Can I reuse the Hard Drive from non-supported My Cloud on a new supported model without losing my data?
Can you extract and remove the hard drive from one My Cloud and use it in another? Yes. Will you be able to preserve your data? Likely no, especially if you are changing models. One will likely have to repartition and reformat the drive once inserted into the newer My Cloud unit.
One should backup their data before removing the drive from the My Cloud enclosure. Ideally one should be backing up their My Cloud data anyway even if not buying a newer My Cloud unit.
Don’t put a 5 year old drive in a new NAS.
How much is that drive really worth?
Just get a NAS with a fresh drive; and copy the data over.
Don’t get a SMR “red” drive.
Don’t get a “Red Plus” unless you can CONFIRM it is CMR; not SMR.
Red Pro should be ok, as will an Ironwolf drive.
My understanding is that all current RED drives (EFAX) 2TB through 6TB are SMR and all RED Plus drives (EFRX and EFAX) are CMR.
On WD Red NAS Drives - Western Digital Corporate Blog
I think you are right based upon this 18month old chart. . .that may or may not have changed since then.
I am a bit salty on the topic since all the 2.5" external drives went SMR. (end of an era. . .had to switch to more expensive/lower capacity SSD’s)
Holy cr_p, I didn’t know that!
The whole world is going down the crapper!
Change is inevitable.
Being old; I have resigned myself to recognizing that all of my tech becomes woefully obsolete every 5 years.
Meh - - My perspective is that every few years it takes a few grand to update everything to the “new norm”.
20 years ago it was diskman CD drives to MP3 players
15 years ago it was film cameras to digital cameras
now it is HDD to SSDs.
I have the dates wrong . .but you get the drift. In the early 90’s - - → I was a huge fan of iOmega zip drives. In the teens. . .I was a huge fan of all things WD. . . . .
In the 20’s. . . . I am moving on once agiain
