I have a HDD that i would like to use in my mycloud ex2 that is already formatted and has data on it. When i install the HDD it shows up as ‘bad’ and data can not be seen on it. Is it possible to use a HDD without re-formatting it? Thanks
No - you MUST format it if you want to use any drive. You will have to transfer that data first temporaily to another drive if you want to keep that data and copy it back onto EX2 after the drive is formatted and setup.
The ONLY time you can skip this step is if you took an EX2’s drive out and then put it in another EX2 - and in very limited situations even then would it work.
The EX2 runs on Linux OS and it needs to put it’s system files in certain locations - in addition to formatting the drive in Linux’s ext4 format. So even if your drive is formatted in ext4 format (which rules out any pre-formatted Windows NTFS formatted drive or Mac’s HFS+ with or without data), it would not have the system files in the right location on an unformatted drive. But if you took the drives out of another EX2, then both the formatting and the system files would already be in place and hence you’d be able to skip this step in that situation.
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Thanks! Does the same go for HDDs attached via USB, like a USB external drive or if i put my existing HDD in a docking station and connect it via USB?
No, external USB drives do not need to be formatted - if they were previously formatted in Windows (I think also for Mac but I do not know for sure as I only had Windows-pre-formatted USB3 HDDs) with data, they will work fine just as they are. Your data and the whole USB drives, including any empty space, will be perfectly accesible for read and write once connected via USB.
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