WD MyCloud 2 TB - replacement max disk capacity?

A friend’s desktop 500 GB drive is about to die so I want to get a new one. She does not need 3 - 5 TB in her desktop PC though, so I would replace the 2 TB in her WDMyCloud 2 TB NAS and put that into her desktop. How large can the replacement drive get for the WDMyCloud on the latest firmware? Anything important I need to check for first? I’ve seen several guides here but I’m not sure which one to use or which virgin disk image to use, the ones linked here on Dropbox are offline.

I guess, I could simply clone the drive of her current WDMyCloud and then add the free space to the main partition on the new drive? I’m not sure because (at leat the 3 TB) layout looks weird. Thx!

The single bay My Cloud drives are formatted for Linux. Don’t think there is a limit (at least indicated by WD) on how large a drive can be used in a single bay My Cloud. I currently run a 8TB WD Red drive in a first gen (v4.x firmware) My Cloud. User Fox_Exe has a set of directions some have used successfully to “unbrick” an existing drive or install a new hard drive in their My Cloud enclosure

FIrst gen v4.x single bay My Cloud: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_6OlQ_H0PxVbzZac0plbkZKeGM/view
Second gen v2.x single bay My Cloud: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_6OlQ_H0PxVQVhnLVJOdDZISUU/view

Generally its best to use a Linux OS when running one of the various unbrick procedures. One can boot their PC using a Linux live/boot disc. Ubuntu (https://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop) is one such popular Linux distro that can be used to boot one’s PC.

Thanks. Since I need to backup the data from the old drive to the new drive anyway, wouldn’t it be best to simply clone the drive and the extend the data partition with Gparted? Or am I making this too easy?

You could try using Gparted or some other program to clone the drive. But it may be better to start fresh by backing up all user data to another location then using one of the unbricking methods and then restoring the user data files to the drive.

BTW, is there a log file on the MYCloud I could check to see how often the thing has been in sleep mode and been started? Kinda see how much wear and tear has been done on the drive over the last 3 years?

On the gen1 you can look at the /var/log/user.log. On the gen2 you don’t have this information. On the gen1 you can use this script. load these two script to the Public folder. SSH into the device cd to the Public folder and run sleep.sh
sleeptime.sh
gunzip -c /var/log/user.log.2.gz > tmpuserlog
cat tmpuserlog /var/log/user.log.1 /var/log/user.log|/nfs/Public/sleep.awk
rm tmpuserlog

sleep.awk
awk ’
NR==1 { a=substr($1,6,2); b=substr($1,9,2); c=substr($1,12,8); y=substr($1,1,4)}
{if ($7 ~ /after/){
hh1=int($8/3600)
mm1=int(($8%3600)/60)
ss1=($8%3600)%60
TotalSleep = TotalSleep + $8
printf “%2s %2s %8s %8s %5d %2d:%02d:%02d\n”,substr($1,6,2),substr($1,9,2) ,substr($11,0,9),substr($
1,12,8),$8 ,hh1,mm1,ss1}}
END {
hh1=int(TotalSleep/3600)
mm1=mm1=int(($8%3600)/60)
ss1=($8%3600)%60
printf “Total Sleep Time: %2d:%02d:%02d\n” ,hh1,mm1,ss1
start= a “/” b “/” y " " c
“date +%Y”|getline year
end= substr($1,6,2) “/” substr($1,9,2) “/” year " " substr($1,12,8)
$1=start
#print start " " end
cmd=“date --date="”$1"" +%s"
#print cmd
cmd|getline st
printf “Start %s\n” ,st
$1=end
cmd=“date --date="”$1"" +%s"
cmd|getline end
#print cmd
printf “End %s\n” ,end
Total=end-st
hh1=int(Total/3600)
mm1=mm1=int((Total%3600)/60)
ss1=(Total%3600)%60
Percent=int((TotalSleep/Total)*100)
WakeTime= int(100 - Percent)
printf “Total Up Time: %2d:%02d:%02d %2d%% Sleep %2d%% Wake\n” ,hh1,mm1,ss1,Percent,WakeTime
}’

One can export the logs via the My Cloud Dashboard mycloudhelpicon icon. Select Create and Save System Report then click the Create and Save button to save a zipped file which will contain a number of log files. However, I don’t think it will show all the data you are looking to find.

Thanks. I’m just not sure it’s a good idea replacing the desktop PC’s drive with an NAS drive from 2015. It hasn’t been running 24/7 though.

Replacing a desktop PC with a WD Red drive is a bit overkill. Nothing wrong with doing it just a bit overkill. With SSD prices the way they are one can easily replace a mechanical hard drive with an SSD drive if they don’t need a lot of storage space. And mechanical drive prices are low enough that one can put a 2TB drive in a desktop PC for under $100 US.

Run a surface test and check the SMART output on the WD Red drive and see if there are any warnings or errors. If not, it should work just fine in a desktop PC.

I wonder if there’s any way to do this while the drive is still inside the NAS? Maybe via an SSH shell or something? Would save time in case it’s not suitable for the desktop (which already has an SSD so the new drive is can be 5400 rpm).