HOw ot speed up file transfer - wifi only

My Cloud OS 3 Personal & Network Attached Storage My Cloud
1

Its been four days now of transfering files formmy pc to the MYcloud and only 164Gb transferred.I have read the stickys on ethernet gigabits etc but I am not super technical and so dont understand all this, and neither can I move my entire pc down to the living room where the virgin cable router is connected to the wall. 

Apparently the virgin router is gigabit ethernet compatible but thats the extent of my understanding. 

IUts taking farrr toooo long. What should I do? 

Is it always going to be this slow ona wireless connection? if so I will give up now and return it and just buy a plug and play backup. Afterall, many of you seem to be saying that the CLOUd functiondoesnt work anyway - which is why I chose this item in the first place.

I have another 500 GB to transfer this is getting silly. 

I did try transfering movies to a portable drive and plugging that in to mycloud but then it only allows me to (swearing to self0 transfer one file at a time!??

Help please!. 

2

it will be tough if you only have wifi access but once you get past the last 500 GB, it might be tolerable. You can bring your cloud up to your pc and connect your cloud and pc together using an ethernet cable.

Map your cloud as a local drive (search map cloud as local drive) and transfer the remaining 500 GB.

Then you can put the cloud back downstairs and access it anywhere by wifi.

Now the other problem might be a weak wifi signal by the time it reaches upstairs so you might check into a Wifi extender to boost the strength of the signal for upstairs; all you need to do for a wifi extender is to plug one in at a spot between downstairs and upstairs to boost the signal.

There are a lot of advantages of wifi access to your cloud, one is mobility of which you can access the cloud via your mobile phone, tablet or laptop, or even multiple devices.

However If you have only one pc, then you might consider trading in your Cloud for a USB WD my book instead, which then localize your access without headaches.

Good luck

3

It is recommended that when transferring a large amount of files to connect the computer directly to the same router the WD My Cloud is connected to via Ethernet cable.

Just because the WD My Cloud is capable of gigabit ethernet doesn’t mean the PC your transferring from is capable of such speeds. When it comes to WiFi speed, that is separate from the gigabit lan speed of the WD My Cloud. The WiFi speed  is dependent on the WiFi band/speed used and the capability of the device connecting via WiFi and the WiFi router/gateway. Often one does not get the fastest advertised speed on their WiFi device/router.

If copying the files remotely from offsite then one’s connection speed is limited by BOTH the upload/download speed at both ends of the connection and the speed of the internet connection between those locations.

4

Thanks. 

Well this (mapping netwrokd drive) is also a problem as when I try to map the network drive it wont let me (see my other post).

Could it be because the cloud has to be physically connected to the pc to be mapped? I havent tried that yet as I’m not sure I have an ethernet connection

My wifif is pretty good its about 30mbps I think and dont have a problem downloading fast etc,

5

spacecandi wrote:

Could it be because the cloud has to be physically connected to the pc to be mapped? I havent tried that yet as I’m not sure I have an ethernet connection

No the WD My Cloud does not need to be directly connected to the PC. Its designed to be connected to a router (or hub or switch) so the entire local network can access the device.

As indicated before. You’ll get the fastest speed if you connect the PC, via an Ethernet wire, to the same router the WD My Cloud is connected too. Yes it may be a pain to move a PC (even a desktop PC) to another location so it can be connected to the router via an Ethernet wire (or move the router closer to the PC), or having to buy a long Ethernet wire to run across or through rooms, but the time saved over trying to copy 500+ GB’s through WiFi may be worth it. You typically get much faster throughput speed over Ethernet wire versus WiFi.

6

How did you determine this? “My wifif is pretty good its about 30mbps I think and dont have a problem downloading fast etc,”

if it truely is 30Mbps it will take over 40 hours to copy 500GB. even to 30Mbps is not great there are many things that can impact wifi so it could be much worse at times

how are you doing the file transfer?

what type of files? number of files? size?

7

Oh…well that then may be why it has taken 4-5 days to transfer 200 gb of data! :( 

I determined wifi speed via online speed checker. 

I am transferring all the files on my pc - documents, photos,.videos, program user data, but not big films. I dont know how to find number of files but definitely quite a few!

I’m doing the current file transfer via Smartware backup bbecause I want the system to automatically update and changed files. My movie collection however I will just copy.

I have ordered a 20m ethernet cable which should arrive tomorrow to see if I can speed it all up by connecting pc and cloud together. I hope this is the right thing to do?

I did plug in a usb hard drive to the cloud and it can se all the filoes, but WHY can’t Ijust copy them over to the share? It will only let me copy one at a time which is ridiculous.

I have enough on my plate right now without all this additional stress and effort to get this set up. 

Any advice appreciated.

8

the onlin speed checker will only show the slowest part, the wifi could be faster and at time could be slower

if there is a lot of photos it can really slow the mycould

cabled will almost always beat wifi, mainly a question of how much

I still have not seen how you are doing the copies, I see smartware for backups.

to copy from a mycloud attached USB disk to or from the mycloud I wouold use the desktop or mobil WD app. this is the only transfer methode that that won’t make a reound trip over your LAN. for PC to and from the mycloud file explorer is the better choice on the LAN

9

The copies, which i havent done yet (only tried for a few files), I simply dragged and dropped in the my cloud using the desktop program that comes with the setup.

for the backup which is taking days, I simply set up a backup (i.e. my wentire d drive of personal files, to go to my personal folder on the mycloud) as a continuous backup and itt starts copying everything across. 

10

I don’t use the WD Desktop App.

I simply map the NAS into my Windows File System, and use Windows File Explorer to transfer data.

http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2676

11

yes but I cant map mine (see my other post)!! 

Too many problems with this BLEEP box :frowning:

12

Sorry; I can’t keep track of related problems spread over multiple threads.

I’d start by removing the USB drive, and doing a 4 second reset.

13

If it’s any help, here are my recent notes from starting up a new MyCloud, starting with a factory restore, copying media to it, and getting Twonky running. They’re very terse, because they’re notes intended for my use.

Utilities

quick factory restore

flashing white light

use router to find dhcp-assigned IP address

set to always use this address

use web browser to access Dashboard

/UI/

wait for Dashboard to appear

solid white light

eventually get dashboard 5 minutes later

blue light

dashboard accept t&cs

dashboard create WD login: cancel

dashboard home now accessible

2tb v04.01.02.417 1 user:admin

Firmware

disable auto-update

General

set device name

set time zone

enable cloud access

disable time machine

Network

enable SSH

set workgroup name

Media

disable media streaming

disable itunes server

That’s it. I’m now ready to rock and roll. (This took about ten minutes)

Connect Android file manager to MyCloud file server

Users

edit admin user to set name & email

received confirmation email immediately

Shares

edit shares to delete TimeMachineBackup

add Media share

turn off public access

turn on full access for me

enable media serving

Cloud Access

can configure cloud access, and WD login

06/07/15

Created share MP3

made public

copied all G:MP3 to MP3 share (G: is a 500GB USB HDD on the PC)

07/07/15

updated firmware to sq-040104-422-20150423

took about ten minutes

users and shares maintained

doing a content scan, so I assume that’s the wdmc stuff

SSH

/etc/init.d/wdmcserverd stop success

/etc/init.d/wdphotodbmergerd stop  not running

content scan now reports idle

capacity report 1.5TB

looks good

08/07/15

started Twonky

found sharing:

/Public All

/Media All

/MP3 All

tried to disable Public and Media via Twonky UI

Error 400162

edited /etc/contentdir to enable just Music on MP3 share

restart Twonky

slow scanning?

edited ignore directories

noticed date is wrong: NTP disabled

firmware update time is correct

enable NTP

That’s it. Note that I only have a 100Mb ethernet on the PC, and router is only 100Mb, but I copied all 500GB in a day or so.

14

I dont know if I can manage this without having a computing degree…

I dont know how to log into my router and find the IP address of the box or find the name of the network. I dont have a homegroup. …so stuck on that already :( 

15

Default Windows workgroup is ‘WORKGROUP’. As it is on the MyCloud.

Router UIs aren’t that difficult, and a good idea to learn. Granted, I’m a professional electronic design engineer with 30+ years experience with the research division of an electronics multinational…

You can always wait for the MyCloud to boot, and you should be able to access the Dashboard using ‘WDMyCloud/UI’ in a web browser. Then you can set the IP mode to ‘Static’ using the ‘Network’ page. I just prefer making the setting at the router.

16

I cant log into my trouter becauser it seems I need ot have more problems to fix! But I did find the ip address. I cant puit that in the dashbouard as it also wants screenmask and I dont know what that is.

17

spacecandi wrote:

I cant log into my trouter becauser it seems I need ot have more problems to fix! But I did find the ip address. I cant puit that in the dashbouard as it also wants screenmask and I dont know what that is.

What is a “screenmask”? Do you mean “screen name”? The WD My Cloud Dashdashboard doesn’t ask for a “screen name”, it asks for a “Username” if one is presented with a username and password screen. One uses the Username and password they created when they setup and configured the WD My Cloud.

18

sigh…

when I try to set it to STATIC IP, then it asks me for the IP address and (apologies I wrote it wrong) NETMASK

I dont know what that is either 

19

I also plugged in my new ethernet cable and nothing has changed. 

I cant log into the Smartware (which was doing the backup) even thorugh its the same login details

I cant map the drive

I cant set it to Static IP

20

spacecandi wrote:

 

when I try to set it to STATIC IP, then it asks me for the IP address and (apologies I wrote it wrong) NETMASK

 

I dont know what that is either 

To set the Static IP and Netmask one needs to know the IP range they are using on their local network. There are two ways to set a Static IP on the WD My Cloud. First way is through your broadband router/gateway. Second is through the WD My Cloud Dashboard. One needs to use an IP address that is not being used by any other device on your local network, that’s why often the easier way is to set the Static IP address through the broadband router/gateway.

Check with your broadband provider for more information on configuring their equipment, or look at the router/gateway box and get a model number for it and do an online search. Often there are plenty of directions found online that will instruct someone how to access their broadband router/gateway to configure a static IP for a device. Or at the very least find the IP address pool number and netmask information.

One can find the IP address the WD My Cloud is currently using by accessing the Dashboard and navigating to Settings → Network. The IP address is listed in the “IP Address” entry. Typically and generally if the device IP address is in the 192.168.1.x range or the 192.168.0.x range or the 10.0.0.x range, the Netmask will often be “255.255.255.0”. One sets the Gateway entry to the same IP address that their broadband router/gateway uses. Same goes for the DNS entry, or one can fill in the DNS entries with a public DNS server from the list found at this link.