Prevent MyCloud from scanning files when Cloud Access is enabled

My Cloud OS 3 Personal & Network Attached Storage My Cloud Mirror
1

Is there a way to prevent the My Cloud Mirror from scanning files when Cloud Access is enabled? If yes, please let me know how I can do this?

I had Cloud Access enabled from day 1 on my device (I have 8TB total, RAID-1), so that I could access my files via Android app on my phone and it wasn’t a problem at first. After filling the device with thousands of music files, photos and some big hd videos (all in all about 1.3TB) over the time, I noticed the device has become laggy. I couldn’t play mp3 files on my computer from the device without having constant drop outs. transferring files to the device was a pain since the transfer rate was at 8MB/s and often dropped to 0, and I noticed a constant CPU usage of 50-70% although I didn’t do anything. I always wondered why the heck it became like that until I found this post Slow transfer - #10 by PEMAMETAL last week, where the user says it’s because Cloud Access is enabled. I have followed his advice and disabled Cloud Access, and it’s all cool again, except the Android app is useless now. ok not totally useless, since it still syncs my photos automatically, and I can still browse through my MyCloud and see all files, and yes, I can even upload files from my phone to my device when I’m at home, but the app won’t let me donwload to my phone. I have enabled FTP access to the Shares I want to have access to, and use a third part FTP app to download from my device to my phone, when I’m in my home network, but really this shouldn’t be the case. Either let the App download from the device if the phone is in the same network or disable the useless, CPU eating scanning (creating thumbnails?) of the files, because it just doesn’t make sense to scan 4 TB of small files all day (I don’t need to see thumbnails, rather scan the files on the fly when I browse the folder for preview Images). this is really a bottleneck…

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Hey gmgman.

How are you doing?

I am not a techy guy, but I spent a lot of time trying to make this device work right. I will tell everything I could find out.

The direct answer to your question is Yes you can stop the scanning without disabling the cloud access. You have to access the device via ssh and type the following commands on terminal (I am using Mac, if you use windows, you will have to download a proper software for this).

To access the device
ssh sshd@[ip_address]

To kill process of scanning and generating thumbnails:
/etc/init.d/wdmcserverd stop
/etc/init.d/wdphotodbmergerd stop

I have a short time know but I will try to explain briefly to you

The device is laggy because you uploaded a lot of data at once. It will scan and generate thumbnails from EVERY mp3, photo and video on the device, as the processor is not so powerful this will take a lot of time. Days, may be weeks, I really don’t if this ends or not. Later I will comment on that.

I found out just last week that the problem of my device is that for some reason it can’t generate thumbnails from Canon .CR2 raw photos that are in portrait orientation, bizarre but thats my conclusion. That will cause the process ufraw-batch to get stuck in that specific file and it never ends the scan. The fans are always loud and consuming CPU and RAM. If you have RAW photos on your NAS just reply me and I will give you some tips. If you don’t, than the scanning process should finish, just be patient.

I found a way to check the scanning process, if you need, I can write to you.

3

@PEMAMETAL, your diagnosis is correct, I recently put about 33gb of photos onto the device, most of them being in .CR2. It was the first time i put CR2 files onto it. Now im pretty sure this was the cause for the issue. If you could post your tips for the CR2 issue, I really appreciate it. I will look at stopping the scanning process, I’m on Windows and I have Putty to access over ssh. Also appreciate a tip on how to check the scanning process.
Thanks so much for your help!

4

@gmgman

Good to know that my diagnosis is correct to your case

Let me first ask you. What is your camera? Mine is a Canon 6d. May be this is a problem specific to that camera, who knows

Before I suggest you what to do to solve the problems, It would be nice to check if the photos that are getting stuck in the ufraw-batch process are in the portrait orientation like mine.

First place, You can check the processes that are running on the device logging in in the dashboard, in the main page there is a little cpu graph, click on that, then click on process. You should see something like this:

2560×1600 379 KB

Click on “CPU %” and the process will be organized by use of CPU. If you have any thumbnail being generated, one of the following process will use CPU:

  • “wdphotodbmerger” - generate thumbnails for .jpg photos
  • “ufraw-batch” - generate thumbnails for .CR2 photos

BUT! Thats is the thing. If you have a CR2 files that got stuck, 2 ufraw-batch processes will show as 0% CPU, but both with 50.1 of RAM.

My knowledge on linux commands is zero, but I got this on another thread. To check the scanning process you have to ssh the device and use the “ps” command. The guy tried to taught me how to use "ps|grep " but I couldn’t get it right. I just typed “ps” and a list of process showed up. If your device has the ufraw-batch working. You should see something like this:

7731 root 9856 S N convert -define jpeg:size=192x192 /shares/Volume_1/PEMA-8TB/Photos/Viagens/Ferias 2013 - Turquia/IMG_3281.CR2 -auto-orient -strip -background #000000 -quality 80 -filter box -resize x192 /shares/Volume_1/.wdmc/PEMA-8TB/Photos/Viagens/Ferias 2013 - Turquia/transcoded_files/IMG_3281.cb62bbdd389b48898f2e5244977cb2c5.jpg
7747 root 252m D N /usr/local/wdmcserver/bin/ufraw-batch --silent --create-id=also --out-type=jpeg --out-depth=16 --output=/shares/Volume_1/.wdmc/magick-uRiqtq0W.png /shares/Volume_1/.wdmc/magick-ocOdPJMr

11893 root 9856 S N convert -define jpeg:size=192x192 /shares/Volume_1/PEMA-8TB/Photos/Viagens/Ferias 2013 - Turquia/IMG_3055.CR2 -auto-orient -strip -background #000000 -quality 80 -filter box -resize x192 /shares/Volume_1/.wdmc/PEMA-8TB/Photos/Viagens/Ferias 2013 - Turquia/transcoded_files/IMG_3055.cb62bbdd389b48898f2e5244977cb2c5.jpg
11899 root 252m D N /usr/local/wdmcserver/bin/ufraw-batch --silent --create-id=also --out-type=jpeg --out-depth=16 --output=/shares/Volume_1/.wdmc/magick-gKQBNDh9.png /shares/Volume_1/.wdmc/magick-3Bgn07va

You can see 2 CR2 files being scanned. I typed the ps command for 2 days and the files being scanned were always IMG_3055.CR2 and IMG_3281.CR2, indicating that the process was stuck. Then I decided to rebuild the cloud database (on the settings section of the dashboard there is a option for that) and kept checking the process with "ps"command. As the device start to scan jpg photos all over again, the folders being scanned changed very quickly, the device generated thumbnails very fast. Thousand of photos in just 1 hour, until it get back to the folders that have .CR2 files. The CR2 started to being scanned at 1 file/ 5 minutes may be, slow, but it was working, until it got in those same files IMG_3055.CR2 and IMG_3281.CR2 and got stuck again. When I Reached and opened those files, They were on portrait orientation. I waited for more 2 days, nothing happened. I deleted those 2 files reboot, and rebuild the cloud database again and the device did all over again until it got stuck in the next CR2 file that were on portrait orientation.

So after that test, I was sure that the device can scan CR2 files slowly if they are in landscape orientation, but it can’t get over or skip if they are on portrait

The workarounds that you can try is:

1 - Convert to DNG - That worked for me. I converted 650 CR2 files into DNG using Lightroom, and uploaded again. The device scanned them very fast and now it is very quiet, almost sleeping. But it is a pain in the ass having to convert everytime you upload
2 - 1 - Delete all CR2 from your device
3 - Change extension of the files to avoid them from being scanned

And I hope this thread get read by lots of people, specially Cannon users. I can’t even imagine how many people are having this same issue, with a ■■■■■■ performance because just a single .CR2 photo. I have read dozens of threads with people returning their devices because of poor performance. I don’t know but, maybe my diagnoses would fit in all those cases. What can we do to pin this thread to get more views?

What intrigues me is that I am just a regular guy, I don’t even know how to use linux commands. How the hell I could diagnose all of this by my self, and WD don’t? All they have to do is to eliminate those ufraw process because we are not getting thumbnails from cr2 anyways.

WD should fix that man, it is unbelievable.

PS: Sorry about my English I am from Brazil

5

no worries on your english, I understand what you are saying and I’m not a native english speaker also. first off all, thanks much for your info, I will try to answer your questions briefly.

I cannot tell what camera was used when creating the CR2 files. the wive of my cousin, who is a professional photographer, took those photos at my wedding last month, I think she used at least 2 different cameras over the whole day, and gave us all photos unedited in jpg + CR2 Format afterwards (they were saved on the falsh disc of the camera in both formats already). So I cannot tell wether they were shot at landscape orientation or whatever orientation.

I think you can also see the processes over ssh if you type “ps -aux”, I will try that also when I check it out. Unfortunately I don’t have the time to check into this any further this weekend, guess I will just disable the scanning/thumbnailing for now to get the app work again, or live with my FTP app untill next weekend.

again, thanks for all the info, especially on the workarounds, I will get back to this thread when I did what I did (I hope I can confirm that CR2 files get stuck at scanning) and let you know.

In the meanwhile I would like to hear someone from the WD support staff here on this boards regarding this issue, I suppose this could be fixed with a firmware update at some point?

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@PEMAMETAL. I played around a bit this weekend. I activated Cloud Access and immediately had a look at the process via ssh via the “ps” command. I was like you said, it was trying to create thumbnails for 2 CR2 files. I kept checking the command over a few minutes, it was always the same two files. going back to the Dashboard to check CPU usage was a pain again, so after spending some time in the nearly frozen Dashboard, I deactivated Cloud Access and rebootet the device. I then put all CR2 files in a zip file, so that I have backups of these. I then activated Cloud Access again and again had a look at the processes via the “ps” command. I was able to see what jpg files were scanned, and each time is typed ps there were different file names displayed, indicating me that scanning was really fast. it took less than 5 minutes and all the scanning was done, CPU was back to low again.

what I noticed on my device, (I noticed this earlier, it’s been like that pretty much all the time) is, that my RAM usage is always at 50%. Is this the case with our device also? I only have NTFS enabled, media Streaming and Cloud Access.

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Whats up @gmgman

I think my RAM is always around 50% too, but I think that the numbers are not a good indication of performance because the Ram and CPU numbers, when the ufraw process was stuck, were very similar to what they are now, but the difference in performance is huge.

What OS are you using? I think windows 10 can open .CR2 files natively
Even if you can’t, you can check the camera info by right clicking the file → properties, you should find what camera was used and exif info (aperture, ISO, Eposition).
To check if they are in portrait or landscape, you can’t check the equivalent jpg file. If I am correct, it seems that the photographer shot the photos using RAW+JPG, that will create 2 files with same name but different extension. So all you have to do is: If the file that was stuck is IMG_XXXX.CR2, just look for IMG_XXXX.JPG and open it.

It is very important to know if the problem relies on being in portrait orientation.

8

I can’t believe.

Look WD answers on the case I opened:

2866×1568 320 KB

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Now that is a half ass answer by WD support, if you are not a techy guy and back up your CR2 photos on the MCM you will never figure out why the device becomes a useless piece of sh!t. Thanks very much WD.

As for the info you asked for. I’m on Windows 10 and yes, it has no troubles displaying CR2 files, but the take a bit to load.

The camara model of my CR2 files is Canon EOS 5D Mark III according to the file details.

10

The same problem
Canon 5D Mark I

lots of CR2 files on mycloud.
I’ve bought it for backuping raw files on it…

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well, it looks like you wasted your money, unless you put your cr2 files in a zip file or something, before moving it to the WD.

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I’ve disabled cloud acces and also DLNA from folder with CR2 files, and now it’s much better

But I think that WD IT guys should do something with this…

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Dude, i’m waiting for the solution more than one year, and still nothing change from that time. WD team totally ignore this major problem. They just fix some minor bugs twice a year or less, and that’s all. They really don’t care about customers who bought this slow peace of sh*** plastic. If you have an option, I suggest you to buy another not wd device.