Ok I’m new to this. But pretty smart with pcs.
Rule of thumb…replace hard drives and store every 5 years. So my question is I have 8tb / 4 tb drives raid 1. So let’s say i take out one of the hard drives and put in a new one. To backup all my photos? How would I do that? Do I have to format it? How would i format one without losing information on the other drive I left in?
Raid 1 is “mirrored” drives.
Pull one; you could theoretically insert a new second drive and all data will copy over. It’s called a “Raid Rebuild”. Pretty much go into the menus and push one button.
Now - as for the drive you pulled: Not sure you could reinsert it into an EX2 by itself. You can, however, hook it up to a PC and read the files. It’s a standard Linux EXT4 format. (Of course, you need a driver for a windows PC to read an EXT4 disk).
The way I do it is to - - → copy all the data to an external drive. That drive is my backup. Archive backup drives every few years. I have a drawer full of backup drives; with a recent backup in a different state than my NAS and older backups.
So you copy all the stuff on your EX2 to an external hard drive like what a WD element? The whole purpose of me getting this cloud drive is to download all my Google photos, link up my phone and my wife cell phone and then upload all my photos from an external hard drive that I have into the cloud so we can view them on the phone…
Well, we are talking about backups, correct?
And you are talking about having the NAS as functioning file repository.
For this repository; you want a backup. The two drives in the EX2 provide reliability and some protection against HDD failure. It doesn’t protect against NAS hardware failure or User error that wipes lots of files. You want a backup that is unplugged; and preferably at a different house.
As to the ability of the WD software to link to your phones the way you want is a seperate question.
Great answer…now can u answer my separate question?
I am presuming you are asking about using the NAS to view photos on the phone.
I have not run OS/5 on my boxes for a few years.
Overall; I was not impressed with the implementation of the photos sharing using the WD apps and IOS phones.
Key issues:
- Deleting photos on the NAS did not delete photos on the phone (the phone redownloaded images)
- Photos displayed based on a date; which was fine for recent photos. Not fine for older photos from other devices; or photos that had been modified
- no real ability to organize and sync photos with the phone.
As time passed; I was devolving to forming a VPN link to my network and using the NAS as a remote file server to PC class devices. That functionality worked well. Didn’t really try to make this work with Android devices (although; I do have a use case for that)
Ultimately; I decided from a hassle/security perspective that having NAS units exposed to the internet was a bad idea - and I abandoned this capability. Now I just have a small SSD drive I carry with me containing photos.
Ok ,so also I’m sorry for asking all these questions… There’s apps that you can download with the software so there’s one antivirus one. Should I download that? Does that run on the e X2? To protect all the files I upload to it?
