Hello,
I own my cloud 2TB, and I need more space, is it possible to replace the disk with higher capacity disk?
Fast response is appreciated
Tuli
There are two ways to increase disk space. First, the official way, is to attach an external USB hard drive to the My Cloud USB port.
The second way, the unofficial way, is to replace the My Cloud hard drive with a larger hard drive. There are a number of ways to do so. Including using the various “unbrick” methods that one can search for in this subforum (using the search feature, magnifying glass icon upper right). Some have reported success using a disk imaging program to crate a disk image that is then burned to the new drive. Note that the My Cloud hard drive is generally formatted for Linux so if using Windows one will need to use a third party Linux driver to view the contents of the My Cloud hard drive.
Also because there are two different single bay models the unbrick process is slightly different for each version. Make sure to note which version you have and backup all content just in case the unbrick or imaging process fails.
Bennor,
Thanks for the detailed response
Regards
Tuli
Thanks
Do I really need to unbrick just to upgrade the drive?
For a single bay/single drive My Cloud there are generally only two ways to increase storage space on the unit itself.
First is to add an external USB hard drive using the single USB 3.0 port on the back of the single bay/single drive My Cloud units. The single bay/single drive My Cloud supports using up to seven external USB hard drives. One will need to use a USB hub (likely powered) when using multiple external USB hard drives on a single bay/single drive My Cloud.
Second is to replace the single internal hard drive on a single bay/single drive My Cloud with a larger capacity new or used hard drive. Because the firmware/operating system of the single bay/single drive My Cloud unit resides on the hard drive one must partition and format the hard drive a specific way then write the firmware to the hard drive. WD did not create a simple way to perform this process as they do not officially support replacing the hard drive on the single bay/single drive My Cloud units. The unbrick process can be performed a number of ways on a sinle bay/single drive My Cloud. From cloning the old hard drive to the new hard drive then using a partition management program expand the data partition (sdb4/ext4) to the full unused space on the larger capacity hard drive. Or use the appropriate manual method of partitioning and formatting the large capacity drive then writing the appropriate single bay/single drive model firmware to the hard drive. Because the single bay/single drive My Cloud has two versions (first gen v3.x/v4/x firmware)and second gen v2.x firmware) the process to write the firmware is different between the two models.
The “unbrick” methods used on the single bay/single drive My cloud models are ONLY for the single bay/single drive My Cloud modes. They likely will not work properly on a multi bay My Cloud model and could result in bricking (rendering unusable) a multi bay My cloud model.
User Fox_exe has a set of manual directions for the first gen and second gen single bay My Cloud models that many have successfully used.
User Fox_exe repositories:
Main Repository: https://fox-exe.ru/WDMyCloud/
First Gen: https://fox-exe.ru/WDMyCloud/WDMyCloud-Gen1/
Second Gen: https://fox-exe.ru/WDMyCloud/WDMyCloud-Gen2/
First gen directions:
English: https://fox-exe.ru/WDMyCloud/WDMyCloud-Gen1/Replace%20HDD%20-%20English.txt
Russian: https://fox-exe.ru/WDMyCloud/WDMyCloud-Gen1/Replace%20HDD.txt
File(s) used in first gen:
original_v03.04.01-230.tar.gz: https://fox-exe.ru/WDMyCloud/WDMyCloud-Gen1/Backups/original_v03.04.01-230.tar.gz
original_v04.01.02-417.tar.gz: https://fox-exe.ru/WDMyCloud/WDMyCloud-Gen1/Backups/original_v04.01.02-417.tar.gz
Latest first gen firmware: http://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?g=904
Second gen directions:
English: https://fox-exe.ru/WDMyCloud/WDMyCloud-Gen2/_Unbricking_en.txt
Russian: https://fox-exe.ru/WDMyCloud/WDMyCloud-Gen2/_Unbricking_ru.txt
usbrecovery.tar.gz: https://fox-exe.ru/WDMyCloud/WDMyCloud-Gen2/usbrecovery.tar.gz
Alternate method files:
uImage-wdrecovery: https://fox-exe.ru/WDMyCloud/WDMyCloud-Gen2/Developing/uImage-wdrecovery
uRamdisk-wdrecovery: https://fox-exe.ru/WDMyCloud/WDMyCloud-Gen2/Developing/uRamdisk-wdrecovery
Latest second gen firmware: http://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?g=904
