I purchased a NexStore hard drive enclosure that:
(a) Supports drives up to 6Tb
(b) Uses the “new” USB 3.1 SuperSpeed protocol.
I took my external 3Tb hard drive out of an older enclosure and installed it into the new one. Note that this hard drive has been plugged into the My Cloud via USB (2.n) before and has worked.
The idea was to (hopefully) increase the transfer rate of the external drive when connected to the My Cloud.
Issue:
When I attach the new hard drive enclosure to the My Cloud, it is not recognized, does not mount, and (for all intents and purposes), might as well not be there - even though the My Cloud has a USB port that supports USB 3.
However!
(a) If I connect the enclosure to a different computer (that has USB 2 ports) using the supplied cable, the device works.
(b) If I connect the enclosure to the My Cloud using a “normal” (USB 2) cable, it works.
I do not have any other devices that have USB 3.n ports to compare it to.
Has anyone else experienced USB 3.n issues with the My Cloud, with the version 2.n firmware?
I tried using a completely different USB 3.0 hard drive and it will not work using the USB 3 cable either. Connecting it to the My Cloud using an older style (2.n) cable and it works fine.
I don;t know about “drivers” - the My Cloud is a self-contained unit and should not require a driver update in order to see a USB 3.n device, right?
AFAIK, the firmware is current as of this instant date. Is there something I have to enable/modify within the Cloud device in order for it to recognize USB 3.n devices?
Note that I have not tried escalating to WD support yet. Rumor has it that I will be old and grey, (make that “older and greyer”!), by the time they decide to get back to me.
Since you folks actually have a clue, I use you as my first line support.
If you ssh into the MC running firmware 4.xx and run the following command. You will get a list of
all USB devices that have been plugged into your MC along with the speed of that device.
I don’t know if this will work on a gen2 MC. If the autoMount.db is in /var/local/autoMount then it should.
echo “SELECT vendor, model, serial_number, vendor_id, usb_version FROM Devices WHERE connected IS NOT NULL;”|sqlite3 /var/local/autoMount/autoMount.db
An operating system requires drivers to access hardware devices.
Windows provides a method of providing driver support in a way that allows them to be updated without needing to update the entire OS.
I’m sure linux does too, but WD don’t roll out drivers like that; firmware upgrades, including device support drivers, are rolled out as a monolithic lump.
I’m not sure if the device support package included in the latest firmware is the latest version available in linux; plenty of other parts are not. So it’s entirely possible that the device is unable to cope with all possible USB peripherals.
Drivers are what instruct the operating system on how to use the device hardware.
Because the USB 3.1 protocol is supposed to be backward compatible with USB 3.0, a USB 3.1 capable USB hard drive should work with the My Cloud’s USB 3.0 port. However it would operate at USB 3.0 speed, not USB 3.1 speed. There are many complaints in this subforum of the USB 3.0 port on the My Cloud not providing true USB 3.0 speed. Rather the speed is significantly less than the USB 3.0 standard advertises.
If the USB drive is not being recognized, not being properly mounted, or the Dashboard indicates 0K, you can do a subforum search using the magnifying glass icon upper right to find numerous other threads that discuss these various problems that many others have experienced. Sometimes there may be a solution, other times not.
Here is one recent thread discussing various issues preventing a USB drive from being properly seen/mounted by the My Cloud:
The script that I gave will tell you what speed the MC connected the device.
echo “SELECT vendor, model, serial_number, vendor_id, usb_version FROM Devices WHERE connected IS NOT NULL;”|sqlite3 /var/local/autoMount/autoMount.db
This is the output from my Cloud
Generic|USB Storage|000000000272|05e3|2.0
Verbatim|STORE N GO|071058E9225F9527|18a5|2.0
Western Digital|My Book 1140|574343315430343538343933|1058|3.0
Western Digital|My Book 1230|574343344532594141315543|1058|3.0
SanDisk|Cruzer Glide|4C532000050803116181|0781|2.0
Western Digital|External HDD|575848313038333739383036|1058|2.0
Western Digital|External HDD|324238385042202020202020|1058|2.0
Generic|USB Storage|000000000272|05e3|2.0
SanDisk Corporation|Ultra|AA00000000014667|0781|3.0
Yes, I do “know about drivers” (laughing!), but you folks don’t know that, what with all the people who post on line and ask “What’s a cubit?” (Bill Cosby, Noah’s Ark) What I was saying is that there are no (separate) drivers for the My Cloud, as they are bundled into the firmware. I was questioning if there was some “magic” feature that needed to be enabled somewhere to make USB 3.n work.
Unfortunately, that does not work for the 2.n firmware devices. When you try that you get:
root@Storage2 root # echo "SELECT vendor, model, serial_number, vendor_id, usb_v
ersion FROM Devices WHERE connected IS NOT NULL;"|sqlite3 /var/local/autoMount/a
utoMount.db
Error: unable to open database "/var/local/autoMount/autoMount.db": unable to open database file
root@Storage2 root #
In fact, “/var/local” doesn’t even exist on the 2.n devices!
---------------------------------------
Update on USB 3.n connectivity:
For a moment there, I was beginning to believe that my system was haunted! I plugged in a USB 3.n device - and it mounted and read wonderfully! I plugged in another, Voilà! It worked like a charm!
Huh? (insert emoticon of smiley smacking head against brick wall. . . .)
It appears that there is an interesting wrinkle to all of this.
At least within the context of my system, which is running firmware 2.21.119, (the latest firmware as of this instant date), USB 3.n connectivity appears to do the following:
Note “USB 3.n device” means a USB 3.n device connected with a USB 3.n cable. Devices of any speed work if connected with the older 2.n/1.n cables.
If a USB 3.n device is attached after the device has fully started and is stable, it is recognized, can be used, and additional devices can be connected and used after dismounting the first one.
If a USB 3.n device is attached before the device has booted (i.e. the device is turned on with the device attached), all USB 3.n capabilities are disabled! If you do this, not only is the original device not recognized, neither are any other 3.n devices recognized when they are plugged in. USB 2.n capabilities are not affected, and continue to work. (i.e. If you plug in a device with a USB 2.n cable - even if it is a 3.n device, it will mount and can be used.)
USB 2.n devices can be attached, either prior to boot or afterward, and will work.
Another interesting factoid I discovered when I was doing this:
If you have a terminal session connected (i.e. SSH), using the web interface to unmount an attached USB device also closes the terminal session.
The web interface warns that open shares attached to the USB device will disappear, (doh!), and running backup jobs will be stopped. (I was “assuming” this meant “running backup jobs associated with the attached device”)
What appears to happen is, (God only knows why. . .), disconnecting the USB device also causes the network interface to briefly halt. Note that I have not specifically tested this, (i.e. I have not put a network sniffer on it or stared at the lights on the back of the unit, etc.), but it seems to be a reasonable explanation.
I cannot imagine why connecting a USB 3.n device, prior to first boot, should cause the entire USB 3.n capability to fail.
This does not surprise me. The fora discussing the WD “My Book World” NAS devices mentioned that the “Gigabit network interface” would, on a good day, going downhill, with a tail-wind, maybe get within rock-throwing distance of 100 Mbit throughput.
Silly me, I was hoping that the USB 3.n interface would implement at least some of the speed enhancements. . . I strongly suspect that the inclusion of USB 3.n and/or Gigabit networking is done simply to fluff up the specs on the box, as opposed to providing any real enhancement. Sigh. . .
I don’t have access to a gen2 to find out where the automount.db file is located or if it exists. I would think that
the file does exist, just don’t know where.
