Upgrading from 2tb to 6tb

WD External Drives External Drives for Mac
1

I want to upgrade the drives inside my “My Studio II 2tb” unit. (bought it on 2009)

Model: WD20000H2G - 00

S/N: W[Deleted]

I wonder if I can go from 2tb (2 x 1tb caviar green) to 6tb (2 x 3tb caviar green)

I also want to put them in RAID mode.

Searched all over google but all I see are reviews and some forum questions but nothing related to this.

Thanks a lot in advance.

2

nobody?

3

Dude, I don’t think the controller for the 6TB is the same as the 2TB version. I have seen posts in here of people who got it working up to 4TB but not higher than that. Remember that drives natively over 2TB are built and formatted differently.

1 Like
4

Well well…

I just bought four 2.5tb caviar green for my two MyStudio2 units.

Guess what? it WORKS!

I could see all the 5tb (on each unit) as soon as I tried (before making them RAID1)…then I could also succesfully upgrade the firmware on both units, no problem at all. (Better do that in Mac OS as the wd firmware updater doesn’t work in 64bit windows7)

Finally I put them both in RAID1 mode for effective 2.3tb in mirror for each unit…all went perfectly fine.

Bottom line, you can upgrade your HD’s inside your WD MyStudio2 up to 6tb without any problem (I think, since I could with 5tb)

I don’t know if WD likes their customers to upgrade their HD’s in their old units BUT…considering all the four discs were 420 euro in total, and they ARE western digital discs I don’t see why not. (frankly, I think the bare cases wouln’t cost more than 60 - 100 dollars if you could buy them alone)

So WOHO! I’m a happy camper, I can now relax knowing my data is safe in RAID 1 mode.

Some quick guide on how to do this:

You’ll need to get the files from here: http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=114&sid=103&lang=en

Get the firmware updater for your OS (It won’t work in 64bit windows so get a friend with a Mac or a 32bit windows based PC) and get the Drive Manager too.

Install the firmware updater, CONNECT YOUR MYSTUDIO2 ONLY ON THE USB PORT (better connect one unit at a time to avoid any problem)

Upgrading the firmware is easy chessy, no rocket science. (Just be sure to NOT unplug anything in the process, and make sure the computer power is plugged in case of a laptop)

Now install the Drive Manager, In Mac after installation it will show up as a tiny icon in the upper bar (when you have a WD HD plugged in)

There you can check the status of your drive(s) and configure accordingly (please note that you’ll lose all your data if you change the RAID mode on an unit that has data already in it so always doublecheck and don’t smoke/drink anything funny before doing any of this)

Note that your drives will be FAT at the beginning and they will not show more than 280gb when mounted (the drive manager will tell you they are 2.3tb though) until you reformat them in NTFS then you can see 2.3tb when mounted.

Highly reccomendable: When swapping discs, mark your HDs with a pencil because is very easy to get lost if you are replacing more than two HD’s

Cheers!

Matias.