Before anyone mentions - I will be asking this question on WD site shortly too…
So, recently received the PR4100, nice and easy to set up. Here’s my setup plans:
Two 4 TB WD Reds as my primary in a RAID-1 - Storage for Movies
Two 4 TB WD Blues as secondary drives, EITHER in RAID-1 to store my music (.mp3 and FLAC), or two standalone/JBOD devices - one for music, and one for system backups. Had not decided yet.
I do not need the reliability or speed boost of the Reds on a secondary set, hence the Blues.
So, I started with the two Reds (slot 1 and 2), got the RAID-1 setup no problem. Installed Plex, started copying movies over from my other NAS. Initial volume is called Volume_1.
Popped in the two blue drives, slot 3 and 4. The PR4100 sees them, senses the temp, shows the serial numbers. However, no where do I see any option to create a SECOND RAID-1 set, nor set the drives as individual volumes to share out.
The manual does not indicate either way (multiple volumes supported NOR only one volume supported)… Not that I’m in ringing the bell now, but if a four bay NAS cannot support anything but a single volume spanning all the drives, that’s a no-go for me. It’s why I bought the 4-bay PR4100 instead of the 2-bay PR2100.
@m.hutchinson said:
Popped in the two blue drives, slot 3 and 4. The PR4100 sees them, senses the temp, shows the serial numbers. However, no where do I see any option to create a SECOND RAID-1 set, nor set the drives as individual volumes to share out.
Hi @“m.hutchinson”
This is supported by all our 4-bay devices. The drives #3 and #4 should be in JBOD mode right now. Simply click on “CHange RAID Mode” and combine these drives into another RAID 1 Mirroring (or Spanning or RAID 0 Striping ). More information about the several RAID modes are available in the User Manual of My Cloud PR4100 starting at page 59 of the PDF.
Ahh, that works, thank you. I’ve got the secondary RAID-1 initializing now.
As an interface, that screen is hardly intuitive and could use a rework. Not thrilled clicking “Change RAID Mode” when the manual states: “WARNING! Changes made to your RAID mode will delete all of your data and your user settings.” I have had units in the past that do just that, zero out your RAID config back to nothing.
I had read the manual before (and scoured over page 59, too).
Coupled with “Use the following steps to change the current RAID mode on your My Cloud device.” it doesn’t point the end-user toward multiple partitioning of this unit.
So I guess I would recommend that the manual and the interface get a tweak.
Hi @“m.hutchinson”
yes, the warning message may be seen as a scary advice but it is fact that all data will be lost on that drives which will be put into RAID mode.
Thanks for pointing to the missing part of multiple RAID volumes. The majoritiy of our NAS are sold preequipped with drives, so this part is indeed missing for the empty chassis. I’ll escalate this to our documentation team, many thanks.
Thank you Joerg,
To be more specific - What is there now is really a “View RAID config” button, clicking it should list the partitions. Then a warning upon changing any config modes should pop up. It certainly should warn people (like it does now) that add/move/changing configs are always a destructive process with this unit. But it should not tell people that just viewing the RAID config might wipe their data.
After creating the secondary RAID-1 Mirroring (disk 3 and 4), can you use spanning to extend the volume of the primary RAID-1 Mirroring (disks 1 and 2) or can it only be used as a separate volume?
That is essentially RAID 10.
Not sure if it is a striped mirror or a mirrored stripe.
