My Cloud is a product line manufactured and distributed by Western Digital Corporation to provide a private cloud device for both personal and official (small businesses) usage.
It consists of two versions – My Cloud and My Cloud Home. My Cloud Home is basically an improvement to My Cloud, and has been rolled out recently by incorporating a range of new features which aren’t available on My Cloud devices. Either way, this is an amazing concept and offers a tremendous amount of intuitive features to users who wish to build their own private cloud at their discretion. One of the common issues encountered by users while using My Cloud devices is slow bandwidth speed just as with any other Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices. There are a number of causes for this problem which will be addressed in this article. So let’s get to business then.
Recommended: Play with the Internet Connection
As much as you’re in dire need of looking for ways to give a boost to My Cloud’s performance, you must also take stock of ‘other’ factors. For instance, optimizing the Internet connection as well as cleaning up junk data once in a while are steps that always yield guaranteed results.
Solution 1: Check Hardware/Update Software and Firmware
My Cloud is basically connected over either a Local Area Network (LAN) or a Wide Area Network (WAN) such as the Internet. There are quite a few variables involved here which combine and result in a stable working experience. Even if a single of these core factors is found wanting, My Cloud’s performance will be impacted adversely. Examples of core factors (gone bad) are the cables are in bad shape, slow Internet, the HD in the local machine has a read/ write speed, the RAM doesn’t have enough capacity to hold the data, if the processor is slow to process the data downloaded from the network and so on. Use the following guide to see if you can bring about improvement in the computer system to which My Cloud device is connected.
- If the My Cloud device is connected over a WAN, make sure the Internet speed is fast enough to support stable data transfer. We recommend at least 30 Mbps speed for streaming HD videos, 4 Mbps for copying files across the network. Internet speed can be easily measured through http://www.speedtest.net/. If the results aren’t satisfactory, you can either upgrade your Internet subscription or change to a different ISP.
- Keep the operating system, network driver and My Cloud firmware up-to-date. Operating systems like Windows 10 automatically update themselves unless the user turns off automatic updates. The Network driver can be downloaded from the network adapter’s manufacturer’s website or the motherboard manufacturer’s website (if it’s an onboard one). My Cloud firmware can be updated through its dashboard settings page as seen in the following screenshot.
Updating the My Cloud firmware
Solution 2: Enable FTP Protocol
My Cloud, by default, makes use of HTTP to transfer files. Even though there is a negligible difference between FTP and HTTP in terms of transfer rate, it has been observed that FTP improves the bandwidth of a My Cloud network. Hence, it’s recommended to turn on FTP instead of using the default HTTP.
- Go to the My Cloud dashboard by either typing the IP address of the device or the name of the device in the address bar of the web browser. The default name is WDMyCloud.
- Switch to the Settings tab and click Network.
- Enable FTP access. You might have to provide some more information as well.
Solution 3: Change the Link Speed
Link Speed represents the maximum permitted bandwidth speed as defined by the My Cloud dashboard. This corresponds to the maximum permissible bandwidth speed of the Ethernet port of the computer where My Cloud is being accessed. A typical Ethernet port supports up to 100 Mbps, but there are some high powered Ethernet ports which support up to 1 Gbps. Generally, it’s recommended to keep the value to AUTO, but in case if My Cloud is unable to detect the maximum allowed bandwidth speed of the Ethernet ports, it causes the dashboard to transfer data at a slower rate. Therefore it’s recommended to force My Cloud to 1000 if the Ethernet port indeed supports a speed of 1 Gbps.
- Open Control Panel and Network and Internet category.
- Now click Network and Sharing Center.
- Select Change adapter settings from the left.
- Right-click on the Ethernet adapter and select Status.
- Now check the Speed label. If it says 100 Mbps, all options have been perfectly sorted and you do not need to take any action at all. If it says 1 Gbps, forcing the Link speed value to 1000 is recommended. However, this value should be same across the entire network. If one machine is equipped with a 100 Mbps network adapter, whereas the other one contains a 1 Gbps one, the bandwidth speed is automatically set to the slowest network adapter’s speed.
- As explained in step # 3 of the previous solution, open Network tab and then click Network Services. Spot Link Speed and change the value of the Link Speed parameter to 1000.
