My My Cloud Home Duo 6TB shows only 3TB. Do I need to reset of format?
This will be the standard misinterpretation due to RAID 1 usage (and arguably false advertising).
The device has two hard drives in it, each 3TB so overall there is 6TB of storage in the whole thing. However by default it is set up as a RAID 1 device, which mirrors the hard drives and so basically whenever you write anything to it, the same data is written identically to both drives. As far as the user side sees, only 3TB is actually available because of this, and the device displays its availability and content as a single 3TB drive (you can’t access the drives individually in RAID1 mode).
It’s designed to cover for a physical drive failure of one of the two drives, so if that does happen your data is still safe on the other one. You just replace the failed drive with a new one, the RAID then rebuilds and you’re good to go again. Of course it doesn’t prevent issues with the overall device itself, nor issues that may affect both drives such as power spikes, fire or someone stealing the device. So whilst it helps secure data, it’s not as secure as a true external backup stored in a different location and on a second device.
It may be possible to switch the device to a different mode, such as RAID0 or JBOD (I have an older different WD device that can be switched, I don’t know if this one can). If so then you can access more storage capacity, but you of course lose the mirroring feature. And in doing such a switch over, you need to format all the drives involved as they have to be restructured. Thus all data on them is lost, and has to be backed up onto another drive first and restored afterwards.
Shame, I thought it was 2 times 6TB mirrored. Very misleading advertising
Mobiel verstuurd.
