PR4100 RAID question

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

I have a PR4100 with 2x 8TB red drive in RAID 1. I recently bought 2 new 8TB red drive and installed. I got a message:
“Drive Inserted
A new drive has been inserted into Bay 3&4. To add this drive to your system’s RAID set, navigate to Storage >> RAID and click the Change RAID Mode button.”
Any no data wipe suggestions? It seems RAID 10 is a good option for capacity and redundancy. Even keeping RAID 1 will cause a data wipe. Please help. Any solution, and suggestions are welcomed.

2

Hi @PYeung,

RAID 1 (Mirroring)

  • RAID 1 provides a fault-tolerance configuration that copies data from one drive to another simultaneously, creating a mirror of the data. If one drive fails, the data will still be accessible. RAID 1 requires a minimum of 2 disks. It will not perform as fast as a RAID 0 but provides protection of the data if one drive does fail. RAID 1 would cut the total capacity of the RAID set in half.

RAID 10 (Stripping and Mirroring)

  • RAID 10 is similar with RAID 1E as it would also combine the stripping of the disks in RAID 0 and the mirroring in RAID 1, but a minimum of 4 drives in the RAID Set will be needed. This RAID set would group the drives in pairs of two and within that group, and those pairs will mirror each other within the group. Just like RAID 1 and 1E, RAID 10 will cut the total capacity of the RAID set in half.

Please refer to the article How to Change the RAID Mode on a RAID Enabled My Cloud Device:
https://support-en.wd.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/27421

3

Thank you for WD staffer giving the definitions of RAID 1 and 10. My original question however was how not to trigger a data wipe on the two 8TB drives I have in my PR4100 bay 1 and 2 after I install two blank 8TB to bay 3and 4. I can’t make the two new drive useful unless I initiate a “change RAID mode” but either RAID 1 and 10 will erase all my data in both bay 1 and 2.

4

Random thoughts here from someone with a two bay NAS. . . and a fear of even opening the dashboard page to LOOK at the options.

  • My advice is worth what you are paying for it :wink:

  • This would be a great time to make a backup of all the data. :wink:

  • Have you thought about making the two new drives a separate volume? If you do that. . .you should be able to do a raid 1 or raid 0 with the new volume. . .without affecting the existing volume.

  • I glanced at the manual: My Cloud Pro Series User Manual (westerndigital.com) Certainly, this seems to say that changing raid mode would cause a wipe. I am surprised that you can’t setup the new disks as a separate volume within the NAS. This is not referenced; but I think it should be possible. . . .So it doesn’t seem to give you that choice?

  • You might try removing drives 1 & 2 before inserting drives 3&4 to create the new volume. Less likely to have the drives wiped if they ain’t there. :wink: You should get a “raid roaming” message when you reinsert drives 1&2. (Not sure, however)

  • hope this rambling helps. Let us know if any of this works.