USB drive transfer speeds

Legacy Products My Cloud OS 3
1

I just bought a My Cloud 4TB as a media server in my home.  I have about 2Tb of media files on my WD Passport USB 3.0 drive and am transferring them all to my My Cloud.  Given that I have a wireless N system in my home I started with the USB drive connected to the USB (3.0) input on my computer and sent them over the wireless network to my My Cloud drive.  Speeds were about 10MB (capital B) /sec.  I thought the direct USB 3.0 connection to the My Cloud drive would be fasted so I stopped the transfer and connected my USB drive to the USB input to my My Cloud.  Transfer speed 3MB/sec.  I know WD tells you to connect the USB drive to your computer for faster transfer speeds but why would a USB 3.0 (Passport) drive to a My Cloud USB 3.0 be transferring so slowly?

Thanks,

Keith

2

Oops, sorry. I initially replied to your post but realized I misunderstood what you were asking. 

3

I guess: Since you are using a PC (or notebook) to do the files transfer job, then all activities will be carried out through the PC.

Could it mean: USB 3 drive attached to NAS USB 3 for files transfer = Drive files go to PC by N radio wifi, followed by files from PC go to NAS by N radio wifi. If true, it is a slower process.

The files transfer rates depend on N radio speed as well, how fast is yours?

wifi: 802.11ac radio is a faster way;

Direct connection: Giga enternet connection PC (or notebook)_NAS is fast

Now I have my 2-port USB 3.0 pcie card working on “old” PC. Files transfer rate (not to NAS) = 108 MBps initially and dropping to 45_65MBps at the end. 2GB files transfer in less than a minute (between two USB 3 ext HDD); planning to test with NAS much later.

Earlier test showed that files transfer rate (to NAS) from PC HDD using USB 2 by wifi ac radio (link speed 867Mbps) to a fast router connected to NAS by giga ethernet connection was 16MBps.

4

Hi,

I thought the same thing. The only thing i came up with was that this was to do with processor or RAM speed. Laptops and desktops usually have better performance than the WD mycloud so i can only think that this is why the transfer is quicker. 

Have you tried with a different desktop or laptop?

5

That sounds plausible, if a little unfortunate… It would be nice if the NAS was able to intercept the copy command and transfer directly from NAS USB  to NAS disk.

Which led me to think: why not SSH log in to the NAS and do the copy there?

The Public area of the disk can be found at /shares/Public

I don’t know where the USB drive appears on the NAS, but I’m sure it could be found, or someone more experienced could point it out; I imagine it will auto-mount.

Having identified the USB  and Public file path, you could simply use the Unix cp command to copy whatever files you wanted.  In theory, this ought to proceed at USB3 rates, but I guess it won’t achieve that…

Alternatively, connect your PC to your router with a cat5e cable, ideally, with PC and router with gigabit Ethernet ports.

6

Attach USB Drive to the NAS and use WD My Cluod Desktop App to transfer files: copy is directly Disk->NAS (or viceversa)

7

Interesting; at least that might be a good reason to have the MyCloud app installed on a local PC.

I note that the User Manual (p113) has this to say:

You’d think that if connecting the USB device directly to the MyCloud would give better performance (direct copy from USB to NAS, using the MyCloud app), that they’d mention that in the User Manual, wouldn’t you?  Then again, there’s almost no discussion of the facilities of the MyCloud app for local use in the User Manual, which I note has had no revision since it was published in Nov 2013.  Which is probably a shame, since it’s not a great manual.

8

I thought I’d plug in a USB drive and see. I thought it wise to find out how to safely eject it first, so I went to the user manual index and looked up ‘USB’.  No entry for USB ejection.  There’s ‘Ejecting A USB Storage Device (Windows)’ on p39, but it’s unclear whether this is for devices plugged into the PC, or devices plugged into the MyCloud.

Since I wasn’t sure whether I’d be able to eject safely, I dug out an old 1GB USB stick, plugged in a simple hub, then plugged the USB stick into the hub.  The dashboard went unavailable, then returned and needed a log in.  When the status re-appeared, the USB icon was now illuminated.  Clicking on that shows a USB DISK 2.0 device, with capacity details, but the volume name isn’t shown.  There was a funny little icon in the bottom left of the pop-up panel; a triangle over a bar.  I clicked this, and an ejection pop-up appeared.  Right; now I know how to eject a USB drive from the Dashboard.  It would be nice if that were included in Section 13 ‘Connecting a USB Hard Drive’ of the User Manual.  And in the index.

So, I SSH in, and look around.  And there, in the /shares folder, is the USB stick volume name.

I copied the entire stick to /shares/Public, timing the operation:

cd /shares/Volume

date; cp -R * /shares/Public/usb; date

Result: 1’07" for 732MB, 1019 files, 68 folders; 10.9MB/s

Okay, it’s a Flash memory stick, not a HDD.

Eject worked eventually, although no ‘it is safe to unplug’ message appeared; it just dropped back to the Dashboard, with the USB icon now dark.

Now to get adventurous…

I plugged in a USB3 500GB Toshiba portable drive.  Again, the Dashboard went down with an error report, then came back up, needing a log in, and, once status re-appeared, it showed a USB icon.  Clicking this showed the disk correctly identified as a 500GB Toshiba External USB 3.0 drive.

Back to SSH, and see the volume name under /shares

This drive had a lot of media on it, that might be a more useful test.  So I choose to copy a bunch of videos.  Same timed process as above.

Result: 1’37" for 304MB, 23 files.  That’s 3.13MB/s

Not as many videos as I thought; they’re all small clips.

Let’s try something a bit meatier; 10.3GB of music files:

Result: 50’35".  That’s 3.4MB/s.

It doesn’t look good…  But at least I now know where the USB disks appear in the filing system, and how to eject them…

9

Sounds pretty much like my experience for direct connection of USB 3.0 directly to the My Cloud…  not good!

10

cpt_paranoia wrote:

Interesting; at least that might be a good reason to have the MyCloud app installed on a local PC.

 

I note that the User Manual (p113) has this to say:

 

[quote]

…You’d think that if connecting the USB device directly to the MyCloud would give better performance (direct copy from USB to NAS, using the MyCloud app), that they’d mention that in the User Manual, wouldn’t you?..

In my experience that’s the best and fastest way to copy data (USB3 Disk attached).

11

Hi,

Yes this seems to concur with my previous theory on the processor speed. It would be interesting to run this with an old laptop or desktop to see what the transfer is like. 

A comparison also for download would be good as i know a fair few people on this forum have experienced issues with their download speed when streaming.