MyCloud 5tb external USB drive flaky when when on splitter

When I Plug My new My Book 5tb drive into the MyCloud USB port all alone it works fine, but when I use a new Anker usb 3.0 - four port splitter and plug the drive into it, it continually drops the drive or doesn’t recognize the volume intermittently. Does it need to be a powered splitter? Its a powered drive so It shouldn’t, It worked fine with 3 lesser WD my books and a Hitachi all plugged into it before without a hitch. I’m confused why it doesn’t work.

without dmesg output from the mycloud, i can only speculate.

Are you talking about plugging it into a My Cloud or to your computer?

I meant the MyCloud USB It is fine when it is plugged directly into the MyCloud, but when I use the splitter the drive continually drops off and gets directory errors on it for not being ejected. The smaller drives I had no problems dropping all 4 plugged in at the same time same hub.

Not sure how to access the dsmeg.

Many drives of different brands do not like being plugged into a USB HUB, this sounds like one. I have a drive that can be flaky if in the hub but fine into the PC.

It’s accessed via the mycloud’s command line console, over ssh.

When a USB device enters or leaves the USB arbitration pool, it makes messages in the diagnostic message (dmesg) log. If there is a failure, it will give some cryptic error code(s) as to the nature of the failure.

It is accessed with

dmesg

at the command line. If there is something in particular that you are looking for in the dmesg log (as by default, calling dmesg that way will just blast the screen with everything that has happened since power on!) you can pipe its output to grep, which is used to look for specific key words you specify. eg, something like this:

dmesg | grep USB

which would return lines from dmesg that contain the word “USB”.

For example, this is the dmesg output of my linux based laptop, after inserting a USB mouse dongle.

[ 1109.674868] usb 1-1: USB disconnect, device number 2

[ 1111.319624] usb 1-1: new full-speed USB device number 5 using xhci_hcd
[ 1111.493504] usb 1-1: New USB device found, idVendor=046d, idProduct=c52f
[ 1111.493520] usb 1-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[ 1111.493529] usb 1-1: Product: USB Receiver
[ 1111.493538] usb 1-1: Manufacturer: Logitech
[ 1111.504247] input: Logitech USB Receiver as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-1/1-1:1.0/0003:046D:C52F.0003/input/input12
[ 1111.505788] hid-generic 0003:046D:C52F.0003: input,hidraw0: USB HID v1.11 Mouse [Logitech USB Receiver] on usb-0000:00:14.0-1/input0
[ 1111.510596] input: Logitech USB Receiver as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-1/1-1:1.1/0003:046D:C52F.0004/input/input13
[ 1111.564328] hid-generic 0003:046D:C52F.0004: input,hiddev0,hidraw1: USB HID v1.11 Device [Logitech USB Receiver] on usb-0000:00:14.0-1/input1

For a USB failure, it will give some diagnostic information there about the failure, which can guide us about what is causing it/why it is happening behind that USB Hub, and not when on the root hub.

Thanks for your response. You would think a Western digital drive wouldn’t act up on their own device, but then again we have the MyCloud Which doesn’t even like itself :slight_smile:

Thanks for your information. I have shut down a couple times since. I hate to make it error again as it took 24 hours to transfer everything back on the drive last time. I might give it a go anyway,

I do not transfer files from drive to NAS. Instead, I have my drives connected directly to PC’s USB and send files from PC to NAS. No prblems.

Yes I do the same. Network transfer is too slow.

I’ve had problems with unpowered and then a powered Anker USB 3.0 hub and both powered and unpowered USB hard drives. I had a long back and forth with Anker on their unpowered USB hub and they sent me a powered hub and still had problems on certain computers/devices.

It is best to use a powered USB hub if at all possible. The My Cloud supposedly supports up to seven USB devices but many of us have had problems using more than four or five USB drives on the My Cloud.