagnostics to the unit. Please see the links below to know how to reset the WD My Cloud EX2, how to update Firmware and how to run a System Diagnostics test:

Title: How to reset a WD My Cloud, Mirror, EX2, or EX4 Personal Cloud drive   
Link:   http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/10432/    

Title: How to manually or automatically update the firmware on a WD My Cloud, Mirror, EX2 or WD My Cloud EX4 Personal Cloud drive.   
Link:   http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/10440/    

Note: Do not interrupt the firmware upgrade process. Doing so may cause the device to malfunction or unable to boot. Please ensure you have multiple copies of your data (another backup) before updating your drive.   

Title: How to run a System Diagnostics test on a WD My Cloud, Mirror, EX2, or EX4 Personal Cloud drive.   
Link:   http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/10427/   

Additionally, I noticed that if I open the USB share and watch it while the device is trying to back up, the files are in fact being copied even though the percentage never moves past 0%.

However, when it cancels itself, it then goes in and deletes the copied files.

Weird right?

jmead3 wrote:

I am having exactly the same issue. I have been trying to work with support via emai, but to be honest, their recommendations are not very good. Below is what they suggested. I did all of these things multiple times and my backup still cancel’s itself after a while. I also have 2 to 3 rsync processes running when it is trying to do a backup.

I agree - the help that users seem to be getting from the WD’s tech support is really lacking in quality, useful answers. I just noticed another thread along the same lines for their EX4 product →   http://community.wd.com/t5/WD-My-Cloud-EX4/Multiple-USB-disks-on-USB-expansion-port/m-p/773209#M2334

While I understand tech support do need to cover the basics to make sure an user hasn’t missed anything obvious, often I have seen WD’s support asking really useless questions and offering useless advice. It’s not so much the fault of the tech support team as much as a fault of WD’s management team’s failure to realize that they need to better train the tech support staff on the common isses plaguing the users of the My Cloud products. I am not trying to bad mouth WD here…just airing my frank assessment of seeing multiple similar complaints from users about WD’s support.

jmead3 wrote:

Additionally, I noticed that if I open the USB share and watch it while the device is trying to back up, the files are in fact being copied even though the percentage never moves past 0%.

 

However, when it cancels itself, it then goes in and deletes the copied files.

 

Weird right?

Good finding. Actually, I don’t think it’s weird - when a backup fails I think it is supposed to clean up the partial backup by design…so that users are not mistaken into thinking the backup worked (yes, no user would think that if it shows 0% complee but it makes sense to me to clean up the incomplte backup.

I myself have not run the backup - but I wonder if the log file on the mirror leaves any clues. It may…or it may not. I have never run a backup (and I have EX2 but the firmware is very similar to the Mirror). To view the log file, you will need to SSH in to the mirror and navigate to /var/log directory and then look at user.log file. It contains lots of other info, so to see if a backup job actually leaves any crumbs in there to piece together, the best thing would be to ssh in and be ready to look at the log, then run the backup job and when you see that the partial backup on the USB drive is cleaned up (indicating the backup failed), look at the user.log. Best way would be to use the unix tail command (google if you aren’t familiar with the command syntax) to see the last n number of lines in the log (pick a number of lines arbitrarily -  this avoids seeing the whole file scroll through and just displays the last few lines in a file that are of interest to you).

Any update on this topic? I have the same issue. It is really anoying… 

Well, I’ll be another to say I’m having the exact same issue. Quite frustrating because you don’t find out until hours later that failed. Up until then, it’s writing all the files to the drive just fine. It did about 500 GB for me, then apparently “cancelled” itself. Also have the same issue with the progress bar being at 0% the entire time. 

I’m going to try different drive formats for the external USB drive to see if it makes any differnce. So far I’ve tried HFS+. I’ll see what happens with NTFS, FAT, etc. 

Another thing that’s weird is every time I plug in the external drive, I get notification in the MyCloud dashboard saying “USB device not supported”. Yet it reads/writes to the drive just fine.

Has anyone had any luck backing up to an external drive? I am considering on purchasing this device and would love to know if I can mirror to an external drive that would allow me to place the external in a fire proof box. 

Thank you for taking the time out to read my post.

Ralph

I wonder if the backup job names you are creating has space(s) in them. See →   http://community.wd.com/t5/WD-My-Cloud-EX4/Backup-not-working/m-p/792087#M2554

I just ran across this thread looking for answer to same problem.  I guess my problem is due to my backup USB drive being formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled).  It really bugs me that this drive doesn’t support drives formated for iMacs!  The tout the MyCloud Mirror as working with PC or Mac, and to some extent it does, but the fact you can’t back up to a Mac-formatted drive is very disappointing.  

USB drives formatted for Windows and Mac should work the same way. I think there is some other reason why your backup job is failing, one of which I mentioned in my last post.

fivedollar wrote:

I attach an external USB HD (3T) to My Cloud Mirror 3T, I have set up a backup job from NAS to USB, whenever I select “Backups” and run the job, the backup status bar just shows 0% for a long period of time.  

 

After I come back few hours later, the job was cancelled by itself.  Then I check the contents of the USB drive, the folders that I selected from from the backkup job were created succesfully, but each folder is empty.

 

I also notice that when a backup job is running, the CPU of the NAS always runs at high percentage; almost 100%. I found two rsync processes are running, each consumes about 42% of CPU usage.

 

I never get a backup job successfully.  Please help.

 

Many thanks in advance. 

Hi guys, we have passed this along to support. 

I just wanted to post a quick update.

The problem occurs from NAS to USB (AND) USB to NAS. I’ve also tried a number of different formats (NTFS, OSX Journaled, Fat 32, etc) and types of USB drive (thumb drive, usb hard drive, etc) and none of them work.

In early August they escalated my case to Level II technical support and I was contacted by someone. They remotely accessed my system and had me recreate the problems. They took a copy of the log files and said they would contact me back. I didn’t hear anything for a while.

On Tuesday (9/30/2014) I was contacted by someone else from Level II support. They seemed unaware of the first time Level II contacted me or the log files that were taken. We did the same thing this time except he recreated the problem himself while remotely connected to my machine. He took a new copy of the logs and said he was going to escalate it to the developers.

Hopefully, now that its up a level further we’ll all get an answer from the developers or maybe a new firmware. I’ll try to keep you all posted as I get new details.

Hi,

I have exctly the same problem, can’t backup my files on my EX2.

Did someone finally get a come back frome WD ?

Thanks

Jmead3, Did WD ever reply with a solution?

Thanks.

They responded around the middle of last month. It wasn’t particularly helpful. The tech asked me to upgrade to firmware 1.05.24. I checked and (at that time) there was no such firmware. My EX2 was still on 1.05.21 and .24 did not exist. I replied to him and asked him for further information and he said that he mistyped. By the time he responded 1.05.30 was already out and I had upgraded to that. It seems that 1.05.30 fixed the USB to NAS issue I was having.

However, on a side note, in the backup editor it seems like you should be able to select multiple files due to the fact that the selections are boxes (which typically indicate multiple choice), but you can only select one file or folder at a time. This means if you want multiple files and/or folders in a directory, you have to either take the whole directory and delete files or run multiple backup jobs.

I just bought a 8Tb My Cloud Mirror, and frankly, If I had been aware of this problem, I would have looked  else where.

Not being able to backup to an external USB drive that I can take off-site is a real let down and after reading the previous posts in this thread, WD don’t seem to be in any rush to tackling the problem.

I would seriously recommend not to purchase this device untill WD get their act together and fix this bug.

1 Like

I have recently purchased a My Cloud Mirror 8TB, and can also not backup from NAS to USB. I have been able to backup a folder which contains a few small files just as a test, but when I try to backup the folder with all my critical data it starts, but no progress bar is visible, and after a while it says “Backup Failed”. The backup folder in the USB hard drive was created, and it contains the root folder of my data, but no files or folder in it.

My firmware version is 1.05.30. According to an earlier post, this should have resolved the problem, but not in my case.

I am desperate for a solution please, as it is critical to be able to make a backup of the data that can be stored off-site.

Thanks

Depending on your file structure, a temporary work-around may be to use the copy functionality in the web file viewer app.

To access it, log into the desktop and then apps>web file viewer. You can only select one folder (or file) at a time, hence why the file structure needs to be suitable, but you can copy a folder (and all its content and sub-folders) that way.

It’s not the most user-friendly way, but it does work to send such a tree from the NAS to a USB drive. I used it yesterday/overnight last night to send some media files from my NAS box to an attached USB drive, and it did about 330GB in the period (it’s a bit slow, but in my case mainly as my USB drive is only USB2.0).

Less than ideal I grant you, but it may help at least until WD get the other issue resolved. Once started it will just carry on in the background, although equally once started I don’t know of any way to alter or cancel it (the dashboard will just say “updating” until either it completes or your web connection times-out). But it does carry on in the background even if the dashboard view goes elsewhere.

hi all,

are there any news regarding this issue ? i also have the problem that the backup from NAS to USB does not work (it starts and after some minutes it fail). I tried two different disks from WD (USB 2.0 and USB 3.0) but none worked. It’s a bit annoying that such a basic task and NAS functionality doesn’t work as expected.

regards