Question regarding the FAN used by WD My Cloud EX2

[Shionsan]

Bill_S wrote:

What I am saying is that if the drive temperature gets up to 57C, then the fan will kick on to cool the drive down.  I’m also saying that it’s not uncommon for drive temperatures to go up when writing large amounts of data.  That would be any drive.  We make some of the best hard drives in the world.  So, if our engineers are confident that the fan doesn’t need to go on until 57C, then I’m fine with it.  Obviously, we built these NAS drives with our drives in mind.  So, they should handle it. 

Ok then, let me tell you why your statement is illogical:

• “We make some of the best hard drives in the world” - I happen to have about 5 drives, that, by your statement, are best in the world. Two of them are dead. And another two happen to: #1 Turn off the spinning engine every 8 seconds of drive inactivity, making me wait for it to spin up every time it’s accessed, creating lags in software and games and decreasing it’s lifetime - literally killing itself faster that it could, without possibility to permamently change that setting (wdidle3 doesn’t work); and #2 - takes 10 seconds to spin up. I have a Hitachi drive which spins up in 3 seconds and they don’t claim to be the best.

• “our engineers are confident” in making product that is designed not to last long - they are. But “our engineers are confident that the fan doesn’t need to go on until 57C”, when my 2 WD Green drives works at 0-60C is BS. Why am I talking about WD Greens here? Because they are inside My Cloud EX2, and despite being “unsupported”, are working fine in JBOD mode, with me manually turning on the fan with “fan_control -f 3” every boot, because otherwise, those drives would be DEAD. Your “best in the world” drives would be dead, because your ‘engineers are confident’. Doesn’t sound like BS to you?

I clearly see on my own example that My Cloud EX2 can and does support non-wd-red drives in JBOD mode (of course unless the next firmware would deny them, to confirm the ‘not supported’ statement), but it’s fan software is designed to kill them by overheating. Why? And this is a rhetorical question. Everyone has their own answer to that.

But whatever, people around the globe are attaching their own fans to save their drives from your engineers confidency for half a year now, making photos of their NAS units in this disgraceful state, just like the one above, making WD look bad. But I don’t mind. I never thought of WD as a good company anyway. The only product I bought and were happy with is WD Elements 2Tb USB drive, everything else was ****. And I bough this NAS unit only because it was the cheapest one around and not because it was best. But you can make it one, the question is ’ are you willing to?'.

P.S. There is one thing I am thankfull to your ‘confident engineers’ trough - SSH access, it is there. Which means they don’t think their customers are idiots, like WD support people and you do. Otherwise I would have returned the NAS unit yesterday.

[Bill_S]



I’m really sorry that your experience is different from mine.  I was buying WD Drives long before I came to work for WD.  I still had a couple of them until recently when I gave them away.  However, I did keep one EIDE JB drive that I had been using in case I need it in one of my older systems.  So, to me, my statement isn’t just BS, or a company line, it’s my experience.  As a matter of fact, I owned one of the original silver Passports, and was using it until I recently gave it to my daughter, who is still using it now.

Nevertheless, I can’t fault your attitude because of your experience.  I am really sorry that has been your experience.  And, certainly, I am not meaning to treat people like idiots.  I am simply trying to clear up the confusion about when the fan turns on; and, I’m trying to allay people’s fears of the drives being damaged by overheating.  So, when I say that I’m confident in our hard drive engineers, that is backed by my personal experience, as well as the experience of many others around me. 

Please forgive my insensitivity to your experience.

[Shionsan]

@Bill_S

I’m at loss of words here. Sorry for being a jerk before, but all that, as you said, was my bad expirience with WD hardware (or, to be more precise, firmware). I understand that WD Reds can work within 0-70C range, but WD Greens I have can’t. And I don’t have the cash yet to get Reds, thus here I am looking for other options that would keep my drives and data safe. >  I mean, does it cost a lot to change few numbers in fan_controls code and add it with new firmware so all My Cloud EX2 users would feel safer for their drives, which arent all the Red ones? Or add an SSH command to control the way it behaves manually (i mean the automated way, presets, already using fan_control -f 3 here)? <

Anyway, I already written to WD support about all that and done all they asked. Now just waiting for reply, which I hope won’t be like “we can’t”, “we won’t because *some unrelated reason*” or “buy reds”.

Thanks for being respectfull.

[Bill_S]

No problem. I certainly understand your frustration.  Let’s see what happens with support.  I know they will try to do what they can.  

[Shionsan]

While checking out anything related to ‘find a way to stop Public dirs from being created everytime’ I stumbled upon interesting script called monitorTemperature.sh. It has 3 lines:

TEMP_T1=68 ## Initial Warning Temperature

TEMP_T2=72 ## Shutdown Warning Temperature

TEMP_TF=75 ## Shutdown Immediate Temperature

This kinda proves once more, that whole firmware was made with only 0-70C range in mind and that having temperatures up to 60 is acceptable. But that’s just sad. With this kind of approach, engineers should have made it phisically impossible to put any other drives inside the NAS unit. This script have nothing to do with fan though. And public dirs. Don’t understand why the “Public” share is unremovable, unrenameable and can’t be made user-restricted though. WD logic…

EDIT: Found the lines for public dirs in createDataVolume.sh!

 mkdir -p “/DataVolume/shares/Public/Shared Music”
 mkdir -p “/DataVolume/shares/Public/Shared Videos”
 mkdir -p “/DataVolume/shares/Public/Shared Pictures”

Can anyone pass a request to developers to comment or remove those lines? They are being created every boot, and it’s a bit annoying.

[Bill_S]

I’ve escalated this for review.  

[Shionsan]

I’d like to add something to put more weight to my previous post. If it should be a start of another topic, I hope moderators would split this one.

My request is to remove protection from Public share, and script lines, that create additional subfolders there. My reasons are:

• Public share cannot be restricted, blocked or deleted - thus first drive or a RAID massive can be stuffed with unwanted data uncontrollably by anyone in the network.

• While there is a quota setting, I’m not sure if it is appliable here.

• And in same way data can be deleted without anyone knowing.

• Yep, recycle bin could save from that. Up to 100Gb. So everything above that goes bye-bye. And only If the bin is on.

• All that is also a major security flaw.

• Were this NAS unit be put within public access network, it could be used in illegal activity.

• NAS unit seems to respond to broadcast queries, thus can be easily found in a network. “Your software found it, so mine will too”.

• With “Windows network” protocol not having any “off” buttons in unit settings and being “on” by default, all said above is more than possible.

• I suppose one could turn it off via SSH, but how many people even know what that is?

And some minor but very annoying ones:

• Public share cannot be renamed. Unexplained senseless restrictions on my device? Bad.

• “Shared” dirs in public share are recreated at least every boot - I never asked for this. No, really, I didn’t. I already have made special restricted shares for photos, music and video.

[Bill_S]

Just so you know an idea (feature request) has already been submitted for this. Vote it up and add your comments.  These ideas are forwarded to the relevant product teams for review.

http://community.wd.com/t5/Network-Product-Ideas/Delete-Public-Share-Folder-or-Restrict-Access/idi-p/702110

[Shionsan]

That request was made like 1.5 years ago… And only half a hour back it became “In Review”. Nice reaction time, WD…

Thanks, will repost there.

[Bill_S]

Shionsan wrote:

That request was made like 1.5 years ago… And only half a hour it was “In Review”. Nice reaction time… Thanks, will repost there.

No, actually, we had already pushed it for review, and when I looked it up, the status hadn’t been changed yet.  So, I had the moderators change it.

[Shionsan]

And here is the answer everyone’ve been waiting for. It is in russian, so I’ll put short english translation after it.

---

При изучении системных отчетов проблем с работой Вашего накопителя обнаружено не было; функционал устройства полностью исправен. Сбоев в работе вентилятора так же не наблюдалось.

“Your system is fine. Fan works as it should”. But I already know that, god.

В данном случае мы рекомендуем Вам использовать диски WD Red в составе устройства My Cloud EX2, допустимая рабочая температура которых составляет 65 градусов C. Когда температура диска достигает 56-57 C, включается вентилятор, что позволяет не превышать допустимый порог температуры для данного диска.

To be short - “buy WD Red”. No f-in way. How could I’ve missed that possibility?

Вы в свою очередь можете использовать диски WD Green с накопителем My Cloud EX2, однако при такой конфигурации постарайтесь обеспечить достаточное охлаждение всего устройства и не допустить внешних факторов нагрева. Постарайтесь поставить устройство в прохладное, хорошо вентилируемое помещение.

“You can use WD Green here, but you will have to find other way to cool NAS”. Yeah, put it into fridge, or attach additional fans. Cuz, the one in the NAS is programmed by idiots.

Если на данный момент у Вас есть предложения или идеи по внедрению нового функционала на устройстве или изменениям текущей микрограммы, Вы можете создать новый топик на нашем официальном форуме, который ежедневно просматривают разработчики компании WD на предмет поиска новых идей для усовершенствования продукции.

“Go write stuff in the ideas section”. But many people already did, and guess what - they were ignored for YEARS.

---

Support obviously thinking that I’am an ■■■■■ and our feelings are mutual.

Who do I have to kick now to make firmware developers see, that manualy changing fan_controls behaviour (via fan_temperatures.txt for ex.) is a must-have feature?

[Bill_S]

Did someone from support really tell you to put the drive in a refrigerator?  We’re looking into this.

[dreadnot]

Well my drives are 57 and 58 and rpm is at zero.  Just put a large fan on the ex2. I have been coping files for most of the day.  

[Shionsan]

Bill_S wrote:

Did someone from support really tell you to put the drive in a refrigerator?  We’re looking into this.

No no. That part was my sarcasm. Answer translation part is within “quotes”. The point was - supports reply was nothing new or helpfull. Best they could do is to pass whole thing to someone somewhere and tell me to wait for a reply. Maybe by the end of next year. The funny thing is, were I an average customer, who doesn’t know what SSH is, I’d have returned the NAS already because of two dead drives. Maybe that’s what I should do.

[Siegfreid]

Hi all

I’ve purchased my My Cloud EX2 a month ago and the hdd’s temps where extremely hot ( 56°) and idling at ( 49 - 50°) 

So i tried to put a 90mm fan removed from an lga 775 cpu cooler and the result was awesome the unite never get over 37° and the fan is very quiet as it is plugged in usb 5v

So i wanted to share this solution with you,  instead of waiting WD to move and do something for us

[Shionsan]

@Siegreid

Pics are gone. But it is not a correct way to fix this problem. Internal fan can be made to work at lower temperatures. It’s just “confident engineers” were instructed to programm it so it would not. Changing few code lines in next firmware is more than possible, but they seem to prefer to make people attach another fan to the NAS instead. I’ve also happened to find another screw up by those actually inconfedent engineers, which is related to different problem, so nothing surprises me now. And of cource there is still no answer about this fan problem.

[TimMallon]

which way is the fan flow in or out…

[Shionsan]

Looks like “in”. Internal fan doesn’t blow until 57, so there would be no counterflow. Would like to see the way it is connected to usb.

About to do similar customization. But in my case power will come from what build-in fan used. Speed controls as before - are via sshd. Web-interface already crying about broken fan - the replacement doesn’t have an RPM counter.

Will not buy anything with WD mark on it again. At least until “confident” engineers learn to make proper firmware.

[Siegfreid]

The flow is going IN from top i’ve tried it first OUT but the result wasn’t great

Here’s how it is pluged you can plug it to a usb phone charger if you want to leave your 2 usb’s free or in my case directly to the unit itself

[gemaa]

I have this issue to with my ex2 and i’m also concerned about the fan been always at 0rpm.