PR4100 Space left and ways to reclaim/delete unwanted ffmpeg thumbnails?

Like many, I thought perhaps the new indexing combined with something I loaded took more room than I thought when I got the first warning alerts about the drives filling up. I deleted a few things and was surprised when it kept going down even after I shut off and deleted Plex and shut of twonky.

Based on Runaway-ffmpeg-process I shut off cloud access and have hopefully stopped the PR4100 from filling itself up.

Right now the dash claims I have 1.18 TB free; accessing as a server from one of my Macs shows it has 1.74 TB free. I wonder at the discrepancy and about whether there is any way to delete this thumbnails (which I do not want or need).

Is there any way to identify which files had this done to them? Would deleting and reloading video files that had been transcoded work in reclaiming the space?

Trying to make this all work without deleting a lot of files so this is more functional again.

Thanks.

There is no option to clear the thumbnail previews or pre-transcoding videos globally. Try turning off those individual shares which should clear the thumbnails & pre-transcoding videos.

https://support-en.wd.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/30021/kw/indexing

Sorry to butt in here but I am seriously peed off with this shambolic attempt of an OS update.

The saying “if it’s no broke don’t fix it” comes to mind.

I have spend about £600+ on the Pr2100 a few years ago, 8TB in raid 1 so essentially 4TB with the other 4TB mirrored.

Since this stupid software update I have lost over 300GB of space due to the thumbnail issue. WD are absolutely useless. I was in touch with someone from there & he took over my computer did his logs & now is radio silent after a number of emails.

Users who are into SSH things should not be coming up with solutions to a problem that hasn’t been beta tested properly.

Firmware updates do absolutely sod all. The app is OS3 gave you remote access to your files so for example if you wanted to watch a movie when your away from home you could do it. You do NOT lose absolute loads of GB of memory. They have seriously not thought about this.

Any customer that has a lot of data on there drive that wants to use the app has to be conned out of 100’s of GB & there solution well turn cloud off? That’s no a solution that’s a cop out to a stupid problem they brought upon themselves.

What I would like to know that no one can answer is if you turn cloud off, it stops the stupid process but see if you turn it back on see the thumbnail issue does it finish off where it started or does it repeat the whole process as that is what I am going through at the moment, I switch it off after 3 days as it’s still going & then put it back on again to be met with more GB of data getting lost.

Absolute livid at such a stupid process. The firmware as well is a disgrace it claims it gives you a % of how much time you have left indexing aye it does that right enough but see when it disappears it still works away in the background using more GB sorry folks but this message community board is the only way these people actually react to messages as there phone lines & emails are non responsive. I’m seriously thinking about moving to another NAS system they have completely changed stuff with no real benefit apart from users to upgrade there drives when they take a hammering & are running out of space

Users should be able to control what is on the drive not WD!!!

While I share much of emirb351’s frustration, I am trying to follow through on your reply and have some follow up questions.

I had all the videos in the Public share. I have transferred them all to a private share so I could more easily turn the share off as you suggest. Despite having disabled cloud (according to my dashboard), the Mobile & Web App Access button on both the Public share and the new private share indicates it is “on” and it is grayed out so I cannot affect it.

What else do I need to do in order to turn either of them “off” so it will “clear the thumbnails & pre-transcoding videos”?

Thanks.

The Mobile & Web App Access button requires Cloud Access to be configured so you will need to turn Cloud Access back on then turn off the Mobile & Web App access for each of the shares.

That’s all fine & well but to reclaim the GB/space lost in my situation anyway the space never reappears I had to fight hard for WD to send me a new system with OS3 on it. I now have all my space back that I lost absolute nightmare honestly.

From what I gather if you want to use the app/cloud to use your drive remotely to say watch videos etc you have to have cloud on to have cloud on means the thumbnail issue & transcoding.

Turn cloud off the drive settles after a few minutes the disks stop spinning & eventually if you have it turned off it will go ok power save mode like nothing ever happened.

Thanks for the info that helps. It doesn’t help in the fact that i don’t want to touch SSH as I’m not confident enough to do it though.

Am I right in thinking because I am in raid 1 if I lose 200gb on one drive it’s essentially 400gb as I have two mirrored this would make sense as I have lost an absolute truck load which is a disgrace. I did post a new thread about this but I managed to get WD to send me another unit with os3 on it. I now have 670gb left instead of 218gb that’s a big difference in space.

Thanks for all your help.

I managed to get my drive today turned off automatic updates right away as I feel cheated that I would essentially have to upgrade my drives if I left os 5 on it as the amount of space is doubled like you mentioned. Hopefully os3 & the app don’t disappear & you are forced into OS5 in the near future.

Thanks for all your help.