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.

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