MyCloud Mirror takes days to process a few gigabytes

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

I asked the WD support these questions one week ago:

I have bought a MyCloud Mirror 6 TB.

I have installed it in my home network.

I have activated SSH access.

I have coupled a USB 3.0 external harddisk of 2.0 TB.

I logged in on the MyCloud, using SSH.

I created a sub-directory on the /mnt/HD/HD_a2 (the data disk in the MyCloud Mirror).

I am copying directories from the external harddisk to this new sub-directory,

using the command “cp --archive ”.

In three days, only 1 TB is copied, while this is a USB 3.0 connection.

During these three days, the CPU is always near 100%, and it still is now.

The disks are both continuously active, it is almost impossible to access the system through the web interface.

The health indicator is ‘healthy’.

  • Why is copying from USB 3.0 so slow ?

  • Why is it continuously working, but has it only processed 1 TB in 3 days ?

  • Will it ever complete copying the 2 TB disk ?

After one week, still no answer (the helpdesk did suggest to reset the unit completely and try again).

After one week, the MyCloud Mirror is still processing, it already has copied 1.5 TB !!!

The cpu is 100%, the disks are both active, but I don’t know what is going on.

Regards,

–

Harry

2

Hi, I’m surprised you are using ssh to copy files. The whole point with the MyCloudMirror is that it offers easy to use facilities without having to understand or use Linux direct. It’s nice that we can ssh in and take a look at how the box works, but I don’t think WD will support us working at that level.

The web interface has an option to set up “Backup” jobs including backup to/from USB. That would be the thing to use to start with.

3

Hi, you are correct that WD does not support using SSH.  That is the only answer I get from them.

But they offer this option in the dashboard: “They show you the keys to the house, but tell you not to use them.”

The USB Backup in the interface does not do what it tells you: when I select as destination directory “MyCloud/MyDir”, then the files will be copied to “MyCloud/MyDir/NameOfTheUsDisk/NameOfTheJob”.  That is not what I want.  And that is the reason I tried to copy files directly by using SSH.

The copying of one directory took 1 hour, after that the MyCloud had a CPU of 100% during 3 days.  It was impossible to do anything through the webinterface, because logging in was so slow that the next screen never came up.

The only way to access the MyCloud was through SSH.  I was glad I had activated it.

But now, after two weeks, I have copied 1.5 TB to the MyCloud, and it still is not accessible through the webinterface.

Sigh.

4

Have a look through the dashboard, and turn off services that you don’t need, or can temporarily live without.

The prime one is cloud access, as this involves cataloging and indexing the drive content. It ties up a lot of processing power, thus of course can slow everything down. And of course if the processor is very busy, then the dashboard can easily become inaccessible as the http request times-out before the processor can get around to dealing with it.

Cloud access, DLNA, iTunes and things like that you may want to consider putting on hold whilst you do your work. I’ve done this myself, and transferred about a Terabyte overnight.

5

Thanks for the advice.

It takes some 20 minutes to load the webinterface pages, but finally I reach the “setting” page.

And to my amazement, I already have turned off cloud access !!

6

  • Why is copying from USB 3.0 so slow ?

  • Why is it continuously working, but has it only processed 1 TB in 3 days ?

  • Will it ever complete copying the 2 TB disk ?

Do you have Plex, DNLA or iTunes running?

Do you have backups or Anti-Virus apps running?

What does top tell you?

What does iostat tell you?

What does free tell you?

What USB device?’ WD, Seagate ??

What transfer rate are you getting?  USB 2.0  or slower?

7

The webinterface was so slow, that it first showed that “Cloud access” was off, and only five minutes later it showed it was on !!  After I turned this off, I was finally able to get a more responsive webinterface.

I could now copy files from USB to the MyCloud mirror with some speed.

Thanks for the hints and the working answers:

  • when you want to copy many files to the MyCloud mirror, you should turn off “cloud access”, otherwise it will start indexing and building thumbnails during the copy, and this will take “forever”.

  • although SSH is in the webinterface, and there is no mentioning of “no support” anywhere in the webinterface or the manual, Western Digital is not willing to give support when you use SSH.

  • when you copy directories (e.g. with USB backup), the destination directory you specify will automagically be changed by appending the and the .  Afterwards you can move (e.g. using Explorer) the files to the destination where you really wanted it, and this will happen promptly, without any major copying or mirroring delay.

Regards,

–

Harry

8

When cloud access is turned on, it triggers the cateloging of the devices content and generation of metadata and thumbnails (which are used by the WD apps to display the information on the content that you may be remotely accessing).

So what I think was happening was all the cateloging was taking up almost all of the processor power, hence why it was not responsive to do other things like generate the dashboard. As you basically dumped a huge amount of data at once, then it swamped it. 

Hence why I recommend if you don’t need it (if you don’t use the WD apps, or the new access via wd2go.com), then turn the cloud access off. You can still separately remote access your files if you need by setting up webdav and port-forwarding in your router (or turn it on in the MCM and let the uPNP do it for you if you router supports that).

Or if you do need such app access, then if you give it a couple of days of solid churning you should find it has databased everything and you will get your responsiveness back. But whilst it’s doing the catelogue, it’s dog-slow (especially the MCM gen1, which isn’t the most powerful of beasts processor and memory-wise).

As to SSH - you (should) get a little pop-up warning when you enable it. It’s the same screen which tells you that the username is sshd, just before you configure it and set the password. WD don’t support it as if you don’t know what you’re doing then you can severely lobotomise the MCM and wreck everything, or at least cause major issues.