Help setting up NAS (Western Digital My Cloud PR4100)

[davys]

Hello guys,

If anyone can offer any assistance I'll be very grateful - I've just set up my first NAS, a Western Digital My Cloud, (the four disc version).

I'm a photographer, and my plan was as follows: set up drives 1&2 as RAID 1 - this would be for my client files (weddings, conferences, family shoots etc), so that I'd always have a copy in the event of a crash. Drive 3 was going to be a standalone drive (JBOD?) which would hold all my RAW files after each shoot, and drive 3 would also be standalone and act as my Time Machine back up.

However now that I have installed the drives and gone through the set up process, all the drives appear to have been set up as RAID 1, split into volumes 1&2. I'm now unable to see any option to have drives 3&4 working as separate Raids.

Am I missing something obvious, if so please let me know, or is the PR4100 unable to be set up as I would like? I'd also appreciate any advice as to whether there's a better strategy re-set up for what I was planning to do.

Thanks in advance for any assistance offered!

Best,
David

 

[belvdr]

It likely configured the drives as RAID 10 (drives 1 & 2 in a mirror, drives 3 & 4 in a mirror, then a RAID 0 stripe across both mirrors). Looking at the user manual is giving me a headache. It's not really specific, so this is a stab in the dark.

I would try delete the current RAID configuration and try running through it again. You may need to remove drives 3 & 4 while you setup the first mirror, and add the drives back as you create new arrays.

You might also consider using one RAID array and splitting it into volumes for your different uses. The manual was not clear at all on how to do this, so I'm not sure it's even possible.

 

[davys]

It likely configured the drives as RAID 10 (drives 1 & 2 in a mirror, drives 3 & 4 in a mirror, then a RAID 0 stripe across both mirrors). Looking at the user manual is giving me a headache. It's not really specific, so this is a stab in the dark.

I would try delete the current RAID configuration and try running through it again. You may need to remove drives 3 & 4 while you setup the first mirror, and add the drives back as you create new arrays.

You might also consider using one RAID array and splitting it into volumes for your different uses. The manual was not clear at all on how to do this, so I'm not sure it's even possible.

Many thanks for the response mate, much appreciated.

Yes, the manual is next to useless for this issue! I think you're right about removing drives 3 & 4, then adding them again - after researching on the net, I know folk who have started with 2 drives (rather than 4) have been advised that they can add further drives with different Raids to the originals.

Thanks again.

ETA: I did try to change the RAID set up using the WD software, but there was no option to configure the drives individually, it looked as though any changes would have affected all the drives. Next step will be to remove two drives and try re-installing.