Transferring m4a files

My Cloud Home - Personal Cloud Storage My Cloud Home
1

I have tried copying my music collection over to My Cloud Home, and every time things have hung. When using Robocopy to transfer I noticed that it always stopped with m4a files. If I exclude them all goes OK, but when I try and copy them over it hangs.

Has anyone had this issue before?

2

If the files are older downloads from iTunes, they likely are copy protected files from Apple. and your Home may be detecting this.

1 Like
3

So why the slowdown, does the My Cloud Home check for this?

4

To expand, how exactly is My Cloud Home deciding if I can put a file there or not? Is this the reason for the slowdown? I am not aware of making an agreement that WD would check material with Apple. Is there such a thing?

5

I have no idea; I was just making a guess. Apple music and videos with copy protection cannot be played on any device but an Apple one. So, if you have any such files, even if they get copied to Home, they cannot be played unless they are ON an Apple device.
So, ignore what I said at first, and don’t get PO’d at WD, get angry with Apple if you have any such files! I have none. I solved that problem years ago by NOT downloading ANY media files from Apple.

6

My point still stands, I should be able to copy media to this device no matter its format. If someone could answer why it slows down or refuses to copy m4a files that would be great. Otherwise I will return the unit as having a fault.

7

@ZamZ

  1. I’ve forward your issue to engineering for comments

  2. Have you tried transferring the file NOT using RoboCopy? IE: Drag and Drop or Copy and Past

  3. Have you checked the actual file itself and it’s owner permissions? IE: protected at the source

  4. What was the “source” of this file? IE: what device or software created it

  5. Were are the “physical files” located? On the local computer? iCloud ?

  6. What is the exact folder path of the files on the local computer?

  7. What is the actual size of the file on the local computer and is the file DRM protected?

  8. What is the message that you receive when transferring the file?

8

Thanks for getting back. See below replies.

Have you tried transferring the file NOT using RoboCopy? IE: Drag and Drop or Copy and Past
Yes, I started with Drag/Drop in Explorer and performance dropped suddenly, same problem.

Have you checked the actual file itself and it’s owner permissions? IE: protected at the source
Yes, all permission are OK.

What was the “source” of this file? IE: what device or software created it
Source was from a iTunes.

Were are the “physical files” located? On the local computer? iCloud ?
On local computer hard drive.

What is the exact folder path of the files on the local computer?
Folder format is D:\Music\Artist\Album - Track Name.m4a for most of the files.

What is the actual size of the file on the local computer?
Varies, but from 1 to 5M

What is the message that you receive when transferring the file?
Most simply hang for a while, taking perhaps minutes to complete the transfer. Others get the error “ERROR 2 (0x00000002) The system cannot find the file specified”

9

But you do not get an error message correct?
Just a drop in performance?

Quick search sounds like a known issue with Robocopy and unrelated to MCH

10

The drop in performance is not insignificant, it’s actually a hang. The whole process stops for minutes on end.

This happens in both Explorer and Robocopy, the errors in Robocopy are most likely related to the timeout settings I used of 5s.

Again I go back to the main issue, this happens with m4a files, not with mp3 or flac or other sorts of files.

11

I have a number of M4A files from itunes and I have never seen a similar issue with any transfers I have made.

Have you tried just copying a single album over? Do you see the same hang?

I would also try copying a few folders to a different location and then see if that will transfer with out hang.

12

@ZamZ please open a support case and provide the debug logs from the My Cloud Home Side.
The issue could very well be a “device busy” condition.

https://support.wdc.com/support/case.aspx?lang=en

13

I am having this same problem…has anyone resolved this? My “My Home Cloud” unit freezes completely and goes into a weird semi-rebooting state when I try to transfer m4a files to the unit. Since I use my device to back up my music server this is obviously a huge problem. Any advice appreciated.

15

To anyone still experiencing this issue: my brute method of resolving the problem was to convert all of my .m4a files to .flac files. Once they were converted to .flac the My Cloud Home accepted them all with no problems.

Also, as others have mentioned, don’t even bother trying with licensed .m4a’s. My .m4a files are (were) all non-licensed.