Hi I have an WD My Cloud EX 2 Ultra with dual 4TB drives in raid 1 mirroring format.
I want to upgrade this to two dual 10TB drives.
What is the best way to do this?
I read that replacing one 4TB drive will mirror one 4TB drive but only 4 TB will be accessible on the entire 10TB drive. If I then put in the second 10TB drive will it mirror the 4TB on the 10TB drive and ‘unlock’ the rest of the available storage for both drives? How does this work, hence my question.
Thanks in advanced.
I’ve been reading forums here. It seems making a backup of 4TB first, then replace the drives. Then transfer the data to the new 10TB mirrored RAID 1 drives? Seems a lot of work and not time efficient but maybe it’s necessary for the best outcome?
OK as there were no replies, I thought i’d share what I’ve done which may help others in the same situation.
After spending the weekend backing up everything onto various external drives (as recommended by everyone and sundry) I did the following EXPANSION feature which copies across one lower storage drive to the larger drive, then after a day copying content if almost full, the My Cloud OS says the Drive 2 in Volume_1 needs to be removed (Whilst the NAS is still turned on) and then replaced with the new drive. All drive replacements are completed with My Cloud EX2 Ultra turned on.
This then mirrors the copied content to the new second drive and expands to the total drive capacity.
Using the ‘WD My Cloud Ex2 Ultra’ web interface, under the top Storage tab, then RAID in the left column, selecting ‘Change RAID Mode’ whilst following the prompts on this page. It has taken several days but it works without transeferring everything across from My Cloud off and then back again as what I’ve read.
If you want to upgrade your WD My Cloud EX2 Ultra from two 4 TB drives to two 10 TB drives, the way to do it is to back up all your data first and then recreate the RAID. Swapping in just one 10 TB drive will only mirror 4 TB, and putting in the second 10 TB after that won’t give you the extra space. The EX2 Ultra doesn’t do live RAID expansion, so the proper approach is to back everything up, put in both 10 TB drives, set up a fresh RAID 1, and then restore your data. Yeah, it takes some time, but that’s the only way to get the full 10 TB usable storage.
