When I first bought my WD MyCloud I noticed that whilst it was doing its job of serving files, TimeMachine backups etc. the performance wasn't the best. I wasn't sure what was causing this so did a bit of browsing and found an article on shortattentionspade.
Posted on March 12, 2018 March 12, 2018 Author krypted Categories Mac OS X, Network Infrastructure Tags app, Apple, backup, macos, mycloud, wd, wd mycloud 15 thoughts on “Replace Time Machine Server on macOS Server with WD’s MyCloud.com”. Thanks for Watching! If you enjoy our videos please like, share or subscribe. Install WD My Cloud on Mac OSX. WD My Cloud; App description: wd-my-cloud (App: Install WD My Cloud.pkg) App website. Install WD Security on Mac OSX. My Cloud Home Desktop App (64-bit operating system required): Windows® 10 or Windows 8.1/8.0 operating systems; macOS® Big Sur(11), Catalina(10.15), Mojave (10.14), macOS High Sierra (10.13) operating systems; My Cloud Home Mobile App: iOS® 11 or higher operating systems; Android™ Marshmallow (6.0) or higher operating systems.
After carrying out the changes detailed in the blog post I saw an immediate improvement. However whenever there was a firmware update the changes would be overwritten so I needed to put them in again. I went to the blog and it was down - it's still down - and so I checked Google's cache and found the instructions in the blog post.
I have copied the instructions - verbatim - into this post to help others the way the original helped me. If Mr Spade's blog comes back online I will take the post down. Anyway, here it is, just follow these instructions and you will immediately see performance improvements on your WD MyCloud.
Do all this at your own risk. I don't care about you or the people you love
Turning off the bastards
The process below will turn off two processes, it involves accessing via hackery text looking stuff, but don't be scared. It also voids the warranty but you can factory reset and be like “I KNOW NUSSING”
1- Through your browser, go to http://wdmycloud.local/UI/
2- login and go to settings
3 – turn SSH on
4 – open terminal (or putty/linux terminal if you're using windows)
6 – type ssh root@(whatever IP address is of mycloud)
7 – say yes
8- password welc0me (the o is a zero but that's not clear with this font)
9 – Type /bin/sh /etc/rc2.d/S86wdphotodbmergerd stop – turns off shittily written thumbnailer
10 – Type /bin/sh /etc/rc2.d/S85wdmcserverd stop – turns off piece of shit mycloud indexing.
Basically these two piece of shit processes are terribly written and just blow the reasonable-ish hardwares brains out.
If you've got days when you won't be using it, (i'm talking days upon days) let them run and it'll finish indexing apparently. Frankly I couldn't be fucked not accessing my data for that long
de suckify twonky (the media server bit)
There's another part, a media server, which takes the media and makes your devices be able to play it. It basically is set to rescan itself any time a file is moved. So anytime you change a bit, the whole thing just shuts itself down for some serious introspection. Thankfully this is fixable.
1- through your browser, go to twonky (http://wdmycloud.local:9000/)
2- go to advanced
2- go to rescan intervals
Wd My Cloud App Macbook
3 – change it to 0
4- save (at bottom) this stops it scanning itself completely every time a file moves.
5- go and rescan your database
6 – for bonus points go to sharing section, and specify the media folders on your drive and the types of content they've got. (this will just make scanning more efficient when it does happen.
If you make changes to your file structure go back to advanced and select rescan.
By removing these processes and following the above steps your NAS will work ok.
In summary the software is written terribly and you're better off turning it off till they write some code that doesn't melt this poor little nas's brain. This then becomes a reasonable hard drive and home solution, with reasonable media streaming . It will deactivate the cloud bit till you let WDMCSERVER finish. If your server restarts you will need to do all this again. You can write code to automate it but that's another story for another day.
Any other tips/tricks to optimise this garbage bag of woe? Comment below.
Rolling back the firmware.
I've yet to try this, I'm pretty drained, and have this thing working in a reasonable way, so I'm leaving this more as a note from myself, these instructions are straight from the forum. Apparently the issue is the latest firmware (however I've been back historically and every update has been a litany of woe by the sounds of it).
Anyways, straight from the forum –
1 – Download the following firmware version and unzip the .deb file sq-030401-230-20140415.deb.zip
2 – Then download Winscp and install it: Winscp Download
Wd Mycloud App Mac Os Recovery Tool
3 – You need to “turn on SSH” from Settings > Network in Wd My Cloud web interface.
4- Now run Winscp program you have installed earlier. In the Login window
5 – select “SFTP” in File protocol dropdown
6 – Enter your My Cloud IP address in the host name
7 – The default username is root and password is welc0me (its the number 0 in welcome and not letter O)
Once you login you will see 2 panes in the window.
8 – Go to the right pane and navigate to the folder “etc”.
9 – Once in the “etc” folder scroll down to the bottom and you will see a file called “version”.
10 -Double click to open the file and change the version name to 03.04.01-219 and save the file.
Thats all the SSH work. Now close and exit Winscp application.
11 – Reboot My Cloud. (Settings > Utilities > Device Maintenance > Reboot)
12 – After it has rebooted go into settings > firmware and click on “select from file”. Navigate to the sq-030401-230-20140415.deb file you have downloaded earlier and update.
13 – MAKE SURE TO TURN OFF AUTO UPDATE FIRMWARE.
When I first bought my WD MyCloud I noticed that whilst it was doing its job of serving files, TimeMachine backups etc. the performance wasn't the best. I wasn't sure what was causing this so did a bit of browsing and found an article on shortattentionspade.
After carrying out the changes detailed in the blog post I saw an immediate improvement. However whenever there was a firmware update the changes would be overwritten so I needed to put them in again. I went to the blog and it was down - it's still down - and so I checked Google's cache and found the instructions in the blog post.
I have copied the instructions - verbatim - into this post to help others the way the original helped me. If Mr Spade's blog comes back online I will take the post down. Anyway, here it is, just follow these instructions and you will immediately see performance improvements on your WD MyCloud.
Do all this at your own risk. I don't care about you or the people you love
Turning off the bastards
The process below will turn off two processes, it involves accessing via hackery text looking stuff, but don't be scared. It also voids the warranty but you can factory reset and be like “I KNOW NUSSING”
1- Through your browser, go to http://wdmycloud.local/UI/
2- login and go to settings
3 – turn SSH on
4 – open terminal (or putty/linux terminal if you're using windows)
6 – type ssh root@(whatever IP address is of mycloud)
7 – say yes
8- password welc0me (the o is a zero but that's not clear with this font)
9 – Type /bin/sh /etc/rc2.d/S86wdphotodbmergerd stop – turns off shittily written thumbnailer
10 – Type /bin/sh /etc/rc2.d/S85wdmcserverd stop – turns off piece of shit mycloud indexing.
Basically these two piece of shit processes are terribly written and just blow the reasonable-ish hardwares brains out.
If you've got days when you won't be using it, (i'm talking days upon days) let them run and it'll finish indexing apparently. Frankly I couldn't be fucked not accessing my data for that long
de suckify twonky (the media server bit)
There's another part, a media server, which takes the media and makes your devices be able to play it. It basically is set to rescan itself any time a file is moved. So anytime you change a bit, the whole thing just shuts itself down for some serious introspection. Thankfully this is fixable.
1- through your browser, go to twonky (http://wdmycloud.local:9000/)
2- go to advanced
Wd Cloud App Download
2- go to rescan intervals
3 – change it to 0
4- save (at bottom) this stops it scanning itself completely every time a file moves.
5- go and rescan your database
6 – for bonus points go to sharing section, and specify the media folders on your drive and the types of content they've got. (this will just make scanning more efficient when it does happen.
If you make changes to your file structure go back to advanced and select rescan.
By removing these processes and following the above steps your NAS will work ok.
In summary the software is written terribly and you're better off turning it off till they write some code that doesn't melt this poor little nas's brain. This then becomes a reasonable hard drive and home solution, with reasonable media streaming . It will deactivate the cloud bit till you let WDMCSERVER finish. If your server restarts you will need to do all this again. You can write code to automate it but that's another story for another day.
Any other tips/tricks to optimise this garbage bag of woe? Comment below.
Rolling back the firmware.
I've yet to try this, I'm pretty drained, and have this thing working in a reasonable way, so I'm leaving this more as a note from myself, these instructions are straight from the forum. Apparently the issue is the latest firmware (however I've been back historically and every update has been a litany of woe by the sounds of it).
Anyways, straight from the forum –
1 – Download the following firmware version and unzip the .deb file sq-030401-230-20140415.deb.zip
2 – Then download Winscp and install it: Winscp Download
3 – You need to “turn on SSH” from Settings > Network in Wd My Cloud web interface.
4- Now run Winscp program you have installed earlier. In the Login window
5 – select “SFTP” in File protocol dropdown
6 – Enter your My Cloud IP address in the host name
7 – The default username is root and password is welc0me (its the number 0 in welcome and not letter O)
Once you login you will see 2 panes in the window.
8 – Go to the right pane and navigate to the folder “etc”.
9 – Once in the “etc” folder scroll down to the bottom and you will see a file called “version”.
10 -Double click to open the file and change the version name to 03.04.01-219 and save the file.
Thats all the SSH work. Now close and exit Winscp application.
11 – Reboot My Cloud. (Settings > Utilities > Device Maintenance > Reboot)
12 – After it has rebooted go into settings > firmware and click on “select from file”. Navigate to the sq-030401-230-20140415.deb file you have downloaded earlier and update.
13 – MAKE SURE TO TURN OFF AUTO UPDATE FIRMWARE.