My Cloud 4 TB SLOW Transfer Speeds

[ristvedt]

I previously posted this message in a different forum, looks like this is the correct forum to do so. Help me WD Community, you’re my only hope.

I have a brand new Western Digital My Cloud 4 TB external hard drive, connected to my brand new Netgear R6250, which is connected to my brand new Motorola Surfboard 6141. I just performed a speed test and I have 56.94 Mbps down and 12.01 Mbps up. The My Cloud is connected to the router through a Cat 5e ethernet cable, and a Cat 5e ethernet cable connects my Macbook Pro to my router. I have the drive mounted on my network so it’s showing up as a hard drive. All my firmware is updated and the drive appears to be working just fine, other than the speed.

Now that you have all my specs, here is my issue: I keep running speed tests using Lan Speed Test (Lite). I have tried using sample files of 20 MB and 150 MB. Every time, the speed test comes back at around 26 Mbps upload and 289 Mbps download. As far as I understand, these are both drastically beneath what the speeds should be.

Can somebody explain how I can improve my speeds? I’m getting a little frustrated that my drive is working well below the performance that sold me on purchasing the drive to begin with. Any help is GREATLY appreciated.

[Ralphael]

I’m guessing that the following may be your problem…

remember to turn off your wifi when connected via the ethernet cable or set the priorities from WIFI to your ethernet connection. 

Open network connection and select wi-fi and turn wi-fi off…

[ristvedt]

My airport is disabled and the only feed I have is through the Cat 5e ethernet cable, so that is definitely not the issue.

[ristvedt]

For what it’s worth, I have tried numerous different ethernet cables, for both the connections, and have tried using my girlfriend’s laptop as well with multiple different ethernet cables. All my ethernet cables are brand new and both laptops are in relatively good condition (i.e. nothing that would cause them to have such slow transfer speeds).

[Ralphael]

all right… 

make sure you don’t use the WEB software mapping…

Mapping the Devices as a drive

This is how I’ve been using the NAS device by mapping the device as a local drive. SMB for Mac . After mapping the shares as a drive, with the gigabit ethernet, the shares almost feels local.

On my Mac, once your WD Cloud is powered up 

1. in finder, click Go

2. select connect to server

3. click browse

4. you should see wdmycloud, double click on this 

5. you will see Connected as: Guest,

   a. if you have already created users with access to certain shares then you must click on ‘Connect as’ and enter your       userid and password.

6. select the shares that you want to connect and they will show up on your desktop. 

Now if you are still getting slow speeds, lets do something radical… plug the Cloud ehternet cable directly into your mac ethernet port…

If you don’t get at least 45MB/s writes and 75MB/s reads, which is a 733MB file writing in about 15-20 seconds and 10 seconds to read, then you have to check your network settings.

Now if you do get the speeds, clear off all other peripherals from your router except your Cloud device and your Mac.

[Ralphael]

one last thing… if you have data already on the cloud, then it might be a possibility that the cloud is indexing the media which is causing the slow speeds. If this is the case, learn how to SSH into the device and I’ll help you stop the services so at least you get a decent speed and restart the services when you don’t need to copy data…

[ristvedt]

Thanks for your help thus far Ralphael, but so far, no luck.

I tried both the suggestions you offered. I tried mapping as a drive and connecting to the drive directly via the ethernet cable. Both options resulted in the same read/write rates, which are around 26 Mbps write and just under 300 Mbps read. Since this is the case, you said I need to check my network settings? What exactly should I be checking? Everything seems to be fine and in working order. The router and modem are both brand new (as in I bought them 3 days ago), firmware is updated for both (and for the My Cloud), all activity appears normal, I disabled the firewall for the router. Also, until today I was using a different router (a Comcast modem-and-router-in-one) and that router was having the exact same speeds and same issues. I thought it might be that I was using a bad Comcast router, but with the new router and modem, the issue persists.

I would really love to get this figured out as other than the speeds, I really like the drive a lot.

[Etupes]

Just in case, did you measure the time of a Windows Explorer transfer for a big file, and a few small files. Manually compute the transfer speed instead of realying of Lan Speed test.

Do your manual results concur?

Also, if you have another laptop or computer, open a share on the other computer and test the file transfer speed between the 2 computers. Is the speed consistent with the speed of the NAS?

[Ralphael]

ok lets go back to connecting directly from your cloud to your mac book

1. lets make sure we are on the same page. Find a file that is about 700-750 MB in size; this is about an hour and half movie size. Copying to the cloud should take about 15-20 seconds and reading it back should be about 10 seconds. This is the only timing that counts which is about 45MB/s write and 75MB/s reads. Any other filesize which may be smaller has too many overhead to be significant in measuring network speeds. All photos, music files and ebooks takes about 4-6MB/s to write just because of the overhead involved in processing small files. 

2. if you are not getting that speed with a 700MB file, then check your macbook internet card

Checking what speed is your Ethernet Card on your computer

So everyone claims they have a gigabit ethernet card on their PC, so how do you tell?

On a Mac

1. click on system preferences

2. click on network

3. select Ethernet and it should show connected

4. click on Advanced…

5. select the hardware tab

6. it should show Speed: 1000baseT if you doing gigabit

The cloud should have a green light at the back. If it is yellow, then your connection from your Mac is 100mb connection.

3. lastly, if the above 2 doesn’t pan out… then lets check if your cloud is scanning and indexing. Learn how to SSH into your device and when you get the command prompt you can issue the following command line commands.

/etc/init.d/wdmcserverd stop

/etc/init.d/wdphotodbmergerd stop

Also make sure that twonky and itunes server are turned off on your device. All of these services are related to your media indexing and scanning and thumbnail processing.

Once you have obtained the right network speeds then you can turn all these services back on. When you turn off and on your device, the above stop services will resume.

Tell me how you did after all the above…

ps. what mac book do you have?

[ristvedt]

Etupes wrote:

Just in case, did you measure the time of a Windows Explorer transfer for a big file, and a few small files. Manually compute the transfer speed instead of realying of Lan Speed test.

Do your manual results concur?

 

Also, if you have another laptop or computer, open a share on the other computer and test the file transfer speed between the 2 computers. Is the speed consistent with the speed of the NAS?

I just tried using the stopwatch on my phone to test the results when directly connecting to the My Cloud via a Cat 5e gigabit ethernet cable. The time was between 30-35 seconds for a 711 MB file, which if my math is correct, works out to around the same as the speed test results (low-mid 20s/sec).

I should have access to my girlfriend’s laptop once again later today, so I can certainly test the file transfer speed then, though I have never done so in a direct Mac-to-Mac transfer. I’ll have to look up how to do so but I’m not computer illiterate so it shouldn’t be an issue. WIll report back.

[ristvedt]

Ralphael wrote:

ok lets go back to connecting directly from your cloud to your mac book

1. lets make sure we are on the same page. Find a file that is about 700-750 MB in size; this is about an hour and half movie size. Copying to the cloud should take about 15-20 seconds and reading it back should be about 10 seconds. This is the only timing that counts which is about 45MB/s write and 75MB/s reads. Any other filesize which may be smaller has too many overhead to be significant in measuring network speeds. All photos, music files and ebooks takes about 4-6MB/s to write just because of the overhead involved in processing small files. 

2. if you are not getting that speed with a 700MB file, then check your macbook internet card

 

Checking what speed is your Ethernet Card on your computer

 

So everyone claims they have a gigabit ethernet card on their PC, so how do you tell?

 

On a Mac

1. click on system preferences

2. click on network

3. select Ethernet and it should show connected

4. click on Advanced…

5. select the hardware tab

6. it should show Speed: 1000baseT if you doing gigabit

 

The cloud should have a green light at the back. If it is yellow, then your connection from your Mac is 100mb connection.

 

3. lastly, if the above 2 doesn’t pan out… then lets check if your cloud is scanning and indexing. Learn how to SSH into your device and when you get the command prompt you can issue the following command line commands.

 

/etc/init.d/wdmcserverd stop

/etc/init.d/wdphotodbmergerd stop

 

Also make sure that twonky and itunes server are turned off on your device. All of these services are related to your media indexing and scanning and thumbnail processing.

 

Once you have obtained the right network speeds then you can turn all these services back on. When you turn off and on your device, the above stop services will resume.

 

Tell me how you did after all the above…

 

ps. what mac book do you have?

I connected directly to my MacBook Pro directly via a Cat 5e gigabit ethernet cable. I took a 711 MB file and copied it to and from the hard drive. It took between 30-35 seconds to copy the file, which is obviously about double the time it should be.  By “reading it back should be about 10 seconds,” do you mean copying it back from the My Cloud? I copied the same 711 MB file from my My Cloud back to my laptop, which took 20 seconds (again, about double the time it should be).

My network on my MacBook Pro shows Speed: 1000baseT, and the My Cloud has a green light at the back indicating it is indeed gigabit ethernet.

As far as SSH goes, I’ll have to review how to go about doing that this evening. Is there a specific guide you can recommend that would be helpful in learning how to do so? I understand that certain ways of SSHing to a My Cloud can void my warranty, which I obviously want to avoid. Also, I find it a little odd that I have to SSH to the My Cloud in order to get a decent write speed. I would think there has to be some other way, but I’ll see if I can figure out the SSH thing to test it later.

Also, I have already turned off the settings “Media Streaming” and “iTunes Server” and the same speeds remain.

I have a MacBook Pro with a 2.53 GHz processor and 4 GB ram.

All your guys’ help is greatly appreciated thus far. I really would love to figure out how to get the speeds I’m supposed to get but so far nothing works.

[Ralphael]

you are welcome. 

yes, ssh’ing into the device does void your warranty so we can try other alternatives like ensuring all the media services are toggled off at the dashboard but before turning off all the services,

1. I’m assuming that you are on the latest firmware? if not, I would suggest that you update to the latest 3.04 as it has an automatic media scan stop depending on certain conditions of which us “users” do not know. I would guess sudden power off of the device might be one of the conditions as I’ve certainly yank the cord out in frustration a couple of time and "media scan stopped (under the notification bell icon of your dashboard) was the result. Without media scan which can result in a 100% degradation of your device, the device is a pleasure to use.

2. lets try mapping into the device with AFP which is Apple File protocol rather then smb. So if you are connecting via browsing on Connect to Server (the default is smb), you will need to type at the server address bar of Connect to Server

AFP://WDMyCloud.local

assuming that you did not rename your cloud device. If you did, replace WDMyCloud with your device name. 

Assuming a direct connection. Once connected, try your speed test using the 711 MB file.

3. turning off all the media stuff without SSH.

   a. Go to your dashboard

   b. select settings, media, DLNA Media Server off, iTunes Server off

   c. select Shares and select each share one by one and make sure Media Serving is off

   d. I don’t think we need to delete any cloud access devices when we have turned off Media Serving, but you might want to revisit this later if everything fails. 

I’m guessing that is it for toggling media services off.  Again assuming a direct connection, try the file speed test. You might also reboot the device and trying the file speed test again.

4. I have two last resort suggestions as I cannot think of any other possibilities and they are

   a. ssh’ing into the device and do the stopping of the services

   b. do a System factory restore under settings, you can systematically try System Only and Quick Restore, but Full Restore will take several hours. This should clean out any files you have in it and reset your firmware.

[Ralphael]

have been thinking about why you are getting half the speed… 

check

1. open network preferences

2. make sure your Ethernet connection is green and at the top of the Network list, the rest should be red

3. click advance

4. select hardware

5. configure should be automatically, with speed of 1000baseT and Duplex: is full-duplex, flow-control. MTU standard 1500

It should be full-duplex and if it is not, it is the only thing that I can think of why you are getting half the speed. 

[ristvedt]

1. I’m at work now, so I’ll check when I get home, but I know already I am on the latest firmware.

2. I have tried connecting to the server via both AFP and SMB, and neither seems to be any different when I run the test transfers. 

3. I already have DLNA Media Server turned off and iTunes Server turned off, but I did not go through the shares one by one and make sure the media serving is off. I’m guessing it’s off there already, but I will double check when I get home. I’ll look into deleting cloud access devices if we come to that.

4. This is actually my second My Cloud drive. The first I returned to Best Buy because it was running too slowly. In retrospect, it appears the drive was working fine as it was giving me the exact same speeds I now have. I don’t necessarily think that there is anything wrong with the drive, I think there is just some configuration I don’t yet have. I want to avoid doing a restore for this reason: I don’t think restoring will help at all if two brand new My Cloud devices had the exact same issue.

I’ll try turning off media serving on each share when I get home and report back. Is it worth contacting Western Digital’s tech support services, or are they going to be any help at all? Like I said, I really like the drive, I’m just pretty frustrated with the slow speeds and my period to return the device to Best Buy is running out…

[Ralphael]

Interesting…  on the fact that this is your second drive repeating the first drive performance which is indicative that it is your Mac, 

check with your girlfriend’s computer to see what speed you are getting (direct connect)

and if it is your mac, then double check the full duplex as above.

if your girlfriend’s computer is getting the same speed, make sure you are using the cable that came with it.

I agree on not doing the full restore and the only thing that might have benefitted you was the empty drive really simply delete all the data from the drive to clear off any media scans

I think the default is media serving on, and this is the where the two main services wdphotomergerd and wdmcserver are toggled from (I believe); creating thumbnails for photos etc.

If it turns out to be your Mac, use ctrl-option-esc to force quit any apps that seems to be running that may take up bandwidth. 

[ristvedt]

My computer says Full Duplex in the network settings, so no issue there. I tried connecting with my girlfriend’s computer, and instead of 26 write/280 read, I got 35-40 write/700 read. Interestingly enough, it seems that my computer is somehow responsible, but I still have no clue as to how or why. I have full duplex, as stated already, and I have force quit any possible programs that are using any sort of bandwidth. What else could possibly be cause my Mac to get such drastically different speeds than hers? She has a pretty similar computer in terms of specs (in fact her processor is actually 2.26 vs. mine at 2.53). She has around 100 GB more in free space than I, but I don’t see how that would impact anything like lan transfer speeds.

Any ideas?

[Ralphael]

excellent in that we now know who to ask *cough* Apple Forums *cough* and who to blame!! *cough* Apple Forums *cough*

k… here we go…

1.  lets start with this one… disable the network connection that you have and create a new one

2. disable all any other network connection, bluetooth, firewire etc?

3. check firewall… off 

4. check mac harddrive perhaps check smart status, because I remember when my hard drive started to fail, everything slowed down like molasses and I blamed everything else but the hard drive. I replaced it with an SSD and everything came to life. or lack of space for swap?

5.  how much memory do you have left? is it possibly bad memory? corrupt memory?

6. check latest OS update, its maverick right?

7. go to system preferences and users and groups.  tab login items. this will show all the start up apps that start up when you reboot. Perhaps uncheck most of them… then reboot.

8. go check apple forum to see if there are similar cases… and do tell us if you find something… We need it to help others

[Hagbard]

Ralphael - some useful things for me to explore here!!. 

A very stupid question first:

“The cloud should have a green light at the back. If it is yellow, then your connection from your Mac is 100mb connection.”

It has two lights where the ethernet cable is connected.

One is flashing.

One isn’t.

Should they both be green?

(Running off to get partner because I’m slightly colour blind!)

[Ralphael]

Hello Hagbard, glad you found this other thread as I spent a whole day going through all the possible scenarios and I never did find out why his Mac was so slow

whatever you do, don’t buy a pogoplug if you have speed problems you will have them regardless of the NAS product you buy as network speed is almost independant of the NAS device. In this case, the Cloud gets a very decent NAS speed that if you are going to do Wifi, your limitations will be the wifi and not the cloud.

As per the two green lights and one is flashing, they should be both green. I never had the yellow light, but I’ll assume that it would be a flashing yellow light if you are getting 100mbs indicative of the access speed.

Start at the begining of this post and  run through some of the diagnostics; if you have any other questions, I’ll check up on you later…

[Hagbard]

Thank you for your speedy response… I’m going to let LAN Speed Testdo its business so I can report on this 1000Mb file which is still going.

I’m then going to get of a Thunderbolt to Ethernet adaptor so that I can plug my Macbook Pro in to the router direct and go through (very clear) suggestions - that may take a day or so. I’ll meet you back here!