Bennor,
I wish it were that simple.
Especially with embedded devices - like these stand-alone NAS devices - there may be hardware limitations with controllers and/or available memory that would limit the max storage possible. The fact that the USB connector has issues with more than “X” number of devices reinforces my fear of there being some kind of internal limit.
(BTW, has this been explored on a “device size” basis? i.e. can you add more 250 gig devices than 2T devices?)
The rapidly expanding size of both hard drives themselves, as well as the corresponding enclosure capacities and stand-alone device sizes, makes it easy to rapidly and (somewhat), inexpensively add huge volumes of storage.
Assuming that I can only add two or three devices of any size, it is not unreasonable to expect that someone could add 16, 32, or even 64 Tb of storage to the device. Note that I said it’s not unreasonable to expect, not that it is likely to happen in the next 15 minutes.
Example, on Micro Center’s web site, there is a Western Digital My Book Duo 16TB (2 x 8TB) SuperSpeed USB 3.0 3.5" RAID External Hard Drive for $500 US.
(Viz.: http://tinyurl.com/m7e369z )
On the same page is a Seagate Backup Plus Hub 8TB External Desktop Hard Drive for $200 US, (Viz.: http://tinyurl.com/ljx2jjv )
At both $500 and $200 US a pop, these might seem a bit extravagant right now. In six months, a year, (or at a “going out of business sale”), the price of these items could well be within a reasonable price-range. It wasn’t long ago when one or two terabyte drives were horrifically expensive.
Now 8T drives are becoming (somewhat) reasonable in price, to the point that sometime soon I may want to post a “teardown and upgrade” article on how to upgrade a My Cloud of size “X” to 8T. I strongly suspect that within a year, or less, 16T drives will become available. Expensive? Of course. Available if you have the $$$? Absolutely.
So, using the 16T device as an example, if someone were insane enough to connect three of those beasts to a My Cloud, you’d have 48T of storage in addition to whatever the capacity of the internal drive might be.
An even more likely scenario is someone adding a relatively inexpensive 8T external device to an 8T My Cloud - total capacity, 16T. Too big? Dunno.
Q.E.D. I believe that this question has merit and somehow or other should be addressed.
Of course, the absence of a “shutdown” button within the web interface, or the inability to turn it off safely from the front panel, or a real WORKING USB 3.n interface, or a [insert name of stupid and annoying issue] has been kicked around here for eons, and should have been addressed too.
Unfortunately, I am not holding my breath and I fear we won’t find out until someone borks his box by adding too much storage to it.
What say ye?
Jim “JR”