I have a problem with my brandnew WD My Cloud 3TB on my Raspi2 with Kodi 14.2 . I can watch no movie without buffering every 10 seconds! I am using SMB shares. After a hint out of the community I tried NFS shares, but KODI is buffering anyway.
I am still using a pretty old NAS system (D-Link DNS-323 from 2008). This thing works without buffering. By the way Raspi, NAS and WD My Cloud are connected via cable to the same Gigabit switch. Changing of cables and ports at the switch brought no success. The NAS is working perfectly, but using the WD it has to be buffered all the time.
So I came to the conclusion, that’s s.th. wrong with my WD My Cloud.
DLNA server and iTunes server are disabled, because I don’t need them and because I am suspecting that they could be the cause of my problems. Also no success here. But I assume anyway, that there services (indexing?!) running, which keep the Cloud busy.
Can someone please help me? I becoming mad over this matter.
with the pi 1 I had some bufffering with HD movies, with the pi 2 i have not had any issues. using SMB shares on both
has there been any major operations on the mycloud recently? FW update, loading a lot of files (especially photos), system restore etc. this is a very low end device and can take an extended time to settle down
what FW are you on?
do you know what the average bitrate (filesize * 8 / lengthinseconds) is? the pi 1 & 2 both only have 100Mbps ethernet so it your average is exceeding ~50Mbps I would expect buffering
edit:
Can you watch on another device with Gb Ethernet without buffering?
with the pi 1 I had some bufffering with HD movies, with the pi 2 i have not had any issues. using SMB shares on both
has there been any major operations on the mycloud recently? FW update, loading a lot of files (especially photos), system restore etc. this is a very low end device and can take an extended time to settle down
what FW are you on?
do you know what the average bitrate (filesize * 8 / lengthinseconds) is? the pi 1 & 2 both only have 100Mbps ethernet so it your average is exceeding ~50Mbps I would expect buffering
edit:
Can you watch on another device with Gb Ethernet without buffering?
The last operations at all were 10 days ago. I am using FW WDMyCloud v04.01.04-422. What I don’t understand is that my pretty old NAS DNS-323 from 2008 is working flawlessly and the newer and faster WD is not able to deliver the data fast enough. And that with exactly the same video files.
There got to be services which slow down the WD. But which ones? And how can I disable them?
What do you mean with “DNS-323” runs from memory" and 'My Cloud runs from disk"?
I don’t understand the main difference between my old DNS-323 and the My Cloud. Both have
a CPU
RAM
Flash memory which contains the OS
and last but not least an HDD (or two HDDs in case of my DNS-323)
The only real difference I see: There are a lot of services and processes running on the My Cloud which (potentially) slowing it down. On my DNS-323 are almost no processes running. Only the crucial ones.
I will give it a try to stop the processes you mentioned. Hopefully this solves my problem.
rac8006, I stopped all processes mentioned by you. It’s definitely an improvement, but still not good.
SD material: Still every 5 mins or so buffering.
HD material: Hangs every 20 or 30 secs.
In both cases way better than before, but there’s still a lot of room for improvement.
I really would like to stop every single process which is not crucial for the operation of the My Cloud. What I think what I need is SMB, SSH, maybe the web access and everything what the cloud at least needs to work. But since I have almost no knowledge of Linux I really don’t know what to stop.
rac8006, I stopped all processes mentioned by you. It’s definitely an improvement, but still not good.
SD material: Still every 5 mins or so buffering.
HD material: Hangs every 20 or 30 secs.
In both cases way better than before, but there’s still a lot of room for improvement.
I really would like to stop every single process which is not crucial for the operation of the My Cloud. What I think what I need is SMB, SSH, maybe the web access and everything what the cloud at least needs to work. But since I have almost no knowledge of Linux I really don’t know what to stop.
Deezle
The only thing that I can think of that may be causing the stutter at 5 minute intervals is the sleep. Try turning it off.
The DNS-323 as you noted runs from firmware and ram. The My Cloud does not run from firmware. The
DNS-323 could run with out any disk. The My Cloud won’t run with out the disk. Since the DNS-323 runs
from firmware. It dosen’t need to write to the disk when updating inodes for the OS. The My Cloud seems
to be updating the inodes.
I’m currently checking into different mount options for the root filesystem. These options would stop the writing
to disk to update inodes. I’ve had periods where the My Cloud would only wake up two times during a 24 hour
time frame.
RAC
Do I understand you correctly, that the OS on the Cloud is installed on disk?
But why should that pose a problem? I know it’s always a good idea to keep the OS and the data on different devices, but I assume the flash memory on my DNS-323 and also the CPU are pretty slow. Although the OS and the data are on different devices the sheer lack of speed should pose a problem but it doesn’t. The real reason, why the NAS works as intended and the My Cloud not, is, that the NAS is doing only the things that have to be done and nothing else. The My Cloud seems to waste a lot of CPU time with things which are useless to me and slowing it noticeably down.
And why is it a problem to write the inodes on my cloud device and no problem to write the inodes on my NAS? Only because they are on different devices?
And why are inodes written at all while I am only reading files?
And how can I stop the My Cloud writing indodes without a real cause?
I am curious about your findings concerning the mount options to prevent indodes to be written without a real cause.
Thanks again.
Deezle
PS: Sorry if s.th. I have written sounds a bit harsh, but English is not my native language. I am writing as good and as politely as I can.
I can not imagine why the My Cloud goes to sleep while data is constantly read from it. Even if this were the case the intervall should always be the same, but it isn’t.
I can not imagine why the My Cloud goes to sleep while data is constantly read from it. Even if this were the case the intervall should always be the same, but it isn’t.
Thank you very much anyway.
Deezle
The sleep interval is set at 10 minutes. Buffering takes in as much data as your player can hold which can vary between 5-15 minutes of video which varies the interval of reading. Thus between buffering, your cloud could fall asleep and thus when your video player needs more data, your cloud takes a few seconds to wake up which may be the cause of your stuttering.
Ok, let’s assume that this is the solution for the problem I have, but I would pay for this solution with a very limited life of the HDD within the My Cloud. I don’t know if I want that.
And that’s why I think that turning off sleep is not the solution:
Before stopping several processes on My Cloud the shortest time between two buffering processes were around 10 secs. So we can assume the buffer of my Raspi2 is holding up to 10 secs of video. This time is way too short for the WD to fall asleep. Maybe I can increase the buffer a bit. But the RAM of the Raspi2 is very limited.
But I am turning sleep off anyway because I am curious. I’ll let you know how it worked.
it is definitely possible you got a bad WD device but I’m assuming that you are trying all these suggestions together and not one by one and posting up “no”.
if you are streaming through a gigabit line, make sure the light on the back isn’t yellow (100 mbit line)
turn off the services mentioned by Rac, the main ones are the media scans
turn off sleep (it may not be your problem but it does fall asleep at 10 minutes) Usually when I use my cloud during the day, I turn sleep off because waking your hard drive up every 10 minutes as soon as it just parked itself is not a good thing for the device. It is better to run a device 24/7 then to wake a drive up 5 seconds after it sleeps.
turn off buffer on the RAS.
So if it doesn’t perform well, take the device back or phone up WD who will probably have you try a couple of a full resets before swapping your brand new drive for a refurbish one.
Do I understand you correctly, that the OS on the Cloud is installed on disk?
But why should that pose a problem? I know it’s always a good idea to keep the OS and the data on different devices, but I assume the flash memory on my DNS-323 and also the CPU are pretty slow. Although the OS and the data are on different devices the sheer lack of speed should pose a problem but it doesn’t. The real reason, why the NAS works as intended and the My Cloud not, is, that the NAS is doing only the things that have to be done and nothing else. The My Cloud seems to waste a lot of CPU time with things which are useless to me and slowing it noticeably down.
Yes the DNS-323 does less. Also the DNS-323 uses a program called busybox. Most devices like Blueray/DVD/smart T etc use Busybox. Busybox is a single program that emulates most of the programs that are needed to run the device. This means that it does not have to search/open/read the data to do the functions. It also has the libraries built in. On the My Cloud every program is a seperate file. So the file needs to be found. The inode read from disk. Then the data for the progam is read. Each library item that the program requires must be found and opened. This causes alot of disk/cpu activity as opposed to the DNS-323. By the way I also have a DNS-323. I’ve had it for several years. It may be limited in memory/cpu. But it does a good job of recompiling busybox or other programs.
And why is it a problem to write the inodes on my cloud device and no problem to write the inodes on my NAS? Only because they are on different devices?
I don’;t know the internals of the DNS-323. But because Busybox contains most of thhe applications that need to be used to run the device. It would require no disk reads once it is in memory. The disk read/write for the OS would be to memory not disk. Where as the My Cloud would require multiple read/writes for every application.
And why are inodes written at all while I am only reading files?
The inodes are written to update the accessed time in the inode.
And how can I stop the My Cloud writing indodes without a real cause?
What I’m using currently is “mount -o remount,noatime,nodiratime /dev/root /” This command tells the OS not to update the access time.
The WD device is definitely connected through a gigabit line because I have transfer rates from my pc to the WD device of up to 85 MBytes/s. PC, WD, NAS and Raspi2 are connected through the same gigabit switch.
The services mentioned by RAC are still turned off.
Sleep is still turned off
What does that mean?
It still does not perform well and I am still thinking that some “activities” on the WD are preventing it from performing well. I have to locate those “activities” and stop them. It cannot be that a pretty old NAS performs better than a pretty new WD network drive.
The WD device is definitely connected through a gigabit line because I have transfer rates from my pc to the WD device of up to 85 MBytes/s. PC, WD, NAS and Raspi2 are connected through the same gigabit switch.
The services mentioned by RAC are still turned off.
Sleep is still turned off
What does that mean?
It still does not perform well and I am still thinking that some “activities” on the WD are preventing it from performing well. I have to locate those “activities” and stop them. It cannot be that a pretty old NAS performs better than a pretty new WD network drive.
It is a checklist and you have just answered your own question…
If you are getting 85MB/s then you are good to go… there are not other activites that is slowing it down.
That means only one thing… the Raspi2 method of retrieving the movie. There is absolutely no problem with the WD at all, really!!
My Raspi2 uses SMB shares to access data on the WD device. Twonky does not run. I gave NFS shares a shot, but with no success.
I have an HTPC with XBMCbuntu and an i3 CPU. It shares the same problems with the Raspi2. But I am using it only occasionally. The Raspi2 is my main concern.
