NTFS instead of EXT4 on my WD PR4100

My Cloud OS 5 Personal & Network Attached Storage My Cloud Pro Series
1

Hello everyone,

Is there any way to use NTFS instead of ext4 on my PR4100, I really need to be able to take the drive and exchange the files on the desks with on Windows 10. I hope you have any method to change the formatting to NTFS or at least some work around to be able to write and read files from my NAS HDD when it is mounted to Windows.

2

No, you cannot format the drive as NTFS.

You can, however, map “shares” as network drives in windows. Once you do that, you can access the files normally via file explorer (or any other windows program, for that matter)

3

That would be great, is there any instruction or guide on how to do that? Because right now when I connect my drive to my PC the system ask me to format the drive, so I am not sure how to do what you have suggested, Thank you!

4

The pr4100 is a NAS (network attached storage); not an external hard drive.

The network cable connects to the router; not the pc.

After setting up the NAS (read the setup guide); you access using the IP address or the device name (read the setup guide)

The power here is that multiple PCs (or TVs, or phones) can access the NAS simultaneously.

5

Thank you for your reply, what I meant is, I would like to be able to take the drive out of my NAS (which is working perfectly) and attach this hard drive to my PC where I would like to read and write data on that same desk, and then be able to return this drive to my NAS. The issue is that Windows doesn’t recognize the hard drive because it’s EXT4.
I tried DiskInternals, but it can only read from the drive, and can’t write
any suggestions?

7

Dear DSWV42,
I know what NAS is, I have one. This is clearly not what I am asking about. The device that I need to move the data from is not connect to any network and can’t be connected to any network under any circumstances. I hope you see my point now. Do you have any suggestions? Thank you!

8

You could format an external USB drive NTFS and plug that drive into the PR4100.

Then use the USB Backup app to copy or sync some or all shares to the external drive.

you need to install the APP’s as they are not included in OS5

You need backups for a NAS anyway and there are 2 USB ports on most WD NAS units

1 Like
10

Thank you very much for all your help, I believe I would have to get a big external drive and move data between the isolated PC and NAS. Thank you very much for your help and suggestions!

11

Thank you for your help, I will get an external drive to do the back-up sporadically through the USB port. Is there a specific APP that I need to install? Right now when I attach a USB stick to my NAS and start copying by using the button on the device, I don’t know on which HDD my files are landing on, I haven’t used OS5 yet.

12

There are programs that run on Win10 that are essentially linux emmulators and will read an EXT4 disk.

However, I think this functionality will depend on the type of RAID setup you have on the PR4100. If you had two volumes with Raid1; or JBOD. . it would work. Any raid setup that involves stripping of the disks probably would not work.

Overall. . . .the external USB HDD is probably the way to go.

FWIW: On my network; I am moving to a setup with two routers. On Router “A”; I have internet. . .and the PC’s will normally log onto that Router. On Router “B” the NAS will reside. If I need to access those drives; I simply switch which network the PC is logged into.

1 Like
13

Thank you, do you mean programs like DiskInternals and ext2fsd (which has been discontinued) because these programs, as what you have written, can only read, but won’t write. If you are referring to something else, please inform me.

Yes, I am using JBOD, with freefilesync for mirroring some data on two different HDD. I am doing it this way because I don’t want to occupy 4 TB on each desk for only 500 GB of data that I want to secure/duplicate. (I am not sure if this is the best way to do it, but it is what I came up with, since I already used freefilesync for some time now)
Another reason to do this is that as far as I know, I can’t use PR4100 with 2 set of RAID1.

Thank you for the final hint, I might try that. I am still not sure if I would open my NAS on the internet, but your suggestion is worth trying as an extra security step for what I am setting up now. Thank you for that.

14

Exactly.

WD OS/5 (The current operating system) has raised serious privacy/security issues in my mind; such that I do not want this device on the internet

WD OS/3 (the old operating system) has known security flaws. . . probably has unknown security flaws. . . and is now “officially” unsupported. I am pretty sure I don’t want this on the internet either.

Is putting the devices on a seperate router foolproof? Only if you are a fool. . . you can still transfer contaminated files to the device. But it’s alot harder to hack if you don’t have a wire

1 Like
15

If you have not found it
The USB Backup app is in the WD app store but you can download from the user interface

If you click on the USB icon in the interface top blue area you can see the external USB drives
(I only use the back USB slots on my PR4100 )

Mine then show WD Mybook 25EE but for more information click the arrow to the right and you can then used the serial number of the disk for identification - port number and disk size it there too.
– note the up arrow on the left is to eject the drive

I have moved WD NAS drives over to Linux when my DL4100 and ex2 died - but it was a one way move.
easy if non-raid - the EX2 was raid but mdadm standard RAID management tool could see and take over the raid and see the data.

Just a note - you may have to reboot the NAS on connecting and removing USB drives - being old school I like to be take the extra step.

(the front button on my PR4100 NAS by front panel USB port stick and is hard to get it to pop out so I have never tried moving data to external drive the way you did.)

1 Like
16

I have two NAS devices, one an EX4100 and another a different vendor, and will likely be retiring them in favor of home-made rack of high-capacity USB drives on a multip-port USB stick in order to be able to use standard NTFS 2.5" and 3.5" drives in docking stations. Right now I have a 6-port USB stick and a 2-drive 2.5"/3.5" docking station that I will be expanding. At present I have 6 drives on a single USB port. I didn’t realize the NAS devices were not NTFS until I had purchased both. Still learning at 80 years old!

17

By far the most common OS options for the mid-range NAS market are based on either Linux or Microsoft Windows Storage Server.

I do pre format the external USB backup WDmybook to NTFS format and let the NAS system have its way with the storage disk units.

18

If you are running an OS/5 NAS. I don’t think you have any choice regarding formatting EXT4 for the internal drives.

For external drives - - I think OS/5 and OS/3 allow any format. I have not played with this too much: OS/3 had a nasty habit of indexing the drive upon first insertion - you could only change this AFTER indexing was done. . . which could be quite ugly if the drive was a full 4TB drive. OS/5 changed that default behavior (which was one of the two great things about OS/5); but I no longer run OS/5 on my WD hardware for other reasons.