I need to defragment MyCloud using Windows10. However the Deragment & Optimize Drives** do not see the external HD (MyCloud)
It is connected and the drive is visible in the File Explorer
The MyCloud’s share does not need to be defragmented.
If, by some strange set of circumstances— it actually DID need to be defragmented, the tool to use is e4defrag, and you would have to run it over ssh. I dont think it is even included in the tools baked into the mycloud units.
edit: Confirmed, it is not present in my gen2.
SMB, the protocol used by the MyCloud, and by windows to do file and print sharing, is a file-level protocol, not a block level protocol, like iSCSI. As such, the defragmentation software used by windows has no real means of moving the file’s physical location on the volume to accomplish defragmentation. Additionally, the actual file system type used on the MyCloud units is EXT4, which is a Linux file system. Windows does not know how to work with that kind of file system format, and can only work with files stored there thanks to SAMBA, providing SMB protocol services.
Why do you feel there is a need to defragment the mycloud?
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You may want to look at this topic too.
I just cleaned up MyCloud and deleted a lot of data.
Deleting 900 Gb of some old Norton backups took me literally 25 hours!
I don’t think I ever defragmented the drive, but know for a fact than there was a defrag option when running Win7.
cat0w in the post (via your link) there is no answer. Just the same Q as I have.
Again, pretty much the ONLY tool that can defragment an EXT4 volume is [e4defrag]. It is a part of e2fstools package on linux, but is not present on the Gen2.
To use it, you will have to find a statically compiled binary for it, and push it to your gen2, and run it.
For the most part, EXT4 uses “intelligent placement” when it creates files. For this reason, it typically does not need to be defragmented. I strongly suspect that this is why WD did not include it on the gen2. (it would have been pretty painless for them to add a button to start defragmentation from the web gui that launches e4defrag.)
Thanks Wierd_w
I looked at the e4defrag but will refrain from using it. I have had some issues with my MyCloud lately and do not want to start tinkering with it again.
Thanks for your help.
