How to Have a Silent and High-Performing Western Digital MyCloud Mirror

silence.sh

#
# Needless to say, I (Volkan Ozcelik) take no responsibility, whatsoever,
# about what will happen to your NAS when you try these.
# When did it to mine, I observed *ENORMOUS* performance gain and a zen-like silence.
#
#     +----------------------------------------------------------+
#     |  WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO DO CAN LIKELY VOID YOUR WARRANTY  |
#     |                  SO PROCEED WITH CAUTION                 |
#     +----------------------------------------------------------+
#
# There I said. That’s not for the faint-hearted.
# Though if you are fed up with your WD’s poor performance
# and if you feel adventurous, read on…
#
# Where was I? 
# So if your WD NAS is torturously sloooow, the hard drives spin ever and ever,
# your web admin interface does not load in “minutes” and when it does you can brew
# a fresh irish cream latte and also drink it while navigating from one page to another,
# if your CPU utilization is around 50%-90% ALL THE TIME, then what you’ll read here
# might help you.
#
# The root cause of all these issues is that WD Cloud attempts to index all the images
# on your hard drive and create thumbnails for them — If you are an average Joe who
# uploads a bunch of family photos, that’s no big deal. — But if you are like me,
# who have mostly front-end-related projects, digital design, and artwork, that has
# been accumulated over the last 15 years; that indexing process can take YEARS to complete.
#
# ** I’m sorry WD, and I am not gonna wait for a year to have a silent and healthy drive!!!!!! **
#
# The good thing is, the indexing process can be disabled.
# The not-so-good thing is, you’ll need to ROOT into the device, which can void your warranty.

# If you are ready, let’s move on:

# Step 1) Enable SSH from the admin console.
# Log in to the web admin UI and then go to Settings » Network » SSH, and turn it on.

# Step 2) Shell into the device:
ssh -oHostKeyAlgorithms=+ssh-dss sshd@your-western-digital-local-ip-address

# You HAVE TO use `-oHostKeyAlgorithms=+ssh-dss` because your 
# WD drive’s OS (the particular flavor of Linux (BusyBox) on the device) 
# does not support secure SSH access.

# When you log in you’ll be prompted with something like this:
# root@WDMyCloudMirror root #

# Step 3) Stop the bastards:
/etc/init.d/wdmcserverd stop
/etc/init.d/wdphotodbmergerd stop

# Step 4) Check and verify that they are indeed stopped:
ps aux | grep wd

# You are all set!
#
# Enjoy your performant and quiet NAS!

# Extras
# ------
# There is probably a script somewhere that enables these services (wdmcserverd, wdphotodbmergerd) on reboot. 
# If you feel extra adventurous, feel free to hack into the system and disable that script too.
# When you do, I’dd appreciate if you comment on this gist as well.
#
# When you restart the hard drive, or when there is a power loss and a reboot, those services will go up.
# So you’ll have to shell into the box and kill them again.

# Extra Extra Tip
# ---------------
# Moving things around is MUCH faster when you SSH into the box instead of managing 
# them from your remote NAS mount. “The Cloud” is especially a bit foggy when 
# you are connecting through the wifi. Whenever possible prefer a gigabit ethernet 
# connection to your private cloud.

Thanks for the tips. I also don't find any wdmcserverd & wdphotodbmergerd.

When I list directory /etc/init.d I have found only 3 files / folders

1. S20wdtmsd
2. atop
3. wdtmsd

same for me, it looks like the recent devices don't have these services anymore, or they're renamed.
I tried stopping the 'S20wdtmsd', but I still have the process 'rest-sdk-server' taking up 80% CPU and indexing taking forever :(

I ended up ditching it entirely; taking the hard disks out of it, formatting them, and putting them into a QNAP DAS enclosure.

Best thing I did to myself.

Hey Western Digital:
Just because you can add software to your hardware, does not mean you should.

As far as "disabling the things permanently" goes, I think this is what you're looking for: https://community.wd.com/t/how-to-permanently-disable-wdmcserverd-and-wdphotodbmergerd/135878

But in my case, it worked great until they got to restoring the capacity calculator, because I did not have a /Model directory where they specify one, not sure what's up with that. But stopping the same two services you talked about did work for me! Just need to do it again every time there's a power outage.... :/

Thank you so much for this post!

Is this the same as the "Network Database" option that can be enabled/disabled in network settings?