Dropping in an additional disk .... question

My Cloud OS 5 Personal & Network Attached Storage My Cloud EX Series
1

i am in a JBOD setup with a single disk in my EX2 Ultra.

I want to add more storage to my NAS, i don’t know if adding an additional disk will require reformat of the volume already there … i just need to know if doing this would mean i also have to restore the NAS backup. the backup is 5TB in size so I’d need to allocate downtime for the restore job.

2

I have an EX4100 and the only way of adding drives into an existing JBOD i know, was to remove (physically) all existing drives and then create a new JBOD with ONLY the new drives. Then insert the old drives and the NAS should recognize them and you have a JBOD with all drives. Obviously you need to shut the NAS down while removing and adding HDDs. I have tried this process twice and had no problems.

Only disadvantage i noticed, this process creates new Public share folders each time, and you cant delete the redundant ones (except through ssh).

Edit: this also changes around the volume numbers, so if you have apps installed, this might not be the best option, since it might change the HDD used for apps.

3

I’ve stuck to JBOD on EX4100 and PR4100 and have always popped in disks one at a time without ever having to pull out existing disks or restore backups for data on existing disks. Just pop in a disk in an empty slot, goto storage, change RAID, there’s an additional option to add new disk, follow that and disk is formatted and ready to use, go ahead and create shares on the new disk.

It’s usually a good practice to have backups, especially if doing hardware changes like RAID expansion (which you’re not). Do it for peace of mind but I don’t expect your having to use it or face any downtime except for a reboot (maybe not even that if these devices support hot swap, not sure).

4

it looks like i did jinx myself.

now i am having problems with the NAS, out of nowhere the dashboard won’t load correctly, firmware wont update despite trying both ways and the USB connected drive will not mount in macOS as it usually used to.

have tried pulling plugs and hard restarting.

in lieu of uttering something inappropriate here, i’m going to substitute with “wow”.

5

To misquote my Hero: Edna Mode: “Fortune Favors the Well Prepared”

6

Dude!

Oh I feel for you.

Take a deep breath. .and power cycle the unit 3 times before uttering epithets.

After suitable cursing, reboot one more time before googling. Then you can look at System Recovery options. Almost all of them will work without compromising any data. Plenty of people have done that on this forum.

7

the NAS appears to be ok, I rebooted WITHOUT the My Book attached, was able to update the Firmware and waiting for it to report back results from a full disk scan. fortunate there.

i plugged the my book into my PC directly, using WD Drive Utilities (I tried both in Windows and on macOS), the Complete Disk Scan function is returning ‘failed’. SMART test passed, Quick Test Passed.

at this point, if it’s very likely the My Book is toast, i am prepared to take advice on recommended brands and classes. i can buy a basic drive enclosure that has SATA 6 and drop a 3.5" in it. going to stick to a simple single-drive external that the NAS can work with.

8

are Toshiba N300’s considered reliable enough for my needs ?

I would use 2 of them in the NAS, then use the WD Red 8TB from my nas in the My Book enclosure as the USB/Desktop drive.

i’m not looking forward to doing this, it’s time consuming and have to setup somewhere on a PC in order to make file transfers quicker.

can I RMA the 5TB drive from the My Book ? it is a WD Blue.

9

here is the label on the drive that came out of the My Book … since its 2015, I assume its’s a CMR drive. doing a chkdsk on it to see if there are any bad sectors.

image
image3024×4032 3.42 MB

10

So. . . lots to unpack

1st. . .I doubt you can RMA just the drive; without RMAing the enclosure.

2nd. . .if you are willing to go the enclosure route. . why not? Although. . gotta ask. . .is it actually cheaper than getting a new MyBook?

3rd. . . I have no clue what to get these days. The SMR drives are endemic across multiple product lines and multiple brands . . . .frankly, the only way to avoid SMR is to go SSD - - - -which has it’s own issues.

Personally, I am currently rocking a competing brand 1TB SSD for daily use. I retire these things annually. . .as a “fix point”; so I am not worried about wearing them out. On the external HDD - - - -I am not sure what I would recommend at this point. Probably gotta look for something with 7200 rpm. . . .

12

i’d say yes. i consider 5 years or more as reliable. the longer the better, i don’t like having to sink several hundred $ every 3-5 years to replace drives.

decided to try reformatting this 5TB drive ExFAT and seems to be working. can’t detect bad sectors, windows says it’s fine, disk utility says it’s fine.

WD Drive utilities is flagging it for the quick test and the complete test. don’t know why.

decided to plug back in and the NAS recognizes it. i think my issues with the NAS were related to hiccups with the external drive because after I unplugged it, the NAS ran fine.

decided that now is a good time to add storage in the NAS … going to move forward with the swap and figure out the backup situation with the drives I have.

13

if you guys could chime in on my thoughts, would greatly appreciate it:

i am going to go with a SPAN arrangement on the EX2 Ultra when I receive the 2 HDD’s I bought yesterday. The WD Red that is installed now will be donated to the below device:

a dual-drive enclosure (not a NAS) that will setup as a SPAN with the WD Red from above + one more drive. This is going to be the USB backup volume directly connected to the NAS’s port.

I think that’s robust enough for me.

concerning connecting a USB drive to the NAS, should I have the USB drives formatted already ? The enclosure has a physical setting switch for RAID0, 1, SPAN, JBOD. I assume I make my setting first, install the drives second, then connect to a PC or mac to format.

which USB drive file system format would be best recommended that the EX2 ultra recognizes ?