Hello everyone! I’m in the process of planning out my next step to get my PLEX server where I want it and that is a stand alone system. I have come to the conclusion that I want a PR4100 but have limited knowledge on RAID and wanted to run my idea/scenario by this community for any feedback.
I currently have 2 4tb Red drives and plan to put both in the PR4100 in RAID 1 starting out which should last me a while. The plan for the future would be to add 2 more 4tb Red drives (at the same time) when the storage requirements arise. I found this WD article that says you can take a RAID 1 and migrate it to RAID 5 with no data loss. Am I wrong for thinking this is my best route? Should I be looking at going about this in a different way?
Yes, you can add 2 more drives in My Cloud PR4100 device but make sure the new drives must be of same model and storage capacity to configure under RAID without data loss.
Thanks for the reply Brandon. I knew they needed to be the same size but was not aware they had to be the same model drive. Does that apply to a replacement for a failed drive as well? I’m just thinking that if one fails in the future and the models I have are no longer available it would make my whole NAS worthless.
It’s just recommended to use same-type disks, but it won’t make any difference if you use newer models.
But it is harmless to use drives with more cache memory in the future.
You may always use higher capacity drives, but the extra space won’t be available until all drives meet that extra capacity.
But most importantly: stick to WD drives to get proper spindown support.
