You make a great tech support guy Rac8006 but I wouldn’t want to be the customer that has to perform those tests, not because they are difficult but simply I would be annoyed at having to perform test like a lab monkey and give results for a product that I bought.
Anyways, I do have a solution.
I really don’t want to post up a solution because then the real problem will never be solved as another similar USB problem was never solved with the 3.04 version.
When I use to be a part of IT/software programmer, I hated users like myself because I offer helpful solutions that seems to obfuscate the problem and sometimes it impedes the solving of the problem. Take a look at my tech call on the other thread because as I tried to explain two different problems and they get interweaved into one problem; i.e. my public folders has nothing to do with my attaching a USB drive problem but yet the solution they proposed is related to the public folders.
The Story of “The Blind Men and the Elephant”
The reason that I am using that story allegorically, all of us are touching and observing different pieces of the WD software including Tech Support. I might even include the WD programmers because I am beginning to doubt that any single programmer at WD would know the whole interaction of their software.
So for the last week while keeping silent from the forums, I managed to mount my PassPort USB drive and have been using it. I thought it was a quirk but apparently it was a solution from my firmware 3.04 days (actually I had to use it more recently because I downgraded one of my clouds back to 3.04).
The method that I use with firmware 3.04 is
Normally I have these two services stopped
/etc/init.d/wddispatcherd stop
/etc/init.d/wdnotifierd stop
I would then plug in my USB drive…
Then I would start up the services
/etc/init.d/wddispatcherd start
/etc/init.d/wdnotifierd start
As soon as the USB drive is mounted as shown on the dashboard
I would then stop the services
/etc/init.d/wddispatcherd stop
/etc/init.d/wdnotifierd stop
To remove the drive, I click on the eject USB on the Dashboard… then start the services.
The reason for this elaborate starting and stopping of these services is because in 3.04 my Cloud would lock with a frenzy of activities after plugging in a USB drive. When I say locked I mean locked. There are no responses within the SSH window, the drive can be heard rattling with the drives hard at work and there is no Dashboard. I have no idea whether this problem was ever resolve by WD.
This was the reason in 3.04 that
- never boot up with your usb drive attached (filled with data)
- always wait for 5 minutes or more before attaching your USB drive.
- If you do boot up with the USB drive attached, SSH into the device immediately and stop the two services, otherwise the Cloud will lock.
If I left the services running for more than 5 minutes after powering up the Cloud, I can safely mount and dismount the USB drive without having to stop and start the services. It is only during the initial running of these services that seems to give us problems.
I believe you need both services to be active in order to mount a USB drive and you definitely need wdnotifierd to mount and unmount a USB 3 drive otherwise the ejecting of the USB drive would never complete.
So with OS 3… wddispatcherd has been removed but wdnotifierd is still there.
So after posting up this post last week and spending the whole day trying to resolve it, I stumbled on to the solution late at night.
After downgrading my other cloud, I decided to shut down all the services that is not needed in order for the drive to get a good night sleep.
wdnotifierd was one of the services that I shut down.
Thus that night, I decided to try my PassPort drive one more time.
Plugged in my PassPort drive
/etc/init.d/wdnotifierd start
and the PassPort drive got mounted… and I turned off the service.
The PassPort drive was mounted successfully…
I spent the whole week organizing my files without mentioning this solution on the forum in the belief that it might be, when I moved this cloud from the shelf to my desk, I had to power off the Cloud and re-power back on, the solution; I wasn’t sure.
I ended up buying another 4TB My Book and for the last two days I was busy filling it with data directly on my Computer USB 3 port.
Today I decided to try my luck with attaching the My Book to the OS 3 Cloud.
First I had to eject my PassPort…
- so I started up the wdnotifierd service after clicking on eject…
- removed passport
- attached My Book
- stopped wdnotifierd
The My Book was mounted Successfully
So just to be nice, I thought I would repeat this experiment (this is what it means to be a tester which is why I hate this job, repeating your tests).
- started wdnotifierd… click eject
- ejected and I removed the drive
- waited for a few seconds, like about 5 seconds and plugged it back in
- I am hearing a lot of clacking sounds… rumbling… like the hard drive is re-organizing itself…
- I am expecting the drive to be mounted… but I get this panel…
interesting eh?
- So I stopped the wdnotifierd services…
- and the drive got mounted…
so… as I’m feeling the elephant’s trunk…
If you toggle the service “wdnotifierd” stop and start while rubbing your head in a circular motion facing north… your USB 3 drive will attach…
Optionally, perhaps it is just a matter of waiting… wait for your drive to settle (lets say 5 minutes) before attaching a USB drive.
Last words… I am not doing anymore testing on this problem.
If you need to replicate this problem try filling your hard drives with 4tb of data and tell your testers that if they lose any part of the data, they will be fired, strapped to a chair and electrocuted and lastly will need to pay a $1000 fine (in no particular order).
I promised on my last post in the temp forum that I won’t be posting here anymore and I broke my promise twice because I do want this problem fixed and it is a problem.
but was part of my script