Remote access to My Book 6TB seems completely broken, either via laptop or via iPhone app

[Dunebuggy]

So I’m a new owner of a My Book Live Duo 6TB, which cost me about $600. And so far so good, in terms of it just working as storage over Wifi.

But I’m at a complete loss as to how to make this product actually work with remote access - either via browser on a laptop or via the iPhone WD2Go app.

I have set the MyBook up on my home WiFi network, which uses a Belkin N1 Router, model no. F5D8631-4. 

Initially the My Book wasn’t set to use a static IP.

But after being unable to get remote access to work (and then reading these forums for a while) people seemed to be suggesting that if you are getting those “device is inaccessible” errors, you should try using static IP + port forwarding.

I now have static IP working OK.

I have had port forwarding working, however, the My Book randomly seems to change it’s status from “connection established” to “failed to connect” as well. I have no idea why.

I just set it up and it was like this one minute…

Then about 20 mins later (during which time I had changed absolutely nothing), it was telling me this…

In my router, I have set it up like this…

I have even added the MAC address of the My Book to my router’s “Wireless - MAC address Control” area, and given it “allow” status.

Am I doing anything wrong?

Whether Port Forwarding is working, or whether I go right back to having no static IP or port forwarding at all, the result is the same: the WD2Go app seems broken (over 3G), and I cannot access My Book via my laptop either.

e.g. I generate an access code, and add access to the iPhone WD2Go app. 

When I run the app it seems to work at first. It shows the device, and the base share folders - Shared Music, Shared Pictures etc. Alongside these, I have added a folder called “Music Videos” and put a bunch of videos in that. And as soon as I try to view that folder or any folder containing actual files, the app hangs for a bit and then I get:

“The device is inaccessible; only local files are available.”

After that, the app refuses to even try to access the files again (unless you kill it from the “recently opened” list in iOS).

The app does however work when I connect my phone to my WiFi network, and try to access files that way.

On my laptop the situation is similar…

All I can see is the device. As soon as I choose “View shared folders”, the browser page hangs for a while, and eventually gives an error. 

It seems that remote access is a complete fail for me, either via iPhone or Laptop. 

Anyone got any suggestions? Have I exhausted my options here?

[Dunebuggy]

Update:

I have quit using a static IP and port forwarding, and gone back to DHCP.

Still get the same results.

But it seems to me that the iPhone app WD2Go is timing out when browsing a large folder full of content, and that’s why the " device is inaccessible" message keeps appearing and creating the impression that the My Book can’t be accessed.

Until now, I had been trying to remotely access a folder containing 65 subfolders, and each of those containing 5-10 files.

But if I create a single folder, and put a single file in it, I can at least  see these files listed via the iPhone app, remotely over a 3G connection.

However, I still can’t play any files - say, a simple mp3 song, or a simple mp4 video. Both of these are giving the error " unable to play media file".

Yet if I turn my iPhone’s WiFi back on, and try to access those same files, they play fine.

To sum up. Using the WD2Go app over a 3G connection, I cannot:

• Browse a shared folder on my My Book Live if  that folder contains a lot of subfolders.

• Play any media file (even if I can see them when they’re alone in a small folder).

Note also: I have the latest app, latest WD smartware and latest firmware.

[funtime]

Did you ever get this fixed?  My iphone and wifi worked fine for a long time and then somewhere along the line it wouldn’t let me access anything outside of my wifi.

[Dunebuggy]

Sorry for the delay in replying…

Basically, no - I wasn’t able to resolve the problems I was having.

No matter what I did, remote access wouldn’t work properly for me - either via browser on my laptop, or via the iPhone apps. I feel like I tried every suggestion these forums had to offer. Anytime I tried accessing a folder with lots of files or subfolders, the iPhone app would just throw up errors.

The only way the app worked was when I was at home, over WiFi, with the phone on the same network as the My Book drive. But that’s not really “remote” access, is it.

On top of all that, I noticed the My Book was constantly performing hard disk activity - I’m talking 24hr/day hard disk activity. When I looked around these forums, people were saying that turning off “remote access” entirely via the Dashboard might solve this. I tried that, and it did solve it. No more needless activity.

So at this point, I can see 3 reasons not to even bother with remote access.

[tomturtle]

If your drive is running constantly (24hrs a day) then you have some other problem that needs to be sorted out before you can address the issue of remote access. This drive does not have an active cooling system…if it runs constantly like that you will eventually have a failure. I would suggest you try to simplify the configuration of the drive and isolate why it is not going into sleep mode when files are not being accessed.