Recommended drive options to add for JBOD?

My Cloud OS 5 Personal & Network Attached Storage My Cloud EX Series
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running out of space and want to add a new drive into the empty bay i have.

other than WD Red, what other classes and Brands would work ok with the EX2 Ultra ? Currently the NAS has a single 8TB WD Red.

or if it’s easier to answer this way, what classes of HDD should I avoid ?

thanks in advance for the advice

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Thank you for your suggestions. regarding your first point about usage guidelines, I am really sorry here but in addition to the other 1000 things going on in my life and doing my best to skim thru the guidelines, it eludes me as to what I wrote in my OP that isn’t inline with that ?

Since you suggested it, you would know why you directed it to the “other than WD Red” statement I made, if you can please point out what’s not inline ?

Hard Drive Compatibility list is taking me to the Usage Guidelines.

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thank you for updating the link so quickly, i appreciate that.

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one question, should i be all that concerned with looking into 2nd hand WD Red and Purple drives ? Assuming they check out and don’t have bad sectors, damage, etc. … that the drives will perform reliably as new.

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i am in a JBOD setup with a single bay available on the EX2 Ultra.

would I simply drop a new drive in the enclosure and go into the dashboard to add it to the JBOD array ? i originally was thinking RAID0 but if I can avoid moving 6TB of data around so I can accommodate RAID0, then I would go with JBOD and that way I could also add a disk whose capacity is not the same as the one installed now.

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I think the “other classes and Brands” is what Mjoelk is referring to.

For any application that I can think of; I would make sure NOT to get a SMR technology drive. It is definitely inferior, (in several regards). It is a cheaper drive technology; a cost savings which IS NOT reflected in the price.

The alternative is CMR. If it doesn’t say CMR, then assume it is SMR.

A very large cache size is a tip off for SMR drives (they need cache to deal the the ERRORS that occur with file operations - - -)
7200 RPM drives are generally CMR, not SMR.

There are a number of “Red” drives that are SMR tech. To get CMR, you need to look at Red Plus (5400 RPM) or Red Pro (7200 RPM) drives.

Note: 5400 rpm and 7200 RPM will be good enough for nearly all purposes.

The CMR / SMR issues are not unique to WD drives. . .so . .buyer beware :wink:

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good to know this, especially general knowledge. since different classes have different construction maybe best to stick with red or purple class drives …

competing ‘brands’ in the same class have very similar price for the same storage size so for the sake of consistency i should just stick with the same as what i have (red).

one question i have is: can I keep my existing shares and volume while adding another physical disk to the JBOD array ? right now, it is just a single disk in the enclosure.

I have 8TB single disk now I want to put in another 6TB disk … will my existing shares stay in place and the NAS report the new volume size as 14TB ?

or am i looking at a complete wipe where I will need to create new shares and restore from backup ?

EDIT:
maybe what I am looking for is called Spanning … just found that in the manual. Would I be able to:

1-drop in the new drive
2-convert the JOBD to Spanning and keep my shares in place ?

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I can’t comment on Spanning. . . .I have not looked into this.

From what I have seen. . . . .the issue of CMR technology and SMR technology is endemic across HDD brands. The vendors have deliberately injected SMR technology into product lines without providing necessary information to the consumer.

SO - - - in the WD line,
RED = SMR tech, 5400 RPM - - - - advertised as for NAS; but not at all suitable for NAS use. AVOID
RED Plus = CMR tech, 5400 RPM – - -advertised for NAS. . .works just fine for NAS
RED Pro = CMR tech, 7200 RPM - - -advertised for NAS. . .works just fine for NAS (I suspect a bit overkill. . .but works)

Note: Theoretically, the higher capacity Red drives are still CMR. . .my information may be old. I don’t trust WD Red being suitable 1/2 as far as I can throw it.

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i have a fuzzy feeling that Spanning might force me to reconstruct my shares … i dont know. if rebuilding shares is the only way, i certainly hope i would not lose the users i setup for share access.

the disk i have now , model: WD80EFAX-68LHPN0.

regarding CMR vs SMR, why would the the newer tech which is deemed inferior be used on a class of drive labeled exclusively for nas use ? if the design takes into account the pitfalls of SMR then ultimately those limitations may not be an issue for drive reliability and data integrity. im not an expert but i’d assume a manufacturer takes steps to mitigate those problems with the tech in order to get data integrity as well as more disk surface area.

ive used my clouds for some years now and dont recall losing a drive or data so in my judgement, whatever they crammed in there is good enough + the added piece of mind of my daily nas backups to a usb connected box.

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On WD Red NAS Drives - Western Digital Corporate Blog

Warning: That link is a year old. . . so things may have changed. I would still steer clear of Red drives.

So - - -based on the chart in the link. . . .I suspect you have a CMR drive.

As for WHY WD ended up this way. . . they thought a few dollars cost savings was worth a drive performance hit. Almost makes sense from a Corporate perspective But they were wrong.

From a consumer perspective. . .the $10-$20/drive cost delta probably is NOT worth the performance compromise. ESPECIALLY since market pricing made the drives the same price. . . in other words. . .the consumer did NOT see a cost difference, so the performance hit was . . . .not worth it
(last I checked was a few months ago. . .lord only knows where things stand today)

There are any number of articles on this topic from this timeframe; worth a few minutes of reading. You may still say “this doesn’t make me think Red is bad”; but recognize that the split between Red, and Red Pro (and this press release) happened a few months after SMR drives hit the market and a number of reviewers unexpectedly discovered and then publicized the performance issues of SMR drives.

Regarding spanning: Sounds like a GREAT time to backup your NAS. . . one should always have a backup. Then, if the worst happens. . .it’s just annoying; but not catastrophic. I think there is even a place in the NAS menus where you can “save” a configuration file that should address if the user database gets wiped out (but I don’t think that would happen). User database being lost is not a big deal if you have only a few users on the drive.

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when it’s not easy to identify which technology is on the drive itself, I guess the warranty would be more relevant. at least in the sense that if the drive fails then I would put in a claim.

to date, I haven’t experienced any failures with WD products (hope I don’t jinx myself) and i also keep regular backups of all the shares on something external to the NAS enclosure.

in the sense that my data is ‘mission critical’, not so much. aside from photos, music, video and other files i am not too concerned about a day’s gap between backups and the likelyhood that both the NAS and the external drives could fail simultaneously is very remote. i keep both of them + my router connected to a UPS - when I have a power outage I have plenty of time to log into the dashboard and power down.

i think i know what i need to do, just need to find a few drives and begin the process. i don’t believe spanning was available to me initially during first setup because i only had 1 disk. hopefully there’s a choice in the dashboard to convert the JBOD to Spanning when a 2nd drive is dropped in and that would not affect the existing shares. Since it’s NOT RAID0, perhaps Spanning just expands the size of what Volume already was there ?

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concerning restores from USB Backup (the app built-into the NAS), wonder how that works IF the scenario I wind up in is that the switch to Spanning would wipe out existing shares and create new ones ?

The backup job I created is backing up all the Shares I have in 1 job. including default public shares, I have 3 private shares that are backed up as well to a single folder on the external drive and use the sync option so each backup is basically mirroring what’s on the NAS.

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I don’t trust any type of backup software. . . .I don’t have the time to periodically test the backups to ensure they work. . . .so I assume they don’t.

I use brute force periodic “drag and drop” and a folder synchonization tool. My NAS is a backup device - - but I use the files on there regularly (for reference - or as media) on multiple machines, so I have good confidence the files are there if my primary data store fails.

Note on drive brands and warranty: In my view, you don’t need warranties with reliable products. If you have unreliable products. . .then the warranty probably won’t help you either. HAVING SAID THAT. . . I have had warranty claims on a number of products through the years . . . including one WD device . . .and it generally has worked out. Still. . . life is too short to deal with that on a regular basis… . .so I only buy products where I don’t think I really need the warrenty.

Long way of me saying:
I would not buy a WD Red drive.
I would consider WD Red Plus or WD Red Pro (after verifying that nothing weird has changed in the last year)

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would like to thank you for the advice. life-saving.

taking a look at my previous arrangement, i realized that where I thought i was safe i had zero redundancy and the backup drive (WD My Book) ultimately DID fail. tried different diagnostics tools and they agree that the drive contained bad sectors.

i think this drive was a CMR drive (WD Blue 5.0TB WD50EZRZ) so SMR would not have been a contributing factor. It was manufactured in 2015 so SMR probably was not around yet ?

I chose a different brand for disks this time and setup a redundant setup:

Jobs look like this:
job 1: all NAS shares → USB 1 (NTFS) physical enclosure 1 brand X CMR drive
job 2: all NAS shares → USB 2 (HFS+J) physical enclosure 2 WD Red CMR drive (donated from NAS)

redundancy. too bad the app doesn’t have scheduling built in and i need to manually run the jobs.

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I think this path will server you well.