blog@cloud-client.info

Hi,

are you using a WD My Cloud NAS drive with a couple of files on it, like pictures or what ever? Did you get a “ultra” poor performance if you transfer new files to it or a “worse” performance in the online GUI? You got connections drops thru FTP, SMB or cloud access?

Of course the WD Support will tell you it’s a bad network cable, a bad LAN/WiFi or worse router configuration but mostly it’s poor development on the highest level done by WD! To much features, bad development and a weak hardware is a really bad combination; the result is called: WD MyCloud.

Want to check it out? Ok.. Try this (iam using Firmware v04.00.00-607 at the moment):

1) Open the WD My Cloud Web Interface and enable in the Network configuration settings the SSH console, this can take some time regarding the increddible bad performance that could be possible.. Reason later.

2) Download and install putty from www.putty.org or use any other SSH client/terminal.

3) Connect to the WD My Cloud with putty, username is by default “root” with the password “welc0me” (o = zero in welcome).

4) The next step can have a impact on the warranty.. Two ultra poor developed services are running at the WD MyCloud to create thumbs of the files on the NAS if possible. These services seams to be very very very slow depending on the amount of files on the my cloud and causing mostly all effects like slow communication/gui or network drops. It doesn’t matter if you have the “public” WD Cloud feature enabled or not.. These services are running all the time and consume all the CPU resources without any sense. So enter the following commands to stop this madness:

/bin/sh /etc/rc2.d/S86wdphotodbmergerd stop
/bin/sh /etc/rc2.d/S85wdmcserverd stop

Don’t log off from the SSH console now!

These services are not really important. If you are using the WD online cloud service, you will not get thumbprints for your pictures anymore but this is still better than can’t access anything at anytime and have a NAS performance like using a old 14400 bps analog modem or sometimes 300 bps thru a bad wire… 🙁

Now try to copy some files to the MyCloud.. It should be much faster and also the web front end should not show any big performance issues anymore. If you can verify the result you can disable the services until the next firmware update arrives with the next step.

5) Disable the crap… This should work until you update the MyCloud to a new firmware version. Enter the commands exactly like written below incl. the #:

# update-rc.d S86wdphotodbmergerd disable
# update-rc.d S85wdmcserverd disable

Update 2: It seams to be that some other script enable the services again.. So here is an alternative solution.

a) In the SSH session enter: crontab -e
b) In the editor scoll down (arrow keys) a little bit and enter the following lines exactly as written as new lines:
@reboot /bin/sh /etc/rc2.d/S86wdphotodbmergerd stop
@reboot /bin/sh /etc/rc2.d/S85wdmcserverd stop
c) Press ctrl+x -> Y -> ENTER

6) Done, you can reboot the device now to verify the results.

Also you can open the twonky server running at the MyCloud (http://*wdip*:9000) and set the rescan intervall for multimedia files in the twonky server advanced settings to 12 hours = 720 minutes (of course it could be less, depends how fast you need a refresh for the streaming service).

Do also not believe that the final result will be now a “ultra fast” NAS, the hardware still is weak in general and there might be much more “crap” code running at the MyCloud but it will be much more better than before.

I really like WD products but i have no clue how WD could sale/release some crap like this or to not offer an option to disable these or maybe other bad services by the regular web gui. Most people don’t need it.. So why not start to develop a good NAS and not the most worse NAS i ever got.

Want more optimizations for the MyCloud NAS? Look here

Cheers

Michael

P.S.: Of course iam not responsible for any damage or the loss of warranty by using SSH commands together with the WD MyCloud!!!