WD EX2 Ultra unreachable after a while

My Cloud OS 3 Personal & Network Attached Storage My Cloud EX2
21

Well, WD Engineers found the root cause after about 6 months of poring over logs and analyzing the symptoms.

The problem is caused by a large external drive connected to the NAS via USB containing a lot of content. After the NAS has started up, it will try to index the content on the external drive. If there is a lot of content, the unit will run out of RAM after some time. First dashboard and cloud connections will become unresponsive (connection refused), then the file serve will quit, and the media server will shut down as well as the SSH connection. Upon reboot, the unit will respond for a short while until the indexing resumes.

Disconnecting the USB drive and power-cycling restores full functionality. The insidious thing about this issue is that it creeps up on you as the external drive fills up. Form me, the issue started when I transferred a lot of backup files from the NAS to the external drive, about half a year after I had purchased and connected the 4 TB USB drive.

Here is the official response from WD, for the record, The suggestions from them are not an option for me, so i just disconnected the external drive for now. Also, it really blows that there is no way to just stick more RAM into the NAS. Well, I wish I had known these things before I bought the darn thing, now I have to live with my choice.

— Response from WD support —

Due to the fact that you have a USB Drive attached to the EX2 Ultra device, the scanning and indexing services running within the CLoud try to index the content of the USB drive and even generate thumbnails for the media files. This eventually causes the device to run out of RAM memory and run a command that renders the device unreachable to keep in running despite the no-memory situation.

When content is added to the external USB drive, the content is indexed so the data is accessible in Web and mobile app

however we do not generate a thumbnail. To generate a thumbnail, “USB Content Availability” has to be enabled and based on the System Logs you indeed have this enabled. Extracting the thumbnails uses more memory and CPU to process the files for remote access.

SOLUTION:

  1. Safe Eject the external USB Drive and disconnect

  2. Turn OFF Remote Cloud Access for now. We will enabled it later on

  3. Turn OFF iTunes Server for now.

  4. Turn OFF Twonky DLNA Media Server for now

  5. Turn OFF “USB Content Availability” to conserve memory on the device.

  6. Reboot the EX2 Ultra

  7. Connect the External USB drive

  8. USB Backups and Restores should no longer trigger the Out Of Memory shut down and the unit should not lock up as before

•You can enable remote access, however, the crawler will index every new piece of data added to the external USB drive which increases the memory usage. It would therefore be advisable to turn off Cloud Access when the External drive is connected.
•We would not recommend to enable Twonky and if you do, just disable Media Serving on the USB drive so that Twonky is not indexing USB Backups.
•We would not recommend to enable USB Content Availability. However, if you require thumbnail access to your USB drive via Cloud Apps, this is the only way which will increase CPU and memory usage.

22

Fascinating.

It seems that indexing is the root of many evils.
An evil, like most evils, that should be avoided.

I seem to recall issues with the WD WIreless Passports and indexing as well. I think WinXP had issues as well.

I have recently played with external drives on the EX2, and I think I was noting similar bad behavior when comparing performance of 32gb USB keys to a 4TB external drive.

I deal with Twonky and Plex indexing by tightly controlling what specific directories I let it look at. I don’t let these apps rampage across the NAS.

I am very surprised you can’t just STOP the crawling process completely. I bet that someone on here has the right SSH commands to do it. Regardless. . . I would question if the Web Apps are really “worth it” if the cost is “indexing”.

Note that with a PC, you could directly access files on the NAS using a VPN connection. As for media. . .plex and VLC offer powerful options for tablets and phones.

Yeah, I guess more RAM is an option. But that sounds like a bandaid for a piece of hardware that is working too hard to generate data for . . . .a web application that perhaps should be blocked for security reasons? There are vendors that provide expandable RAM. . .but I thought that was more for higher level media transcoding and what-not.

23

I have exactly the same problem with my new MCEx2Ultra BUT THERE IS NO EXTERNAL DRIVE connected, nor has there ever been, so Indexing is not the problem.

The MCEx2U did not appear in my iMac24M1 Finder (latest MacOS BigSur) until I had made many, many ‘looks’ (with the Finder) and suddenly I was able to access it as a “Guest”, then it appeared in the Time Machine list of disks, and then TM did about 7 or 8 auto back ups overnight.

Next day, the MCEx2U had disappeared from the Finder (and, of course the TM list of disks). So again many repeated attempts to look for it in the finder, until there it was (but no need to state I am a “Guest”), and I was able to “Back up Now” in TM.

I’m beginning too think the MCEx2U is simply not fit for purpose and seeking a refund on that basis. The question is, which NAS is any better??

25

Thanks for your prompt response, and your opinion. I’ll look into Synology.
There’s a ‘BUT’ -
your $ prices look good, but I am in UK, so $299.99 unit, on Amazon UK, is £309.98 = a crazy rate of exchange!! And the 2 drives on top mean it is c. £200 more expensive than WD. But if it works . . .

27

I also have a similar problems. It worked for 1-2 years. Then started to disappear from the network. I can see it show fast network activity according to lights at the LAN jack. I have a lot of important files and video almost 2 TB of data on each 4TB discs RAID 1 configuration. I a not sure how to recover these data. Bloody waste of money.

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Eventually WD gave me a new MCEx2U - they don’t do refunds, even though the kit isn’t really fit for purpose, so they are in breach of trading standards - but that too became unreachable via the ‘dashboard’. Weirdly, the volumes on the device were on the desktop and visible though the phone app.
Online support suggested a “60 sec reset” but I can’t see any ref to that elsewhere in the help, so I did several 40 sec resets with no improvement.
Eventually I checked what was going on at the router and discovered that the MCEx2U address there was different to that specified online by WD!. With the correct address, the unit became accessible and began to behave itself, even doing TM BUs.
I shouldn’t be complacent - now the power LED is flashing quickly RED, even though the dashboard reports all healthy and there are no warnings!
This device is a real crock of ■■■■. DON’T RECOMMEND!