I have a Mycloud Ex2 Ultra with 2x2TB NAS drives configured in RAID 1, with a total of 1TB of storage used. Recently tried to upgrade the drives to 6TB because I intend to use the NAS for much more storage, and for backups from multiple users. I had mixed results.
I hibernated the unit, replaced one 2TB drive with the new 6TB, and restarted. The NAS showed “Volume Degraded” as expected, and I manually rebuilt the RAID volume. So far so good.
Repeated the process with the other drive, successfully rebuilt the RAID volume. At this point, the dashboard showed correctly that the storage capacity was 6TB, but on the home page there is only 1TB free.
I went back to the “change RAID mode” and tried to expand the volume… I’ve done so several times, but each time it completes there is a total capacity of 2TB. The firmware and apps are up to date, what am I missing?
I read some discussion from other users who said that hibernating the unit between disk changes was a mistake, and there should have been an option to increase the size of the disk being replaced. I never saw that.
So I currently have access to all of my NAS data, as before. I just don’t have the increased capacity. I DO have the option of adding another volume in the unused space (under the storage tab), but I think I’m making things more complicated. I also have a full backup of the data on an external drive, so in the worst case I could change the RAID mode to 0, then change it back to 1, effectively wiping all of the data and in theory the new volume should be the full capacity? Then I could restore the backup to the NAS… This seems more complicated than it should be.
Would appreciate any advice on where to go from here.
No; this is the “stealth upgrade” path where you replace drives one by one; and the system rebuilds the raid from the “old” disks. Once the system is full of new; big disks; it then recognizes that the raid can be “expanded”
I spent a fair bit of time trying to do this the elegant way - but it just didn’t work out. I talked with someone from WD Support in India, and the young man was very pleasant and helpful, but basically said that the brute force option was best. I backed up the NAS folders to an external USB connected directly to one of the two USB ports on the back, using WD’s app. The backup took a few hours - but much less than the time that the RAID had rebuilt or the software had attempted to “expand” the volume. Once I had it backed up, the young man from India instructed me to change the raid mode to something besides RAID 1, and when it was done, change it back. I should note that he actually sent me an email after our first discussion, I replied when the backup was complete, and within a few hours (the following morning) he called me back - that’s incredible. He confirmed that each time I did that, any data on the drives would be erased. I did as he suggested, then restored the data from the external USB using the WD app. After a few hours, it was complete, I have the full capacity, and I didn’t lose anything. It’s still a mystery to me why WD would have the option to expand the volume if it doesn’t actually work. But for the moment, I’m a happy camper again.
