It takes a very long time to delete files from the device. I deleted 12 GB and it took over 2 hours. I did it from my desktop and laptop (Windows 10) it is on Gig network. Any advice would be appreciated
What was the make up of the 12G of files? It should not take 2 hours.
RAC
Mostly pictures. it seems to be consistent as every time I delete files it takes much longer then expected!
How many Pictures in the 12G group?
RAC
I am not sure but most where about 24Mb each. There where some Photoshop files that much bigger though
That works out to about 500 files or about 14.4 seconds per file.
RAC
so the latest saying is “it is what it is” and that is true for deleting files as there is no way to get around the time to delete a ton of files. My epub directory contains about 140,000 entries and it takes, I believe, about six hours to delete everything; it could be a few hours as it was many moons ago. So yes it was as Rac8006 calculated, something like 14 seconds per file.
Remember that each entry has to remove itself from a directory entry, then free up the space allocated by the file back to the pool of free space; unhook all the pointers etc. etc. etc. and all this process is running on an Arm computer that has less power then your cell phone and 512mb of memory.
Not sure why it takes 14 seconds to remove a 24MB file. I wonder if the noatime and nodiratime has an effect on the time. I had created a copy of the firmware 421 and 422 in two different directories to compare them for differences. I was able to from ssh delete the entire 421 directory in less than 14 seconds.
RAC
The slow and ineffectual deletes doesn’t kick in until your file buffers are full on both sides; the pc memory and your Cloud memory.
I think what happens is that the pc is sending each file deletion request one by one to the cloud, waits for the cloud to complete, before proceeding to the next directory of files which is probably trying to read the directory during the deletion process. You need a huge complex structure of multiple directories and multiple files to see this bottlenecking effect.
Just thought of something. If the wd servers are running then its more than just a delete. It is a delete scan to update the database. I would try doing it with those services stopped.
RAC
Thanks I will give it a try!
Ralphael
I did a test on my 6TB My Cloud. I copied a 2GB file to the cloud. I then timed a delete of the file. It took .433 seconds to delete the 2GB file. The setup was a laptop running windows 10 Pro over wifi to the My Cloud connected to a WRT-1900AC router on the 1gigabit port.
Then I copied 10 26MB files and deleted them. It took .601 seconds.
RAC
So what are your conclusions Rac8006? after proving beyond a doubt that what I said was untrue 
a) everyone is lying or exaggerates when they tell stories of how long something takes; e.g. they say it took ten minutes for a file copy when it was actually 1 minute.
b) all users are idiots because they don’t rtfm. They know that nobody rtfm so they say it to make every one feel guilty even though it isn’t documented in the manuals.
c) WD products are un-reliable and it is always WD fault even when it isn’t.
d) Ralphael is an ■■■■■
e) no one knows how to use a Cloud like Rac8006
f) all of the above
My test was not to prove or disprove anybody. as for yourlist.
a) One thing I learned when working support was what the customer felt
was probably correct.
b) Users are not idiots. Though a lot of users have limited knowledge of Linux.
I haven’t read the manual yet either.
c) WD products are not unreliable there firmware is and that is WD’s fault.
d) This one I will let you answer.
e) This is not true. I have very little knowledge of the My Cloud. But I do
know Linux.
f) none of the above.
RAC
PS The question is not if the MC can delete files quickly. But why does it take so long to delete files for some people.
Since I used both systems, the Mac and the PC, I do have the experience of possibly figuring the whys. The PC seems much better in handling large directory entries, however my PC has 32GB of Ram which may be the reason for the ability to handle large directories. Also when I say large, I mean several thousand file and sub directories under the main directory and I’m guessing it depends whether the number of entries will fill up your memory on both the PC side and the Cloud side which then determines how effective the delete will be.
I know this for a fact that ever since I moved off Cloud firmware 3.04, Samba is terrible for reading my large file directories; it takes 30 minutes just to load up 12,000 entries where-as connecting using afp, I can load up the directory in less then 30 seconds. Thus I connect using AFP in order to delete otherwise it would sit there for hours just trying to load up the directories and the subdirectories.
Go check out the Samba people to see maybe it is a Samba problem?
But yup… it takes ages to delete my epub directories and it contains somewhere in the neighborhood of 130,000 files and directories; it takes ages just preparing to delete.
Just for grins. The next time you want to delete those files. Try it by ssh into the MC and then delete the files. I’ll bet is it a lot quicker.
RAC
Not too much of a “Just for grins” person but if I ever get a 6TB Cloud/My Book pair free from WD, I’ll grin and copy everything over and delete the files using rm -f -r . (I think it is something like that) and let you know.
Does the term when hell freezes over ring a bell?
RAC
