WD MyCloud 3TB backing up to a new My Book 3TB(safe point) Do I need to format/partition the drive

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

Hooked up a new MyBook to the MyCloud. Attempted to create a safepoint. It is seen, and when I click on it, it says retrieving partitions and goes no further.The box then goes blank. It appears as though it needs to be partitioned, and that means formatting, right? If I’m backing up a Mac and a Windows PC to the MyCloud, do I need to format as ExFat? Fat32 has the 4Gb file restrictions IIRC.

 Thanks for any help.

2

Nevermind. Figured it out.

  1. Ejected the MyBook from the MyCloud using the User Interface(UI)

  2. Brought the MacBook upstairs and connected the MyBook to the Mac.

  3. Using Finder, clicked on the MyBook, and copied all of the user manuals and goodies from the drive into documents.

  4. Using Disk Utility, formatted the drive HFS+ extended/journaled with 1 3TB partition.(Make sure you click on the lower of the MyBooks listed on the left in finder, Otherwise it will give you an “Unable to unmount” warning}

  5. Ejected the MyBook from the Mac and plugged it back into the MyCloud.

  6. Now it shows 3TB in the Firewire/USB attached drives area on the MyCloud UI.

  7. Created a Safe Point.

  8. It is churning away.

I was wrongly assuming the drive would be plug and play. It was not.

3

Well, evidently I may have been wrong. I navigated away from the Safepoint tab on the user interface and then it was not happy. UI became nonresponsive as did the MyCloud app on my Iphone(offline). I ended up having to power down both drives, and then everything came back to life. I restarted a Safepoint backup, but it’s slowwwwww. It’s been stuck at 53mb for an hour. Do I just let it do it’s thing?

 Also, I formatted the My Book as HFS+. If I’m using the MyCloud to backup a PC and a Mac(I don’t believe I did anything with the format on the MyCloud) and using the My Book to backup with, what is the format that will best serve my purposes?

 Thanks for any advice.

4

When you eject a USB disk from the NAS, make sure you use the eject button in the NAS admin UI, top right. A small icon on the USB status pop up. Not ejecting the disk WILL corrupt your USB disk file system.

To recover, you need to clean your disk (clean here is the CLEAN command from diskpart, a Windows DOS utility. You can as well delete the current volume and create new volume.

I recommend your format the disk as NTFS. This will ensure broaded portability of your files.

5

Yes, I always use the eject button on the UI if possible. The problem is that the UI froze up and stopped working. I checked the manual for the procedure if UI wouldn’t work. Basically made sure no data transfer was occurring, and powered down both drives.

Currently the My Cloud is up and running at this point. The My Book drive is currently unplugged. I attempted another Safepoint backup, but it stagnated at 4.3gb when the My Book was no longer showing as an attached USB drive. It seems as though the drive disconnected on its own.

I will reformat NTFS when I get back home. Do I need to run some sort of repair program if it’s corrupt, or reformatting it take care of that? I’m more familiar with Mac, but can search info on the procedures relayed to me.

One final question. Would I be better off plugging this drive into my Apple AirPort Extreme router, which is wired to the same Cat5 network? Would speeds improve? Is it even possible?

Thanks for all of your help. I truly appreciate it. I’ll be gone for a few days, but will get a plan of action together including contacting WD support if nothing helps when I get home.