Upgrading Capacity With EX4

[thermal]

Hi,

Would just like to know if you can upgrade the hard drives in the EX4.
My EX4 came with 4x 2TB drives pre installed but i’d like to up that to 4x 4TB drives.

Can this be done like the Netgear ReadyNAS devices where you can upgrade the drives 1-by-1 after each drive has finished rebuilding the data.

Can this be done without a full data wipe of the device?

[Hamlet]

Hello,

It is possible to upgrade the drives in the EX4

Take a look at this link for the compatibility list.

http://wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=1170#Tab2&Tab9

[rphilipz]

Hamlet,

Can you please be more specific - when you say “It is possible to upgrade the drives in the EX4”. Is this done in the manner described in the original question. This type of drive upgrading is called Vertical Expansion by other enclosure vendors.

Example: Take a 4x2TB Raid 5 EX4 configuration (6 TB storage space) and 1-by-1 insert 4TB drives - that is in a sequential manner you have 4x2TB, 3x2TB+4TB(2 TB not used), 2xTB+2x4TB(4 TB not used), 1x2TB+3x4TB(6 TB not used), 4x4TB (8 TB not used) -> then run an expansion to resize the Raid 5 array to recover the 8 TB not used and end up with 12 TB of storage space.

Thanks,

Richard

[rphilipz]

Here is a definition of vertical expansion:

Vertical Expansion

With vertical expansion, growth is achieved by expanding the storage volume
with larger hard drives. Vertical expansion is a cost effective method of
expanding storage capabilities within a single machine by replacing existing
hard drives.