I purchased this drive to serve as a portable SD card backup without lugging my laptop around. Was recently on the road with this, moving all the footage/photos to make room on the SD card each time.
I have now lost more than half of the SD cards content (many hours worth of valuable, irreplaceable footage) that was supposed to be backed up. Disappointed and horrified. This product does not work as advertised, no matter what WD’s reasoning/excuses are. The Copy/Move functionality on the Media preferences tab should work when it’s put in front of consumers.
Hi @avntcn , I agree this is ABSOLUTELY not supposed to happen.
Can you please explain in a bit more detail what your process was, and what the output was?
To clarify : were you using one-touch import? Auto-import? Copy, or move? Were you able to verify the files (via browsing via the My Cloud app) had transferred after each offload?
Wanted to backup without use of a computer, so set the mode to “Auto-Import” & “Move” (rather than copying and manually emptying the SD card thru the camera). Rotated between 4 x 128GB SanDisk Extreme Pro (4K files average about 3hrs worth of footage for each).
The backup folders are created, dated at time of backup with different identifiers.
For some backups, there are missing files (eg. videos clips only start getting copied from file C0030 onwards. C0001–C0029 is missing).
Missing files also applies to images within time-lapse sequences.
On one particular backup, the entire video folder (BACKUP DATE/SD Card/PRIVATE/M4ROOT/CLIPS) is missing, with only the photos folder (BACKUP DATE/SD card/DCIM) getting copied. This alone represents half a day of missing footage.
Used the MyCloud app after a few backups only to realise but it was too late, had already cycled thru the SD cards again making data recovery highly unlikely. Ran “Control Panel > Media > Rebuild Content Database” just in case this was an indexing error. No change, files are not there. Being uniquely separated with timestamp for backup and its own SD card identifier, the files should not have been treated as pre-existing files to be skipped.
Everyone please be warned. This product does not do what it’s supposed to do. I’ve lost too much irreplaceable files to rely on this product again.
Was running 2 separate cameras, so the filenames would invariably overlap at some point. This seemed to be the drive (a 4TB Wireless Pro) skipping backup of files based solely on filename rather than other details (write time, file size etc).
Thanks for the detailed steps, @avntcn - I’m going to get this escalated internally ASAP. I have a couple more clarifying questions:
Is your camera set to restart file numbering with each new card, or resume? Ie I have a card in my camera – it does 01.JPG, 02.JPG, and then I put a brand new card in. Is the first file written 03.JPG, or does it go back to 01.JPG?
What Extreme Pro card format were you shooting – SD, or microSD?
Back at home, any luck running RescuePro (provided in pack with the SanDisk cards) to recover your content? (I agree it’s a long shot given how much it may have cycled, but still)
Just did a manual copy (heading into the Control Panel > Media > SD Card > Copy Now) instead of “Auto-Import” and “Move” files, and comparing the card contents with the backup folder side by side, it’s still skipping out files. Very unreliable and buggy product.
Indeed, I just purchased a 4TB one one week ago, to function more or less, as portable backup storage for files not used often so as to have them in my macbook, yet to be accessible on demand. Perhaps the past 5 days, all the time I had spent on this device was to just get it working, which most of the time was not the case. I had to study all that there is available in the FAQ and knowledge base, in great detail, just to make sense of its unreasonable behaviors. Then, when it comes to functionality and also performance, both questionable. To me it looks a semi-finished product, and due to the USB 1.0 type wireless speeds (when it decides to actually appear, or show its web-ui, the whole cost is not justified for the (in-) convenience it offers. At this point I had to full reset the device at least 5 times, and without even changing any of the settings, at least it stays connected fortunatelly, however after copying the SDcard contents, it may very well be that it needs 1-2 system (no-data) resets in order not loop, after the restart. Then where is the user management part? Can it really support creating 1-2 users more that can access it? if I create them from the shell will there be any permissions honored? Can it take a time machine backup over aerial connection instead of the usb one? and Lets suppose I want to develop for this, what else is there besides the GPL pack? But all my interest is in getting to know better, if there is any plans to optimize it and remove all the bloatware init systemd services, or at least make more well informed use of them, so it does not lag when SSHing for 5 and 10 seconds in a raw before writing two characters. Also I’ve seen in the community pages some efforts to create proper fully fledged linux environment. I’m not that much into this specifically, but generally my only solution I’d think would be to override the device services’ and set it up as I see /think fit/best. Otherwise if this situation is like that and the intention that it is what it is, I will perhaps take it back and consieder something else for storage.
Thanks for all the info, @avntcn - this really does help a lot.
I’m very perturbed that you are continuing to see the skipping issue – @SBrown , can you please follow up via PM and send @avntcn up with a customer service number so we can officially log all this and figure out next steps?
Based on how the copy function is coded within the device’s hardware, this is absolutely aberrant behavior (and truly not what our other users are seeing). If you don’t mind, may I ask you to try one more thing so that we may zero-in on the root cause? Please do another test, but this time:
Format the SD card via your camera. (This part is really important for this test)
Power on your My Passport Wireless Pro, and connect via your phone/tablet. Navigate to 192.168.60.1 in a web browser — is the bell icon in the upper right red? If so, please click it, post what it says, and follow the directions.
Shoot a bunch of photos on your SD card – I’d recommend not using “restart numbering”, but if you have time, it would help a lot to try both “restart” and “resume” numbering.
Try a card copy operation now, and let us know your results.
Thank you very much again for all your patience in helping us to get to the bottom of this issue – we’re also going to try to replicate this issue here in HQ. As a fellow photographer/drone-o-grapher, I realize this bug has caused a ton of heartache and disappointment, and I really appreciate your input here.
I had to return the drive while it was still within the return window. Losing footage is not something I can afford to do, so have to give this product a skip. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to try the test you mentioned.
Thanks for the update, @avntcn - I’m very disappointed we weren’t able to help you out here.
Thank you very much for bringing this to our attention, however – we’ll be replicating your exact setup and attempting to re-create your issue in the lab so that we can better understand how to prevent this from happening for other users in your situation.
