Multiple volumes on EX4

My Cloud OS 3 Personal & Network Attached Storage My Cloud EX4
1

Hi,

I’m looking for a NAS solution where I can have at least 2 volumes,

Volume 1 would have 2 of 1TB HDD’s in a RAID 0 configuration for business files.

Volume 2 would have 2 of 2TB (or 4TB) HDD’s in a RAID 0 configuration for backup files.

I’m considering the EX4 ad would like to know if the above is possible on the EX4, and is it easy to configure in this arrangement?

I assume, each volume could show up in Windows Explorer as a separate shared drive.  Is this correct?

Regards,

Sijmen.

2

Hi there and welcome to the WD community.

You should be able to do this with the EX4 device since you can change the raid on the drives. To create shares you can select on which volume you want to have then. 

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Do I understand this that you want to create 2 separate volumes 

one volume consisting of 2 1TB drives in RAID 0 stripe ( for ultimate failability, ZERO redundancy and ZERO speed gain over a pokey slow network attached storage ) to store business files? 

&

a second volume of 2x 2TB drives in RAID 0 stripe ( for ultimate failability, ZERO redundancy and ZERO speed gain over a pokey slow network attached storage ) to store your backups on?

This is either pure genius;  or you have never felt the panic of running a RAID 0 stripe failure with 1 drive of the stripe failing and losing ALL the data. In your posted config it’s just begging for that to happen. 

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Yes, your understanding is correct.

I doubt it’s genious,  but I did think it was a reasonable configuration.

  1.   I was under the impression that with RAID 0, if one drive failed, it’s a simple job to replace the failed drive, and then the RAID hardware would replicate data from the good drive to the new drive, which could take a few hours, and during that time the data was all still accessable to the user (possibly at a slightly degraded speed due to the RAID 0 replication).

2.  If in the rare situation, both drives failed, I could still manually rebuild the volume from the backup volume.

Am I being a little naive here, and if so, to which point?

Regards,

Sijmen.

5
  1.   I was under the impression that with RAID 0, if one drive failed, it’s a simple job to replace the failed drive, and then the RAID hardware would replicate data from the good drive to the new drive, which could take a few hours, and during that time the data was all still accessable to the user (possibly at a slightly degraded speed due to the RAID 0 replication).

No, that’s RAID 1   a mirrored set;  all the data is copied to both drives ( by far not the fastest but a safer way to store data ) 

You mentioned RAID 0 a stripe where the data is “split” between both drives 1TB x 2 drives makes 2 TB RAID 0 stripe, but if 1 drive fails, ALL your data is gone ( fast but totally no protection ) what’s the point of “FAST” stripe on a SLOOOOOWW interface like network attached storage. 

Why don’t you use the 2 x 1TB drives to make a SPAN or total of 2 TB ; and use the 2 x 2 TB drives to make a mirroed RAID 1 set;  You could use the SPAN for production and the MIRROR for backup 

personally, I’d use 4 x 2TB drives ( drives are cheap ) and setup at a RAID 10 stripe to mirrored sets… quick and fault tolerant. 

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/sata/RAID_Guide/RAID_Concepts

6

Oops.

You’re quite correct.  I meant RAID 1, not RAID 0.

Great idea.

Regards,

Sijmen.