RAID Setup for WD MyCloud Pro4100 Question

Hello everyone :smile:

I’ve been using a WD MyCloud 2TB for many years and finally took another step and ordered the Pro4100 with 32TB to upgrade my storage space, but I have a couple of questions about the setup process.

First, what I want to do with it, so you can get a general idea of what I want. I work from multiple devices (Windows tower PC, MacBook, phone, tablet) and would like to be able to access all of my files from anywhere. I’ve also previously used the WD MyCloud to stream movies on my TV, so the Plex feature was also very interesting to me. But overall, the new NAS is going to be a network drive to make my life a little easier and save me the file transfers using flash drives and so on.

Since the WD NAS is going to store all of my data, I want it to be secure in case one of the hard drives fails while maintaining a good speed that allows me to edit and save photos right from and to the NAS. So far, I’ve only ever dealt with RAID configurations in theory and I’m a little confused as to the practical side and setup of it. What I want is to use 2 of the drives as my storage and the other two as a mirror of them, preferably two of them combined into one volume (but not necessarily) so that I’ll have 16TB of total storage and have a secure backup in case one of them kicks the bucket. I’ve watched multiple videos on YouTube and browsed the internet for a good tutorial, but none really explain how to configure each drive.

Do I have to group two into a single volume? Do I set one drive to RAID 0 and the other to RAID 1? Do all go on RAID 1? :thinking:
I would greatly appreciate some pointers because this is my first time setting up a NAS and my very theoretical notes about RAID configurations from school are of little help here :rofl:

Hi,

You could refer to the following link: My Cloud: RAID Online User Guide and Solutions

Your choice is essentially between raid 10 (2 pairs of 10 tb each) and raid 5 (2 data plus 1 parity plus 1 hotspare). I would probably go for raid 5 in your situation but both have advantages and disadvantages.