I’ve used 4TB My Cloud (1st Gen - now retired) and been using 6TB My Cloud (2nd Gen - current), which has a 6TB WD My Elements linked as a Safe Point (backup). My Cloud is mounted to a NVIDIA Shield TV (android box) to access media files via Smart TV.
Is My Cloud EX2 Ultra the best substitute? I know there is no longer any My Cloud (2nd Gen) and the My Cloud Home does not work the same way as the My Cloud (2nd Gen).
I want to retain the same operational settings ie. 6TB Elements can be used as a back up point to the NAS. I see that the My Cloud EX2 Ultra is a RAID drive, how is this different to the My Cloud (2nd Gen). I just need a single bay NAS like the My Cloud (2nd Gen).
Best substitute for what? What is the reason for wanting to replace the 2nd gen single bay My Cloud? If the existing My Cloud is working why replace it? What features or options are you looking to gain that you are not getting with the single bay My Cloud?
The EX2 Ulta is not a “substitute”, it is a step up in capability. It is a two bay unit. It officially supports 3rd party modules/add-on’s. One can buy the EX2 Ultra as a diskless unit where you put in your own hard drive(s), or buy one with drives already pre-installed. One can run a single drive in it, or one can use two drives (typically of the same size) to utilize the RAID feature.
Not sure you can restore a Backup from one My Cloud model to another. I’d assume probably not possible due to various reasons. Instead one may have to attach the USB hard drive containing the old Backup from a 2.x second gen My Cloud and copy the user files to the new NAS. Note that on a 2nd gen single bay My Cloud the backup option is not called Safepoint. Its called Backup. Safepoint is used on the 1st gen single bay My Cloud.
If you don’t know what RAID is, use your favorite internet search engine to learn about it.
I would suggest, if you haven’t done so already, you take a few minutes to read through the EX2 Ultra user manual (http://products.wdc.com/library/?id=1512&type=25&cn=4779-705148&lang=en) to gain an understanding of what that unit is and what it’s feature are.And learn what the RAID option is for that unit.
If one is looking to gain more features and capabilities out of an NAS drive one should look at a number of manufacturers offerings rather than confine themselves to just an EX2 Ultra. Other manufacturers may offer a more polished NAS operating system and different features and options than the EX2 Ultra.
Finally there is the DIY build your own NAS option. Some go the build their own route for a variety of reasons. There are a number of free and paid NAS operating systems available.The DIY route usually requires one have a bit more computer knowledge. There are very simple options such as using devices like Raspberry Pi’s as an NAS running one or two hard drives. To using old rack systems to build a NAS with a large number of hard drives. One can use their favorite internet search engine to find many discussions/directions for creating their own NAS.
Sorry, just to clear it up, my 1st Gen died on me & I was only able to purchase a 2nd Gen (off market as WD was no longer selling the My Cloud device, which at time the My Cloud Home was released) with no warranty. I loved the My Cloud device itself & decided to buy the 2nd Gen. However I feel the 2nd Gen may not have long more and I wanted to purchase another replacement (likely looking to increase to 8TB).
I’ve read the EX2 Ultra product description, but I guess I don’t understand a lot of it. And yes I’ve googled, but I guess I still find it hard to understand the RAID drive.
I just wanted another My Cloud device, preferably from WD. Under the products, the EX2 Ultra was the only My Cloud device I could understand. The rest seems overly confusing, and I don’t understand why there wasn’t anymore single bay My Cloud device like the 2nd Gen.
My current settings:
My Cloud device mounted to NVIDIA Shield TV
WD Elements connected to My Cloud as backup (APOLOGIES I forgot that it wasn’t called safepoint in Gen 2). I am able to unplug the WD Elements drive and copy all files across to my PC or a new My Cloud device (this was what I did when I moved from Gen 1 to the Gen 2).
I transfer all files (media, pictures and music) from my PC to the My Cloud
I have private & shared folders setup in My Cloud for different users
I use NVIDIA Shield TV to access all of my media files from My Cloud device
I am just looking to ‘upgrade’ to 8TB using the same set up ie. single bay My Cloud. Does WD not have a My Cloud device like Gen 2 anymore and only sells the EX2 Ultra as the ‘lowest’ range?
Also, I have no idea how to build my own NAS. I just want to be able to save all my files via my own network to a NAS, and to be mounted to NVIDIA Shield for media files. And to be able to back up those files at the same time
The User Manual for the EX2 Ultra gives a better description of how to use the various features and options of the device compared to the marketing terms used to try and sell the device. For example, see page 62 (http://products.wdc.com/library/UM/ENG/4779-705148.pdf#page=62) of the User Manual for a description of what the RAID options are of the EX2 Ultra.
You want to understand what each of the options does as you have to choose one when setting up a device using multiple drives. There are some plus sides and some down sides to using RAID vs JBOD vs Spanning.
WD seems to think the My Cloud Home should be a replacement for the now discontinued single bay My Cloud. IT IS NOT. Many have discovered after purchasing the My Cloud Home, which uses a different operating system (Android I believe), that it is a step or two down from the single bay My Cloud line.
The WD EX2 Ultra is a popular device and a relatively affordable NAS device. But it has been on the market for four or five years now. No telling if or when WD will discontinue it (like they did with the single bay My Cloud) in the next few years for newer devices. The EX2 Ultra may be a bit overkill for someone looking for a simple NAS. For others, they will find its many features that more basic NAS units lack a plus. There are a number of third party apps including Plex Media Server (no transcoding however) that one can install.
Typically what people do is buy the diskless EX2 Ultra. Then buy two WD EasyStore drives (from BestBuy) and shuck them to remove the hard drives, or use two 4TB WD Red drives, in the device. If one shops around that is usually cheaper option, than buying the EX2 Ultra already populated with drives. Note that typically one will have to format the drives so if you are going to use your own single drive from the existing single bay My Cloud you will likely loose all data on it. So backup that data prior to putting the drive into the EX2 Ultra enclosure.
If you haven’t done so already you may want to dig through the EX2 subforum to see what issues are common with the EX2 Ultra. Or to see if others have asked questions similar to yours in this subforum.
Since this is WD’s subforum I won’t mention the various other manufacturers out there which offer very basic single or dual drive NAS devices that are in some cases cheaper than the EX2 Ultra but may not have as many features. Each of those cheaper devices have their drawbacks, but they are out there. Plenty of them listed on Amazon and other online retailers.
To distill it down: there are two reasons to go with an ex2 ultra
more powerful hardware. Helps apps like PLEX run better.
MULTIPLE drives. Allows for bigger storage (see JBOD) or redundancy.
OH. AND I GUESS a third reason: nobody seems to single drive network drives anymore.
For what it is; the single bay myclouds are great. The ex2 builds upon the theme; although most would say that some of the competitors are producing a better product in 2020. ( the ex2 ultra has been out for a few years)
@Bennor this helps to understand the product more. Thank you! The marketing 2 page booklet is pretty basic.
I think I kinda understand JBOD vs. Spanning vs RAID 0. JBOD just allocates files to Drive A or Drive B of your choosing, whereas Spanning will save the files linearly and RAID 0 just strips it to either Drive A and Drive B for more efficiency.
If you were to have an external drive (say 8TB) as a form of backup for Drive A (4TB) & Drive B (4TB), I am assuming it won’t matter which RAID mode is used.
Can I assume RAID 0 would be the general preference?
@NAS_user thanks! I guess I need to move out of ‘single drive network drives’. I must be one of the few still wanting to use a single drive network drive.
With the move to streaming media and people wanting to preserve their own media the use of multiple drive NAS boxes makes more sense. Both feature wise and data redundancy.
But the fact remains there are still single drive NAS units being sold even if WD isn’t selling the single drive My Cloud line anymore. I don’t consider the My Cloud Home to be a NAS. LOL.
When it comes to choosing the RAID setting, if one goes that route, it comes down do one or two issues. And there are upsides and downsides to each method or option. In very simplistic and general terms…
Do you want the RAID to combine both drives into a single volume (so it appears as one large hard drive - ex: 4TB + 4TB = 8TB)? If so choose RAID 0. Down side is if one drive goes bad the whole volume may be inaccessible.
Do you want the content stored on one drive to be mirrored by RAID to the second? If so choose RAID 1. Typically in this case both drives have to be the same size. If one drive goes bad the other is supposed to keep running an one’s data should still be accessible. One would have to replace the bad drive and perform the steps needed to rebuild the RAID array on both drives so data continues to be mirrored to them. One downside to using mirroring is copying speed may be slower (if that is an issue). And if the RAID 1 volume become corrupted one could loose all their data (assuming it wasn’t backed up prior to data loss).
JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks/Drives) mode would treat each hard drive separately. Think, having two separate hard drives on your computer. If one goes bad the other is still there working.
No matter what method you chose, you want to consider backing the data up to another drive or location. Because of this your backup storage location (say a USB hard drive attached to the EX2 Ultra) would need to be as large as the data that one is copying from the NAS. In your case two 4TB drives mirrored (RAID 1) means one would need a possible max of 4TB of storage space on the external USB hard drive. If one was using JBOD or RAID 0 then one would need a possible max of 8TB on the external USB hard drive.
This is EXCELLENT! This makes a lot more sense!
Yea, either way still need a backup. Can’t understand how would RAID 1 be useful, especially it mirrors (like a backup), but still need a backup in case the volume gets corrupted.
What makes RAID 1 so useful is if one drive goes down, the other keeps working and is still accessible. There is no loss in current data access and no loss of data. The NAS isn’t down for any length of time. For home use it may not be as useful, for business use it could be critical.
When using some thing like RAID 0 if one drive goes down you generally loose access to all your data. Then you have to deal with restoring the backup once you go out and buy new hard drives. All of which takes time, and the NAS is down that entire time until all data is restored.
With JBOD its a similar issue when one drive goes bad. You’ve lost all the data on that drive and you have to replace the drive then restore the data from a backup before you will have access to it.
The main issue with any backup is how frequently you perform that backup. Some may backup only once per week. That means you will not have backed up any data between when the drive died and when the last backup was. For a business, that could be a huge loss of critical data.
It really comes down to how important is the data access and how important is it to not loose any data. When it comes to choosing how to setup an NAS and when setting up a backup plan.
Be a little careful with JBOD on these drives. Unless they changed from the EX2 to the EX2 Ultra, you cannot assume what will be stored on drives A and B (in contrast to the user manual). There is a way to set up a share called “Disk 1” and “Disk 2” which correlates to drives A and B in the drive, but not the way its described in the manual.
Use your favorite internet search engine and search for “single bay nas” to find various options from reputable NAS manufactures such as Synology and QNAP. Likely most single bay NAS devices from other manufacturers will be on par with the old single bay second gen My Cloud. The previously suggested models may or may not still be available. Or you can build your own NAS. Plenty of DIY guides out there for building your own NAS either from an unused computer or SoC device like a Raspberry Pi, or from new hardware.
Synology DS118. I’ve used one for a couple of years now. While I liked the WD MyClouds, the Synology is in a different league and you can swap out/upgrade drives till your heart’s content (without resorting to the shenanigans needed with the single bay MyClouds)!
