I took a little time to play around with this.
One thing I can confirm is WD has it hard coded in the script file to only accept WDC as the code for the vendor. While I have found hacks to get around this, it it quite cumbersome to do and have not attempted it myself. Here we can see me trying to use a 3TB Seagate drive. I would also like to confirm that the limit for the drive size is 2 TB. Or at least that is the largest size it will make the automatically make the volume. I misplaced the picture but using that Seagate 3TB drive, the operating system automatically made a 2TB partition and 1TB partition that was unused. But since it was not a WD drive, it would not create the volume. Quite possible this trick might work however is using a 3+ TB WD drive and letting it do it’s work and create the 2TB partition and volume and then using something like Gparted or Easus Partition Manager to merge the two together. But it does not appear that I have a 3+ TB WD Drive as mine are different manufacturers.
On the other hand, I can confirm that it is false by it’s statement that a 1TB WD Green Drive must be used. As pictured below the drive(s) that came with it.
So I decided to investigate this further. Some NAS like my old Maxtor Shared Store II had the boot partition on the hard drive itself. But the WD Sharespace has it embedded on the motherboard. I did learn that no matter what, the unit will not boot up completely unless it has a hard drive in it. It doesn’t even matter if it’s compatible or not, just so long as it is in the bottom sata slot.
Tip: The drive(s) you plan on using must be MBR and not GPT and be completely blank with NO partitons. Some places have said you must zero write your drive. That’s bogus! You only need to delete all the partitions.
Working:
Not Working:
Notice the drive size i am using here. This is a 320 GB WD Black Drive.
This works perfectly without a problem.
So the end result I have come up with so far is that it will support ANY WD drive of ANY size but will only create a partition of 2 TB leaving the rest unused. Also confirming that the unit will only support a WD (WDC) vendor code.
I would also like to add as a personal opinion that there is really no such thing as a 2TB 4TB 8TB edition and rather the unit is the exact same for all and just using different size drives and amount of drives.
I am willing to bet the 4TB that comes with 4x1TB drives will work just fine and dandy with 4x2TB drives making it an 8TB unit. Just my personal opinion though.
