Given the lack of precise information on the Official WD Support pages and from the WD Support Team (even after logging tickets) concerning this topic here is the exact procedure that I successfully used to upgrade the hard drives in my PR2100 this past weekend. Perhaps this will be of use to other PR2100 owners down the road …
A couple of things to note …
- I have owned my PR2100 since April 2018 and ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT!!!
- My PR2100 had two 8.0 TB WD Red drives in it, running RAID 1 and I had 1.5 TB of free space remaining prior to my upgrade.
- My PR2100 is running firmware 5.27.157
- The main application running on my PR2100 is the Plex Media Server (which is awesome btw!!)
- I was upgrading to two 14.0 TB WD Red Pro drives (WD141KFGX), running RAID 1
So here was the procedure that I successfully used this past weekend:
0. Before I did anything I made a backup of all of the data on my NAS to another disk drive just in case something went wrong so that I didn’t lose any data - in the end nothing did go wrong but I highly recommend this step just in case … !!!
- Log into MyCloudPR2100 using my web browser (I happen to use Edge but the browser choice doesn’t matter to my knowledge)
- Click on the Apps Button on the top of the Menu bar, click on the Plex Media Server installed App, and turn it OFF (click on the OFF button beside the RUN APP toggle)
- Click on the Storage Button on the top of the Menu bar
- Click on the RAID option on the Left and then turn Auto-Rebuild to ON
- RAID VOLUME will display the status of your current configuration. Click the Change RAID Mode Button. Accept the Warning by clicking the OK button.
- Select RAID 1.
- Check the Box Labeled “Expand Capacity”.
- Click Next and Follow the Instructions that come up on the screen.
- Swap the First Drive in the PR2100 - note DON’T POWER OFF the PR2100 device. Just pull the lever on the front of the left drive (the drive that is blinking red at the bottom) and then slide out the old drive (note the physical orientation as you slide it out). Slide in the new drive (ensure you preserve the same physical orientation when you insert the new drive) and close the latch / lever on the front of the drive.
- The PR2100 will proceed to copy the data from the remaining old drive to the new drive. You will get updates on this progess in your browser window. It will be very slow. In my case in which I had 6.5 TB of an 8 TB drive used, it took approx 17 hours to complete the copy. Of course the browser window times out / logs you out so periodically you will have to log back into the MyCloudPR2100 via Step 1 above to check on your status. As the copy is taking place you will see the status LED lights under both drives blinking rapidly blue.
- Once the copy of the first drive is finally complete, the progress bar in the web browser will show as being 50% complete and the status LED lights under both drives will be solid blue. At this point the screen in the PR2100 web browser told me to swap the second drive. Thus again, without turning off the PR2100, I pulled the lever on the front of the right drive (the drive that is blinking red at the bottom) and then slid out the old 8 GB drive). I slid in the new drive (ensuring proper physical orientation) and closed the latch / lever on the front of the new drive.
- The PR2100 then proceeded to copy the 6.5 TB of data from the first new 14 TB drive to the second 14 TB drive. Once again this process took approx 17 hours and the LED lights under both drives were flashing blue throughout the copy process.
- Once the second copy was finished, the LED lights under both drives were solid blue. The dashboard shows that I now have 7.58 TB free and everything is working properly - all disk status and drive diagnostics are healthy.
- Go back to Apps and turn the Plex Media Server Application back ON.
- Confirm that PLEX is running as expected.
So, you can see from above, that while the process is lengthy because the disk copies take a long time, it is actually quite easy to upgrade your PR2100 capacities!
Finally, here is a good link that provides a compatibility chart for the PR2100 and the WD drive offerings for your reference sake.
My Cloud Hard Drive Compatibility Matrix (wd.com)
Best of luck!
Gary (huge fan of the PR2100)
