WebDAV Primer – Microsoft vs… WD My Book Live & My Book Live Duo, and N900C [ Edited ]
09-03-2012 11:58 AM - edited 12-09-2012 04:17 PM
Note: This is WINDOWS specific; if you have a Mac, you can disregard this whole thread, as Macs do not appear to suffer from this issue.
A not insignificant number of complaints with regard to the My Book Live (MBL) and My Book Live Duo (MBLD) are due to users’ PCs connecting to shares on the MBL / MBL Duo via WebDAV instead of the desired Microsoft Windows Network protocol.
In addition to performance woes, WebDAV shares exhibit the following traits:
- Windows reports the Disk Partition type to be FAT32 instead of NTFS (both are wrong, technically, but that’s not important. CIFS shares should always be listed as NTFS.)
- WIndows reports the Free Space Remaining to be identical to the primary partition of your main internal hard disk (usually your C: drive.) That’s because WebDAV has no standard way of reporting free space.
- Deleting files will not work – they may appear to be deleted, but future visits to the same folder will show they’ve not been deleted.
- VERY slow copy / move performance
- … a file system littered with “.DAV” folders and data structures inside them.
- Microsoft Office documents (among others) require you to enter a User ID and password when trying to open them, and the credentials may not work (depending on the version of Office you’re using.)
- Etc.
WebDAV is a necessary component of the MBL/MBL Duo’s WD 2go architecture.
The fact that Windows PCs connect to shares via WebDAV instead of CIFS (Windows Client Network) is a problematic issue with Windows, not the MBL, and the method by which Windows makes this distinction under “ordinary” circumstances is a mystery to me.
My suspicion is that it is due to a malfunction in NetBIOS Name Lookup.
- Windows attempts to connect to the MBL Samba service by first issuing a NetBIOS name lookup, which may fail.
- If the NetBIOS name lookup fails, Windows may then attempt to do a Domain Name lookup (DNS) on the same host name.
- If that succeeds, Microsoft may assume that Samba is not available (due to lack of NetBIOS name resolution) and then attempt to connect via HTTP (WebDAV) which WILL work; it appears that WebDAV service is available on the MBL/MBLD without regard to the status of Web Access configuration.
At any rate, WD makes the WebDAV service available, but it’s up to the client PC to determine whether or not to use it, and it seems that, quite often, Windows makes the “wrong choice,” and the user suffers from poor performance associated with WebDAV client connections.
So, first things first: Determine if your issues are due to WebDAV connections
Open up a CMD window:
- Click START (the “Orb”)
- In the Search box, type “cmd” without the quotes.
- Wait until “cmd.exe” appears in the results and click it.
- A black command-line window should appear
at the prompt, enter the command “net use” without quotes.
It should look something like this:
C:\Users\tony>net use
New connections will not be remembered.
Status Local Remote Network
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OK Z: \\bignas3\Public Web Client Network
OK Y: \\mybooklive\public Microsoft Windows Network
The command completed successfully.
Don’t worry about the specifics here; they’re unique to each user. But what you’re looking for is under the NETWORK column.
If it says “Microsoft Windows Network” your PC connected CORRECTLY using the CIFS / Samba protocol.
Note the first entry, which indicates “Web Client Network.” That is a WebDAV connection and it is NOT what I want to have.
What to do about it
Try these steps in order. Don’t use the WD Link or Quickview tools; I have no experience with them at all; and never needed them.
- First try deleting the mapping and then re-mapping the drive. It will often work correctly the next time you map the drive. Use the “net use” command above to ensure all maps are deleted.
Example:
C:\Users\tony>net use
New connections will not be remembered.
Status Local Remote Network
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OK Z: \\bignas3\Public Web Client Network
OK Y: \\mybooklive\public Microsoft Windows Network
The command completed successfully.
C:\Users\tony>
C:\Users\tony>net use \\bignas3\Public /delete
\\10.0.0.30\Public was deleted successfully.
C:\Users\tony>net use
New connections will not be remembered.
Status Local Remote Network
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OK Y: \\mybooklive\public Microsoft Windows Network
- Try Deleting, then REBOOTING before Re-mapping.
- Try mapping by IP address instead of by name.
If all goes well, you should be able to connect correctly, as shown here:
C:\Users\tony>net use
New connections will not be remembered.
Status Local Remote Network
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OK Y: \\mybooklive\public Microsoft Windows Network
OK Z: \\bignas3\Public Microsoft Windows Network
Last ditch effort: DISABLE the WebDAV Client service on your PC by following these instructions:
http://www.windowstipspage.com/disable-enable-webclient-service/
**NOTE**: Make sure you record somewhere what the PRIOR setting of that service was in case you have issues later.
For most users (especially those users who do NOT use WD 2go from that PC), that won’t cause any issues. But it WILL prevent WD 2go connections from that PC, and it may interfere with any other WebDAV applications your PC may be using. So if you do experience issues after doing that, simply restore the service back to its original state.
Hopefully this will help users.
Unfortunately, I’m by no means an expert in WebDAV, so I can’t offer any other advice if your PC has troubles beyond this…
