Pluggin in USB freezes WD PR4100

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.

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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 :frowning: 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?

Can anyone one confirm that the new firmware 2.30.165 resolves this issue?

Issue regarding UAS devices is fixed in 2.30.165.
Solution to upgrade has been added to KBA
https://support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?ID=15167

With a connected external USB HDD, my PR4100 freezes when backing up from the NAS to USB.

I have connected various WD (new 2017 4TB WD My Passport for Mac USB 3.0 for example) external 2.5 drives. All HFS+ (Mac OS Extended) formatted. Sometimes it manages to stay “alive” but it usually freezes up on me, resulting me in having to push&hold the power button for a force shutdown and living through the file consistency checking hell…

Is there any hint of how to getting the system to remain stable while backing up/ connecting external USB HDDs?

Yes, it’s running on 2.30.165

I have the same problem. Firmware is 2.30.193.

I can get the PR4100 to recognize the external USB HDD however the USB randomly disconnects thus rendering it unusable.

What is the output of dmesg | tail over ssh?
It could be that the usb port provides insufficient power to spin up the disk.

Recently purchased a PR4100, firmware is current. Plugged in a 2TB Seagate into the front USB to copy from it. Ever since under backups in the Dashboard it says USB port 1 is in use. The drive is disconnected and the PR4100 has been rebooted several times since. Also, some of the files had copied and some hadn’t. And now I can’t delete the copied files and directories as it says they are in use.

Besides formatting the system is there anything I can do?

Same here.
My PR4100 works under 2.31.204.1206.2019.
Connecting any USB drive, including WD, brings this little thing to its knees.
The connection of certain HITACHI disks makes it bricks.
I have never found a way to transfer data securely via USB.
Poor software quality, just a shame …

@RLMCN, pls contact the WD support team directly if you are having problem with the WD drives.

Hello dswv42,

Thank you for contacting me.

My NAS: PR4100 / WUBP29110190 / NAS WD RAID5 / 2.31.204
My computer OS: macOS 10.13.6 (17G10021)

Regarding USB-connected drives on PR4100:

  • The disk: Hitachi HTS725050A9A362 (HFS+J) makes the system hang.
  • The disk: TOSHIBA MQ01ABB200 (HFS+J) never mounts.
  • The disk: WD My Passport 0820 (HFS+J) mounts but totally freeze the Web User Interface.

Drives were connected directly to the NAS (no hub or whatever).
Any drive USB-connected will make Web User Interface nearly not responsive, WD My Passport 0820 just freezes it.
I never found a way to use any USB-mounted drive on this system. Even uploading all the data when the NAS arrived was done through the network (took hours), no direct USB connection was properly functioning. I searched the Knowledge Base, no proposed solutions was found working for me.

Regarding WD support:

I contacted WD support (11 of August 2019) about an issue ( #081119-14025079) with the Web User Interface: the session timeout is about one minute, whatever the setting in the options. This means every minutes or so you have to login again. It makes the administration of the NAS nearly impossible. I never received any solution for this issue from WD Support: transmitted to development team, case closed. The last update to 2.31.204 didn’t fix this issue neither.

Following this 2.31.204 update a new issue appeared.
My NAS have 3 folders named XXX-NAS-01, XXX-NAS-02 and XXX-NAS-03. The first XXX-NAS-01 folder is always visible in the Finder and accessible for applications.
The folders XXX-NAS-02 and XXX-NAS-03 are available when the NAS powers up, then after few minutes are regularly unmounted and unavailable. Connecting again makes them available for some time, then they disappear again…

Will I contact WD support about this?
Well, maybe, I don’t know, I was not impressed…

Honestly, I did not expect such a low level of performance from WD.
The hardware of the NAS looks fine, but the (Linux based?) software is not even at a beta test level.
There are two users’ accounts: admin and myself declared on the NAS. This is for the time being a two-computer setup. Just the file server is used, sharing 3 folders, no other application is running (even backup still handled by a MacMini Server). It should be a trivial situation.
This system is just not enough tested to my eyes.
I deeply regret this purchase.
Next month I will have a trial run with a SYNOLOGY product, in the same configuration.
If no such basic issues are found, I will just power down definitely the PR4100.
I need a trustful and safe system, what the PR4100 is not.
Regards,

@RLMCN someone will reach out regarding your USB drive issue.

I wonder if this issue has been resolved? The only way for me to copy files to my PR4100 is through USB backup. If I connect an external drive through USB and use the normal file transfer method (dragging files from one folder to another ie from the USB to the NAS) it just freezes up the PR4100.