Very slow after firmware update

Legacy Products My Cloud OS 3
1

My 4TB WD My Cloud device is running incredibly slow after it completed the firmware update on Saturday night (it automatically updated on Nov 17 to version 2.30.172).

Trying to load pages on the Dashboard takes 10-20 seconds, if it loads at all. Opening folders on the mapped network drive through a Windows machine also takes about 30 seconds. I also use the drive as a media server, but playback of files on the drive isn’t possible (videos freeze, etc.).

I’ve tried restarting the device, and power cycling my router. No luck. I searched the forum and found a thread from 2016, but the issue wasn’t resolved.

Any suggestions? Thanks!

2

Same here, but I didn’t see firmware updates with my 2TB device…

Current Version WDMyCloud v04.05.00-315 : Core F/W
Last Update Saturday, April 22, 2017 4:48:22 AM

The symptoms are exactly the same, , the dasboard is very slow too, and the DLNA working neither…and more: When copying files, it’s time to time drops to 0 b/s. Then goes up to ~10MB/s for seconds, and 0b/s again, and then I have to wait for 1-2 minutes to going up again.

I read hundreds of topics, tried to reset network in windows settings, installed credentials, modeified the registry, but nothing helped yet. This is very annoying, the storage went completely useless, and I lost my weekend because of this…

My last hope is that anyone can help here, any ideas or suggestions will greatly appreciated!

3

Pretty positive this latest firmware update ruined my MyCloud storage. I can not get this thing to discover on my internal network. I have tried replacing the ethernet cord. The only thing I haven’t tried is getting a USB-A to A aka Male to male cord to connect direct to my PC. Not sure if I’m the only one experiencing this after this last update. If anyone has had the same issue and could tell me what I’m doing wrong it’d be great to hear.

When I say it is down on my internal network I mean I can’t access the dashboard so if anyones suggestion is to get on the dashboard and do a firmware update again. It is impossible unless you can tell me how to get on that dashboard without network access. Also the LED in the front is flashing blue quickly.

4

That won’t work; the MyCloud USB port is a master, just like the PC.

It is possible to revert the firmware: search the forum.

5

*silently wonders if WD made the media server’s index crawler more aggressive/increased its priority, causing serious problems, like IO contention.

1 Like
6

One way to test: turn off Cloud Access to disable the indexer/thumbnailer.

7

Thanks all for the feedback and suggestions.

CPT, your suggestion of turning off Cloud Access seems to have “fixed” the issue. Dashboard is far more responsive now, as is browsing folders on the mapped drive. Playback of media files seems to be working fine now as well.

So is this a bug in the new firmware? Or can something else be done instead of leaving Cloud Access switched off?

8

The MyCloud has a system daemon that runs in the background when cloud access is turned on. This daemon does indexing and thumbnail generation of media files, among other things. It is known to have issues, and to sometimes spend DAYS doing the thumbnail generation. During that time, it consumes high CPU, and lots of the very limited memory available inside the MyCloud. (It even has problems with certain types of image file, where it can spend HOURS trying to parse a single image, before producing a broken thumbnail.

The recent firmware release has a pretty banal looking “Improve latency on thumbnail display for cloud access” keypoint.

At this point, I strongly suspect that they “Improved the latency” by increasing the process priority of the thumbnailer/indexer daemon. Again, this daemon ALREADY was consuming inordinate amounts of system resources to do its task. Increasing the process’ priority would make it harder for other tasks to wrest the CPU away from this process to do something you actually want it to do-- like network or file IO.

I am not brazen enough to install this firmware to do analysis myself, but I strongly suspect this to be the root cause. Personally, I would have LOWERED the priority of the thumbnailer, so that the system functions more reliably as a NAS when cloud access is enabled, and just ignored the lack of thumbnail images… but that’s me. (I rather prefer having reliable access to my data than reliably having pretty thumbnails in my browser…)

One of the things that WD could have done INSTEAD of dumbly inreasing the process priority, would be to add zram compressed swap to the device. (Currently, when the system runs low on RAM, it swaps to a swap partition on the hard drive. This is painfully slow compared to zram compressed ram swap. Both swap devices can be be enabled at the same time. so that when the zram swap is full, it uses the HDD backed swap, so really there is not a reasonable explanation for why they did not enable it on this device’s kernel.) which would reduce the IO contention issues of the device under load considerably. Currently, the device spends lots of time “waiting” to get data into memory from the HDD. This slows the entire system down to a crawl. Throw high CPU requirement on top of it all, and you have a recipe for trouble.

I dont think that WD spends a lot of time actually trying to tune the software of these devices at all.

I have silently wondered about taking every FW release they make, tearing into it myself, and reconfiguring it to be less insane, then releasing a community fix firmware based on it. I really dont have the time to reliable perform such a service though. :frowning:

1 Like
9

If one has not copied any new video/photo files. Why does the system get so busy after a new firmware update? Does it scan all the files and verify the thumbnails? One the thumbnail is created there is no need to scan that file again. The program that creates thumbnails should be using the inotify feature. It allows a program to be notified when a file is added to a monitored folder, therefore no need to scan the disk over and over again.

10

You’re making the rash assumption that the firmware is written by someone who has a Clue…

Turning Cloud Access off and on again causes a complete re-scan/thumbnail, rather than the more nuanced “let’s see if there’s a thumbnail of this image already available before I waste precious CPU time re-creating it”. Which would have been a far better approach to the ‘thumbnail latency problem’ (you know, the one that has hundreds of threads complaining about it. oh, it, doesn’t, does it…?) that WD claimed to have addressed.

I wish they’d fix the bugs that people have actually complained about, rather than ‘fixing’ one I’ve never seen mentioned here, and in doing so, making a pig’s ear of it.

11

A quick update: I have rolled back to the previous firmware (2.30.165), and it seems to have fixed the issue almost right away.

Perhaps others we able to wait out the re-scan of the indexer with the new firmware?

12

After 3 years of dealing with this scanning, busy, indexing ■■■■ I am done with WD; my whole LLC is getting rid of these toys and we’re investing in real NAS that’s not designed to be a video picture player. I wasted enough $$ & wasted hours of time with issue. I am running a business not a social BS camp. Sorry to hear you all having these problems too.

GiantAvocadoLLC Trading, Systems & Research
Homestead, SoFLo

13

Sometimes people learn the hard way that consumer products are sometimes/oftentimes NOT designed or intended for business use. The single bay My Cloud is not designed for business use. At best (and its a stretch), the My cloud could be used for a SOHO.

The My Cloud is a very low cost NAS device, with limited remote access capabilities. People get focused on the low cost and ignore the fact the device may not be suitable for their use, especially if they plan to use it in a business environment. There is a reason why competitor NAS devices are typically much more expensive than the entry level My Cloud devices.

For home use to store some media, some data files and stream video to a few devices, the entry level My Cloud is acceptable for a large number of consumers. However, tax the My Cloud and its limited/low hardware capabilities and limited sometimes buggy Dashboard/software/app capabilities and these shortcomings become very and glaringly evident.

14

Business or Home use is not the point; I am only using these for backup and occasional web access. When the unit is updated or has any substantial use it goes into scan mode and that renders this product useless from the sluggish performance. You are making excuses for a product that has a failed background; (checked the web on comments & issues of MyCloud lately?) If WD would give the user the option to have some control over when it scans and what is scans that would bail out this product to some degree. It has taken a week of scanning to recover some performance after the recent firmware update on my home unit. Bottom line, if this product can’t hold up & perform for the home user so why put it on the market no matter what the cost. It won’t be long before we will see these MyClouds in dollar stores. Excuses Excuses for Scan Scan Scan.

15

What excuses? As I indicate above the product DOES have low powered hardware that when taxed, by say numerous users or computers all accessing the My Cloud at once like say in a business environment, the device shows its limitations. I am not defending the product, just explaining how it is. The single bay My Cloud is not, in my personal opinion, suitable for business use or use where numerous computers are backing up to it at the same time.

One or two users remote accessing at the same time may not be a problem. But toss in local network access at the same time as numerous remote users all at the same time an the hardware just isn’t capable of supporting all the users at once.

Backing up a one computer at a time to the My Cloud I don’t notice any issues. But if I try to backup multiple computers, while streaming and accessing it remotely it is a different story. YMMV

Some have found that performing a 40 second reset may fix certain issues including sluggish Dashboard access after the My Cloud finishes scanning files. Turning off unneeded and unused services like Media Serving and Remote Access also help with sluggishness. In the end the single bay My Cloud is what it is and isn’t for everyone. If one needs a full featured NAS then they should consider looking at other more expensive products that are more capable with better hardware.

16

I will try the 40 reset but I think even one of my computers to one MyCloud may be the limit; I have a MyBook that works flawlessly because it does not have the server services. After the first of the year I plan on (as I always somehow end up doing) build my own NAS and will fork out for the SSDs and that will be that.

17

Bennor isn’t making excuses for anyone. He’s just telling you how it is, from one user to another.

We are users here, not WD Staff; they very rarely appear, and, when they do, they have ‘WD Staff’’ beside their name.

If you want WD to do something, ask WD. Good luck with that, though; we’ve been suggesting the ability for users to control the thumbnailing and scanning processes from the Dashboard for years, and WD have taken no notice.

18

We will just go somewhere else: I agree, thanks.