Whenever I plug in a USB, my PR4100 freezes. I am plugging in a 4GB drive. What’s going on?
Hello,
What make and model of USB drive?
What file system? exFAT, NRFS, HFS+ ?
Any content on it? or is it empty?
Is it a UAS device?
I had this exact problem. If you plug in a non-WD USB device, it will freeze the NAS. WD says non-WD drives are compatible but I tried a number of them, including 8TB Seagate, and a number of small thumbdrives, all will freeze it. When I called WD, they say they can only guarantee the drive working with WD devices. They say you can use different manufacturers for the internal drives, but I am betting they have some kind of fail-safe to prevent a different company’s devices from being plugged in via USB.
@spenfree
What make and model of USB drive?
What file system? exFAT, NRFS, HFS+ ?
Any content on it? or is it empty?
Is it a UAS device?
http://winaero.com/blog/check-if-your-usb-3-0-device-supports-usb-attached-scsi-uas-protocol/3
I have tried a number of flash drives (1-15GB range), all exFAT, and two different Seagate external hard drives (4TB and 8TB) with NTFS. All drives had content on them already and worked perfectly before and after attempting to plug them into the PR4100. When I pulled them from the 4100, the NAS resumed functioning after a power cycle but immediately stopped working when a device was plugged in. The only time I did not have a problem was pluging in a WD 4TB MyBook external drive.
They were not UAS to my knowledge.
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I have the same problem… Drives are all NTFS 3, 4, & 8TB, 3 & 4 worked but 8 would not. Copied the content off the 4TB and then deleted all the files and put 3.5TB off the 8TB on the drive. The 4TB then locked it up the same as the 8. Seems to be dependent on the number of files as this 3.5TB had 10X the number of files. Looking across the web this seems to be a historical problem on a number of WD products.
exact same problem here, and trying to contact support and send them a bugs and they don’t care. Its [Deleted-Be respectful] nonsense.
I too am experiencing this problem on the PR2100. I have been contacted by WD support and the issue has now been escalated to level 2 support. Really hope this is an easy damage free fix. glad to see it isn’t just me.
Same problem. Bought a PR4100 this weekend and tried to connect an external drive and it froze up the NAS. I thought it might be related to the drive being encrypted so I tried connecting another unencrypted (HFS+ journaled) drive and the NAS became unresponsive right away. By the way: The unencrypted drive is a WD Green 6TB. An FAT thumb drive connected just fine.
Same problem for me too.
WD PR2100 crashes upon trying to hookup a Seagate 4tb USB3 drive (external power supply).
This has happened since buying the NAS four months ago. Ive done everything obvious, system restore on the PR2100… I’ve formatted the USBHD as OSX Journaled, and also FAT32, same issue both times on this empty drive. Thumb drives work fine, another USB drive has worked fine - but I purchased this 4tb Seagate specifically to backup this NAS every other week or so.
I’ve got a case open… but no answers from WD yet. Seems like it is a common issue, I’d love to find out what is causing this and get a firmware update or something. Please keep me posted!
+1 for this. This is ridiculous. USB Storage is a standard. Can’t believe WD would not be able to support this. The drive i performed my back ups on from my MyCloud EX2 ULTRA could not be used on my PR4100 without locking it up. So much for backup and restoring it. WD this is incredible poor!!!
I had the same issue. I attached several drives from another manufacturer. All were used on a MacBook Pro and were formatted for Mac and were in the 1-4TB range. All were either USB 2 or USB 3 drives. The only way I could get the PR4100 to copy was to “hibernate” or more correctly power off, attach the drive and reboot. From there everything worked fine. I do not know if it will work with windows formatted drives or not But all mine were copied successfully. It should not matter but FYI: PR4100 4 WD Red 4TB drives Raid 5 configuration.
Same issue here with a WD PR2100.
As far as I’m concerned a USB to the end user is USB.
I really don’t care what is in the box or what protocol is used to transfer
information. This is on WD to fix their problem with a firmware update.
In a Pro Level NAS this should not be an issue.
WD fix your problem and own up to it.
4 Likes
Agreed, this is a required function for our use. Will be returning a new PR4100 once we confirm no firmware solution is planned from Western Digital.
From the PR4100 brochure:
One-touch copying
With an integrated copy button the My Cloud Pro Series can back up and preserve content from an external USB device in a single move.
There is no footnote published on above stating a UAS limitation.
Is there an update from Western Digital. Are there plans to support UAS drives? Because I am already lighting up the reviews on Amazon and Newegg basically warning people about this flaw. I just purchased an 8TB external USB drive to act as a mirror to my PR4100. So I am a little perturbed that I am out money on the drive and I am living with a NAS with a critical design flaw. USB 3.0 devices that use the UAS protocol are getting more common and I am playing Russian roulette with my data every time I plug an unknown USB device into this thing.
I like to see a compatibility list, and/or a commitment as to when this will be fixed. the manual does not point out this issue. And external drives do not exactly list if they use the old Bulk transfer method or the newer UAS method. This is a point of serious customer confusion.
Western Digital Please acknowledge receipt and communicate an action plan
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Just sharing my experience. I just bought a PR4100 and wanted the migrate my data from a 4tb Lacie. Every time I would plug it in the PR4100 would freeze and i would have to hard reboot it. After looking on the web and in the WD Community thread I found some people that said to try a WD external. Went out bought a 4tb WD External, moved everything form the Lacie to the WD. Plugged the new WD external into the PR4100 and everything worked fine. Was able to press the copy button and it moved over all of my data.
mine does this too just got it yesterday and had backed all my data up onto two seagate 5tb drives it took me weeks ive had to plug the drives into my laptop and put the data on through wifi 
it will take me months to get everything on
Similar thread here:
https://community.wd.com/t/pr2100-locks-up-disconnects-from-network-when-attaching-usb-hard-drive/190917
I will give you same advice as in previous thread - open a ticket with WD support and demand a fix. Even better, if you are still in return period, throw it on their heads and buy something from Qnap or Synology. More people complains, higher chances of WD actually fixing their (insert profane word for human excrement here).
I actually came to conclusion that buying PR4100 was big mistake - support is full of trained brain-dead monkeys, product was advertised with features that were never implemented or are broken - USB3 (broken UAS), Z-Wave (incorrectly compiled, broken), Google drive backup (never introduced), forum for Network Product ideas is a joke, cause no idea ever made it live as per my knowledge.
Once you spent your cash, you are dead to WD. Stay away.
Has there been any update on this situation? Does the PR4100 still render a USB device unusable?
