First, thanks for all your great tech videos you make for us, Lon. Too often the equipment we (I) purchase doesn't have near enough information / instructions for the options available. The MyCloud EX4 16TB happens to be one of these pieces of equipment that gives the least amount of info as they could possibly get away with. The main issue I'm looking into is the Link Aggregation settings. I live and work at a major university which gives us a network connection inside our apartments, and while from inside the apt to the floor hubs is a max of 100Mb, from the building gateway is a fibre-optic connection to the main university network which is connected to a backbone internet gateway. So while I'm limited to 100Mb through this single ethernet RJ-45 port, I have all of my other devices inside my apt connected at 1Gb using CAT6a cables and a TP-Link TL-105SG Gigabit 5 port switch, as well as a TP-Link Archer C7 v2 Dual-Band Wi-Fi router. As you know, there are multiple Link Aggregate options on the MyCloud EX4, and after researching online each option, I've settled on the 802.3ad. Additionally, I've got one CAT6a cable in LAN 1 connected to the 5-port Gigabit switch and LAN 2 connected to the Archer C7 v2 Wireless router via a CAT6a cable. Everything is lit Green showing Gigabit connectivity except the one switch port connected to the ethernet RJ45 port connecting to the floor 100Mb hubs, therefore all data inside my apartment, include all wireless mobile devices, are passing through this single RJ45 port to the 100Mb outside hub which is connected to the building gateway. Since the main purpose of the EX4 having 2 LAN ports is to have backup should one LAN fail, but if using one of the aggregate options, it should double the bandwidth if LAN 1 is connected to one router/switch and LAN 2 is connected to another, which is what I've done. LAN 1 connects to the 5-port Gigabit switch and LAN 2 is connected to the Archer C7 v2 Wi-Fi Dual-Band router, of course the caveat being everything passes through the single 100Mb RJ45 port. Now that I've written you a small tech novella of my home network setup, I'm wanting to do some tweaking around with both the Link Aggregate options and the Jumbo Frame sizes to see if I can get the EX4 to speed up inside my home network loop. The TP-Link 5-port Gigabit switch says in its tech specs that it can handle 9,000 Jumbo Frame packets, but I've not hear back from TP-Link Support / Forum if the Archer C7 v2's Jumbo Frame can be changed or if it already handles 9,000 (or any size in between 9,000 and default 1,500) without need for tweaking. So I'm writing this small novel to you in hopes that you can suggest/advise/help/offer information on some settings of my EX4 that will speed it up. Upon my initial setup I connected it to our domain, but since our IT guys forced all internet connections to be logged on through a Web Proxy (which times out after about 5 hours requiring another manual login), the EX4 will not connect to the internet since it has no web browser in which I can use to log it online. Given this misfortune of the EX4, I disconnected it from our domain and gave it a static IP address, but if our network goes down, no device on my apartment network can access the EX4. Other mobile devices and computers inside my apartment connected to my internal network have no problems accessing each other, only the EX4 cannot be accessed. It can be pinged, and I can FTP, but I cannot do any browser activity. Any thoughts, suggestions, ideas, help you can offer? Thanks, if for nothing else, reading this "War and Peace" long posting. LOL
I was contemplating for a few weeks what to buy. First wanted to buy an external drive. Then had 2 fail in the same week. Wanted a My Cloud, then the mirror and now I got the EX2 Ultra. Just rewatching this before I configure it. Thanks for all the information
I used to be a pro photographer (that's an early shot of mine as my avatar) and I'd recommend you turn down your accent light to about .5 f-stop over your main light. Right now its glaring, plus it hits the side of your nose sometimes so put a snoot over the light or otherwise control its spread and think about tweaking its position a bit. You might want to reposition your main light too so you get more butterfly lighting. (shadow under your nose that's butterfly shaped). You might check out the Lowel Rifa light or similar light with a softbox, or just place your main light behind a white sheet or translucent material. If you use a hot light watch out that you don't cause a fire by placing the sheet too close. I used to like using two lights with umbrellas placed one above the other to create a nice even light source.
I pre ordered my first Mac Pro on December 19. I red the Steve Jobs bio and decided to switch to Mac! I am going to pick it up in a couple of hours. I ordered this drive to put all my music, movies, shows, pictures and everything else on. I wanted a big external drive. Though this seems to be a bit different than I am used to, I am going to try and hook it up tonight. I will probably not sleep. haha Know nothing about Apple stuff, but one never knows until they try. Great review.
Well, I wish I had your knowledge about stuff. haha Only three things I can not get to work. First, Sound Forge. It's fine. I will get a really good laptop with Windows one day. Second, my Cintiq 21 UX does display, but I can not get the pen to work. I will have to tinker with it later. Finally, Photoshop installed and works. But, Premiere Elements will not install. Gives me a list of errors. Oh, my Hauppauge (if that is how you spell it) will not work. I see one that works with Apple for $119 or something. Sucks to have top buy another one. So far though, I am very happy with the system!
I'm a tech at a med sized company (about a 100 employees), and we need the field reps to see a hour training video, will this product do the job with the WD my cloud app for them to access the video and view it with no problems with buffering or skipping if all or half watched it at the same time? Your video was very helpful!!
I have a few questions 1. Can I select the hard drive among the 4 in which I want to store my files? 2. Will the device work if I have inserted only 3 hard drives instead of 4?
Hello Lon, I know that the EX2100 is new and has limited reviews and I can't wait to see your review on it. Few Questions: I have a WD Live TV and Planning on buying a NAS for myself, I wanted to ask your opinion on whether or not there would be a big difference btw the EX2100 compared to the the EX2? Also, I am new to using DLNA and wanted to know "how can I access my friend's WD NAS when she's on a different network then my local WD Live TV?" Amazing reviews as always!!
Already did! Keep the excellent job and I strongly believe you'll reach the million-views mark really soon! The reviews are precise, clarifying and catch the viewers' attention the whole video and your speech is like a pro. It helped me a lot in my decision to get a My Cloud EX2 soon. Kudos, Lon!
can you add-on drives incrementally without having to re-create the filesystem? or does a simple "rebuild" automagically do this for you? raid 5 scenario of course. i'm thinking of getting a 0tb, start with 6tb, create a file system, dump files, then add-on other drives (taken from unloaded mybooks). if so, can we mix/match drives with different sizes/models? eg 1st drive 6tb, 2nd drive 3tb, 3rd drive 2 tb and finally the 4th with a 500 gb drive.
For mkv's emulating 3D, it doesn't matter, but for true 3D ISO's you need one so that when HDCP media standardization and encryption changes, the drivers can be updated.
Hi, really enjoyed all the information. You solidified that this is the drive for me. It's a little overkill for me but I've been I drooling over the EX4 for awhile. I know it's been a year or so since you've posted these but I was wondering how easy is it to upgrade the storage space? I'm still educating myself on NAS, your videos have helped a lot. I understand the importance of choosing your RAID when you start but lets say I ordered the EX4 with just TWO, 2TB drives (2 with 2 mirror) and configured for RAID 5 and later wanted to put FOUR, 4TB drives (8 with 8 mirror) in with RAID 5. Do I have to do anything to move my files over or will the EX4 start writing the 2TB info to the 4TB drives? Can you mix different size drives? It's more of a budget thing. I'm not doing this for a business or anything. Just to keep all my pic, vids, and important files in one place (with cloud backup of course) Thanks in advance.
Very nice review... Thank you! Did I hear you say you HAD to have one of these boxes on each end of a remote backup? No way to locate an EX4 in a location across town for example, and write to it without one on both ends?
Once again sharing my comment, now I am almost done watching this video. Very nice video. Thanks a lot buddy. You are precise what you know about it, and so you shared. Whichever you are doubtful you are open enough to admin, you know very little about it. This is the exact live slow review I am looking for. I am the Founder of TrafficSqueezer a Linux based WAN optimization solution. Looking for a robust NAS server to store my entire TrafficSqueezer versions into it. I hope this product will address my need.
Hi, Lon! Good show! Just one question, due to my need for remote access and lowest possible power consumption. Does this device have Wake-On-Lan support? Cheers, from Sweden!
Hi Lon, thanks very much for the review - really well explained at a good pace with all the right info. So mainly thanks to you I am about to buy one of these, but the newer EX4100 model. Its to replace an old HP WHS unit. For all its failings that was a 4 bay unit and I only had two used. If it looks like I was running out of storage I could just pop another drive in, job done. With this thing I am looking at 2 x 4tb drives or 4 x 2tb drives. I am wondering about scalability. If I go with the recommended RAID5 - where can we go from here? If it turns out that we running out of space with a 4 drive array - how do you upgrade - all at once? With two drives can we just add another pair the same size? On the face of it this sounds more doable and its also the cheaper option, but please let me know if you have other intel. Thanks again James
I'd appreciate it... I'd love to hear your thoughts. Also, are there any portable usb 3.0 3D blurry reader / writer drives that you'd recommend? Hard to tell on the Amazon reviews.
Hi Lon, Would you recommend EX4 as a solution for data backup on incremental basis on a corporate environment ? I have Linux VM servers running with a total of 5TB approx in use.
Hey Lon...review was extremely helpful. I have a question? Looking to pick this up after some reviews for personal / home, but I am wondering if you can put SSD's into this unit?
Hi, how it work for you? I read that the connection of de EX4 not work well, that it cuts very often. Do you prefer this one or de QNAP TS212-P? Or Synology 213j? Greetings
Lon. good video but when you do a RAID which for me is so confusing. if I did a raid 1 what drives will be mirriored? do you select the drives or is that the system disk or drive c:? on the EX4 could you just do a Raid 1 and have 2 drives for that and have two drives set up like the ISCSI or just 2 seperate drives?
I think that this is what I need.... but I think the EX 2 is more in my price range.... unless this one has dropped in price then it would be worth it. thank you for the information!!!
Yo Lon, I'm looking at a 24TB version of this MyCloud EX4. Would you still recommend this in 2019? $1,000 for 24TB, or do you have another recommendation?
Hi lon, I had WD my cloud before and i had good experience with it but now i went to buy EX4 so do you think that wd my cloud ex4 is worth it in your honest opinion.
Does this NAS have a brick on the ac adapter? Do all diskless 2 bay and 4 bay NAS have bricks on the power supply? What is the best budget 2 and 4 bay NAS without a power brick just a simple power cord?
Hi, I have a somewhat multi question for you. I have a previous generation Mac Pro and am preparing to upgrade to the new Mac Pro. I currently have a very large 1080p movie collection which i use on apple tv that is at the point of exceeding 4tb, I am looking for an external drive that I can both access in a cloud and use as an attached external drive on a new Mac Pro. Will this device work for what I am trying to achieve, and if not do you have any recommendations for a solution?
Nice videos, I watched all 3 but I was wondering, I'm sure I can set one of these up in r10 and have the drive visible as another drive wetter "local" or "removeable" but my question is, can I get a 12tb one (or bigger) and divide it into 2-r10 (2@3tb=6tb useable total) (maybe upgrade to 3-r10s eventually to acomidate a 3rd drive backup) and use them as seperate file backups (drag-n-drop version) for seperate internal drives I have in my system (s)?
Hi Lon, You would reccomend this one or the QNAP TS-420? I Love the WD Interface, it's seems simply. QNAP have the AirPlay App that interest me, but I think both Download Center of QNAP/WD don't support Torrent Download with RRS. The TS-420 do not have Plex, so for me it's a tie. Thanks
hi, great review. Just that i was wondering if i wanna running this device in my office and i have my own software which i wish to running on network. does this device able to handle the job?
Thinking a little for that I may need to do that via that iSCSI feature, but I'd rather just use the drives raw in raid10, please let me know your thoughts/ideas though. Thx
Hi, great video on the My cloud ex4. Just wondering if there was a way to go from 16TB to 32 TB and upgrade as you need to. I would guess that you would need to replace all the drives and reload the data form some other sources. hopefully there is an easy way to deal with these growing pains. Many thanks
hello, any word on why EX4 stops responding from the app and Web browser? I have no alerts in the log file or any indication of a problem either. after a restart, works for a while and then nothing... Thanks for any help...
Tanks !, I´m going to use it for movies storage, 3Tb x 4. I´ve only one drive in the NAS full of movies. May I add 3 HDs and make it raid 5 ? or do I´ve to format this disk to build a 4HD raid 5 ?
hi Lon just wondering is it possible to upgrade the EX4's hardware, eg CPU etc? cause i like the OP that's allowing us access worldwide but want more storage than just a max cap of 4 drives... thanks in advance :)
Any idea on how well this would "scale up". For example, you have 4, 2TB drives. What if one wanted to increase the capacity - 3TB or 4TB per drive. Is that possible?
Hi! I have an old MyCloud EX4 and a more recent My Cloud 4100 and was thinking of connecting them together and make them appear as one. but not sure how to make it happen. So far I was using 2 small UPS's which I would like to change with 2 bigger UPS but not sure if I would be able to signal the second NAS to shut down with only one USB cable connected to one Nas. Is it possible to make these two Boxes work together and also shut down together with just one USB cable connected to the UPS? I would appreciate if you would consider doing a video on this. Thanks Steve
Lon, watch all your videos on the my clouds. I have one question you spoke in regards to the EX2. Not sure which video it was but I remember you said when you were talking about Mac users how Itunes will not read music from a external hard drive. Since the EX2 can create a Virtual hard drive where it will actually trick the Mac to think theres an actual new hard drive connected to it, not just think its an external but actually think its part of the mac; will Itunes be able to read music thats stored into that "virtual" drive? Or will it still not allow it because its external.
Thanks dear. I have 2 Qs plz. 1) I want to set this in my coffee shop to allow customers view my videos (wireless) on local network rather than consume internet bandwidth, the Q is : do they have to install an application on their devices (Android, IOS, PCs) first to be able to view and play the videos ? if yes then this will be a withdraw issue. 2) is there a limited number of devices that can access the cloud all at a given time ? Thanks
Ion or anyone who can help really. Im looking at purchasing this for my small office. Can you tell me please is this product compatiable with the latest OSX and also would I be able to access all the data remotely when away from the office. Forgive my ignorance as I know nothing about computers and need something that will allow me to access my many files whilst away from the office via my macbook pro ?
This crossed my mind until I saw the Qnap series.... If I can't add a 10Gbase-T in an open slot... then i'm not interested. After all, it doesn't cost WD anything to give me a free slot.
Does it use the same trick to quickly copy files off a USB 3.0 drive as with the single drive My Cloud? Write all your data to an external USB drive, plug it into either of the two USB 3.0 ports on the back of the 4-drive MyCloud, then copy or move those files over to it? Since it is running Linux is there support for 2.5 Gb or 5Gb Ethernet dongles over USB 3.0? If so you could attach a powered USB 3.0 hub to the back of any WD MyCloud, then you'd effectively have added faster Ethernet connectivity for file transfers bypassing the slow 1 Gb Ethernet port(s).
Does anyone know what is the format type of these WD NAS drives? I got a good drive which came out of an archiver and when I put that in my WD my book NAS drive as only drive, it sits with standing yellow light. I tried formating it in ex32 and NTFS, but no help.
Hi there I am new to NAS and I have just bought a WD My Cloud Expert Series EX2 and I expected that I could pick up all my files via Os5. I was wrong I can only open PDF and Pictures as I wanted to open Microsoft Word and Excel. It appears that I can only download these files which makes it very difficult to open a file alter it and then save it back where it came from. Am I asking too much or is there a way that I can use the NAS via the cloud (Os5) and it appears like a normal drive on say a laptop with MS installed? Is there a solution and I want to pick and administer my MS files on a laptop and then store it back on the cloud?
Hi ! Thanks for the video. Do you know if I can access this device though the network so I can back up the data on tape ? Server = Win2012.. Tape = HPMSL4048... BackupSoft = Yosemite Server Backup.
If I set this up in RAID 10 does it give me the option to hot swap a drive if one should fail and automatically build it back up or does that only work with RAID 5? Thanks.
Backup stored in Amazon S3, how can that be recovered ? Can any external S3 tools be used to look at backed up files. Because S3 uses buckets (not files)
hi there this system looks great I do have a question or too. firstly I have been running a laptop with a 4TB drive just for iTunes + I use 2 Apple TV's. if I was to in vest in this unit would I still need to have a computer running all the time with iTunes going as to access movies on apple tv your help would be great cheers John C
Have you got the active directory/domain to work? seems to have a few issues with domains just wondering if you or anyone else has gotten this to work on a domain
***** we try from small 8 port gigabit switch to 48poe cisco managed switches. we confirmed gigabit connection and still an frustrating 15 - 20MBs copy speed. With the same scenario and just switching the EX4 for a Synology DS412+ we get 80 - 112 MBs write speed. The WD Forum is full of low speed complains!
Hi Lon Seidman. I have an iMac and a MacBook Air actually it is my mom's laptop. Basically I love time machine. My mother though doesn't connect her backup disk regularly. I was thinking of buying a nas device to actually backup my iMac and MacBook Air. I would like to also share files in my local network. So can you recommend a nas for this purpose. I would prefer the WD disks and a cheap one. Thanks
Is there any Plex support? I'm a graphic designer that have a lot of files. I also have lots of movies that I currently access via my Roku 3 streaming from my desktop through Plex. I would love to offload all my media to something like this. Great Video!
Wow! Those read/write speeds over a gigabit network are PATHETIC! Absolute garbage! Almost purchased this, but after your review I'll be looking at something that can take full advantage of gigabit transfer speeds. Thanks for the video! You helped me dodge a bullet.
I am realy willing to keep my photos and videos of my family forever and scare of loosing them. I am confused about the storage space it provides... lets say i have 3gb harddrive and 4 of them installed... now.... what is the total size of the storage available in raid1, raid2, raid5 or others?? can you clarify this? it may be a silly question but it is very important info for me.
we are looking at getting this for movie and photo storage at home. If i connect it to my Cisco Wireless Router (using the RJ45), will I be able to access this and all it's content via my wireless blu-ray or wireless streaming devices? I do not have smartTV's...
i have a question for you ***** first of all the review is awesome second i purchased WD my cloud ex4 Diskless and i know that the maximum storage is 16TB but i found this new model of HDD that is 6TB so if i install 4 HDD 6TB on the 4 Bays would it show that i got 24TB or only 16TB? and i got linksys 1900ac router connected to a cisco SG100 24 port switch is it ok if i connected the ex4 to the switch or should i connected to the router? thanks in advance
Can I setup different raid configurations for different bays? For example I would like to have RAID5 for disks in bays 1,2,3 and JBOD in Bay4. Or do all bays have to be the same raid type? -thanks
***** Yeap this does work, I had a slight issue, since I had to upgrade my firmware to the latest version in order for this to work. The problem with the firmware upgrade is WD removed NFS support. So now all mounts must be shared out via cifs/smbfs. thanks.
George Flaherty Hi George, I have had the EX4 up and running in a 3-Bay RAID 5 since the summer of 2014. I have been thinking about doing the same thing you describe in regards to having a separate drive (non-raid) in Bay4 as well. I just happened to come across Lon's post while researching and was happy to see your comments. Can you point me toward any information, problems, or tips/tricks you came across while going through this process please? The firmware is already at the latest V1.05.30 as of today's date. Thanks in advance! Thank you, Brian-
AmherstNY GIS Brian, yeah the big thing is the firmware upgrade. If you have it upgraded to the latest 1.05.30, then yout should be able to drop an extra (empty, else it will be formatted) drive in bay4 and create a JBOD volume just on that additional drive without issue. In my current setup I have RAID1 in bays 1 & 2, JBOD in bay 3. I originally was going to use RAID5 but one of my drives died on me so I went to RAID1. As for documentation, I really didn't find anything on this. I only knew about this configuartion by watching some other video on the EX4 and they mentioned this configuration style. Hope this helps.
When I typed in "WD MY Cloud EX4", your video popped up first. I know I can count on you for tech reviews ;).
First, thanks for all your great tech videos you make for us, Lon. Too often the equipment we (I) purchase doesn't have near enough information / instructions for the options available. The MyCloud EX4 16TB happens to be one of these pieces of equipment that gives the least amount of info as they could possibly get away with.
The main issue I'm looking into is the Link Aggregation settings. I live and work at a major university which gives us a network connection inside our apartments, and while from inside the apt to the floor hubs is a max of 100Mb, from the building gateway is a fibre-optic connection to the main university network which is connected to a backbone internet gateway. So while I'm limited to 100Mb through this single ethernet RJ-45 port, I have all of my other devices inside my apt connected at 1Gb using CAT6a cables and a TP-Link TL-105SG Gigabit 5 port switch, as well as a TP-Link Archer C7 v2 Dual-Band Wi-Fi router.
As you know, there are multiple Link Aggregate options on the MyCloud EX4, and after researching online each option, I've settled on the 802.3ad. Additionally, I've got one CAT6a cable in LAN 1 connected to the 5-port Gigabit switch and LAN 2 connected to the Archer C7 v2 Wireless router via a CAT6a cable. Everything is lit Green showing Gigabit connectivity except the one switch port connected to the ethernet RJ45 port connecting to the floor 100Mb hubs, therefore all data inside my apartment, include all wireless mobile devices, are passing through this single RJ45 port to the 100Mb outside hub which is connected to the building gateway.
Since the main purpose of the EX4 having 2 LAN ports is to have backup should one LAN fail, but if using one of the aggregate options, it should double the bandwidth if LAN 1 is connected to one router/switch and LAN 2 is connected to another, which is what I've done. LAN 1 connects to the 5-port Gigabit switch and LAN 2 is connected to the Archer C7 v2 Wi-Fi Dual-Band router, of course the caveat being everything passes through the single 100Mb RJ45 port.
Now that I've written you a small tech novella of my home network setup, I'm wanting to do some tweaking around with both the Link Aggregate options and the Jumbo Frame sizes to see if I can get the EX4 to speed up inside my home network loop. The TP-Link 5-port Gigabit switch says in its tech specs that it can handle 9,000 Jumbo Frame packets, but I've not hear back from TP-Link Support / Forum if the Archer C7 v2's Jumbo Frame can be changed or if it already handles 9,000 (or any size in between 9,000 and default 1,500) without need for tweaking.
So I'm writing this small novel to you in hopes that you can suggest/advise/help/offer information on some settings of my EX4 that will speed it up. Upon my initial setup I connected it to our domain, but since our IT guys forced all internet connections to be logged on through a Web Proxy (which times out after about 5 hours requiring another manual login), the EX4 will not connect to the internet since it has no web browser in which I can use to log it online. Given this misfortune of the EX4, I disconnected it from our domain and gave it a static IP address, but if our network goes down, no device on my apartment network can access the EX4. Other mobile devices and computers inside my apartment connected to my internal network have no problems accessing each other, only the EX4 cannot be accessed. It can be pinged, and I can FTP, but I cannot do any browser activity.
Any thoughts, suggestions, ideas, help you can offer?
Thanks, if for nothing else, reading this "War and Peace" long posting. LOL
I was contemplating for a few weeks what to buy. First wanted to buy an external drive. Then had 2 fail in the same week. Wanted a My Cloud, then the mirror and now I got the EX2 Ultra. Just rewatching this before I configure it. Thanks for all the information
I used to be a pro photographer (that's an early shot of mine as my avatar) and I'd recommend you turn down your accent light to about .5 f-stop over your main light. Right now its glaring, plus it hits the side of your nose sometimes so put a snoot over the light or otherwise control its spread and think about tweaking its position a bit.
You might want to reposition your main light too so you get more butterfly lighting. (shadow under your nose that's butterfly shaped).
You might check out the Lowel Rifa light or similar light with a softbox, or just place your main light behind a white sheet or translucent material. If you use a hot light watch out that you don't cause a fire by placing the sheet too close. I used to like using two lights with umbrellas placed one above the other to create a nice even light source.
Great review video, Lon. You answered questions I didn't even know I had.
I pre ordered my first Mac Pro on December 19. I red the Steve Jobs bio and decided to switch to Mac! I am going to pick it up in a couple of hours. I ordered this drive to put all my music, movies, shows, pictures and everything else on. I wanted a big external drive. Though this seems to be a bit different than I am used to, I am going to try and hook it up tonight. I will probably not sleep. haha Know nothing about Apple stuff, but one never knows until they try. Great review.
Well, I wish I had your knowledge about stuff. haha Only three things I can not get to work. First, Sound Forge. It's fine. I will get a really good laptop with Windows one day. Second, my Cintiq 21 UX does display, but I can not get the pen to work. I will have to tinker with it later. Finally, Photoshop installed and works. But, Premiere Elements will not install. Gives me a list of errors. Oh, my Hauppauge (if that is how you spell it) will not work. I see one that works with Apple for $119 or something. Sucks to have top buy another one. So far though, I am very happy with the system!
Love watching your vids, just a quick question how fast are the transfer speeds with iSCSI enabled.
I'm a tech at a med sized company (about a 100 employees), and we need the field reps to see a hour training video, will this product do the job with the WD my cloud app for them to access the video and view it with no problems with buffering or skipping if all or half watched it at the same time? Your video was very helpful!!
I have a few questions
1. Can I select the hard drive among the 4 in which I want to store my files?
2. Will the device work if I have inserted only 3 hard drives instead of 4?
Lon, link aggregation protocol (probably LACP) is for using both NICs for redundancy in case one fails as well as load balancing between them!
Hello Lon, I know that the EX2100 is new and has limited reviews and I can't wait to see your review on it. Few Questions: I have a WD Live TV and Planning on buying a NAS for myself, I wanted to ask your opinion on whether or not there would be a big difference btw the EX2100 compared to the the EX2? Also, I am new to using DLNA and wanted to know "how can I access my friend's WD NAS when she's on a different network then my local WD Live TV?" Amazing reviews as always!!
i'm very admirative of the design, the features. there is even an icecast server ! i will try to found an app list
Thx a lot Lon for this other amazing review of WD's products, your reviews are simply the best!
Already did! Keep the excellent job and I strongly believe you'll reach the million-views mark really soon! The reviews are precise, clarifying and catch the viewers' attention the whole video and your speech is like a pro. It helped me a lot in my decision to get a My Cloud EX2 soon. Kudos, Lon!
Great in-depth review, cheers Lon
can you add-on drives incrementally without having to re-create the filesystem? or does a simple "rebuild" automagically do this for you? raid 5 scenario of course.
i'm thinking of getting a 0tb, start with 6tb, create a file system, dump files, then add-on other drives (taken from unloaded mybooks). if so, can we mix/match drives with different sizes/models? eg 1st drive 6tb, 2nd drive 3tb, 3rd drive 2 tb and finally the 4th with a 500 gb drive.
For mkv's emulating 3D, it doesn't matter, but for true 3D ISO's you need one so that when HDCP media standardization and encryption changes, the drivers can be updated.
Hi, really enjoyed all the information. You solidified that this is the drive for me. It's a little overkill for me but I've been I drooling over the EX4 for awhile. I know it's been a year or so since you've posted these but I was wondering how easy is it to upgrade the storage space? I'm still educating myself on NAS, your videos have helped a lot. I understand the importance of choosing your RAID when you start but lets say I ordered the EX4 with just TWO, 2TB drives (2 with 2 mirror) and configured for RAID 5 and later wanted to put FOUR, 4TB drives (8 with 8 mirror) in with RAID 5. Do I have to do anything to move my files over or will the EX4 start writing the 2TB info to the 4TB drives? Can you mix different size drives? It's more of a budget thing. I'm not doing this for a business or anything. Just to keep all my pic, vids, and important files in one place (with cloud backup of course) Thanks in advance.
did you find your answers or bought the ex4?
Very nice review... Thank you! Did I hear you say you HAD to have one of these boxes on each end of a remote backup? No way to locate an EX4 in a location across town for example, and write to it without one on both ends?
Lon. Awesome review. Looking to buy one, does it support expansion chassis. Can i put 2 drives in use it and add 2 later without loosing data? Thanks
Once again sharing my comment, now I am almost done watching this video. Very nice video. Thanks a lot buddy. You are precise what you know about it, and so you shared. Whichever you are doubtful you are open enough to admin, you know very little about it. This is the exact live slow review I am looking for. I am the Founder of TrafficSqueezer a Linux based WAN optimization solution. Looking for a robust NAS server to store my entire TrafficSqueezer versions into it. I hope this product will address my need.
Hi, Lon!
Good show!
Just one question, due to my need for remote access and lowest possible power consumption.
Does this device have Wake-On-Lan support?
Cheers, from Sweden!
Hi Lon, thanks very much for the review - really well explained at a good pace with all the right info. So mainly thanks to you I am about to buy one of these, but the newer EX4100 model. Its to replace an old HP WHS unit. For all its failings that was a 4 bay unit and I only had two used. If it looks like I was running out of storage I could just pop another drive in, job done.
With this thing I am looking at 2 x 4tb drives or 4 x 2tb drives. I am wondering about scalability. If I go with the recommended RAID5 - where can we go from here? If it turns out that we running out of space with a 4 drive array - how do you upgrade - all at once?
With two drives can we just add another pair the same size? On the face of it this sounds more doable and its also the cheaper option, but please let me know if you have other intel.
Thanks again
James
Hi Lon. Can I copy from my iMac using the usb3 or is it just over the network?
Love your channel
One of best review i seen about this product. Keep it up bro!
I'd appreciate it... I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Also, are there any portable usb 3.0 3D blurry reader / writer drives that you'd recommend?
Hard to tell on the Amazon reviews.
Nice, Mega Drive in the background :)
Hi Lon, Would you recommend EX4 as a solution for data backup on incremental basis on a corporate environment ? I have Linux VM servers running with a total of 5TB approx in use.
Hey Lon...review was extremely helpful. I have a question? Looking to pick this up after some reviews for personal / home, but I am wondering if you can put SSD's into this unit?
***** Thank you sir. Just ordered 16TB one. Excited!
Hi, how it work for you? I read that the connection of de EX4 not work well, that it cuts very often. Do you prefer this one or de QNAP TS212-P? Or Synology 213j? Greetings
Any thoughts of a NAS that delivers great speeds (most come with almost all or more of what this one comes with)
A little off topic but what video camera are you using to film yourself?
Lon. good video but when you do a RAID which for me is so confusing. if I did a raid 1 what drives will be mirriored? do you select the drives or is that the system disk or drive c:? on the EX4 could you just do a Raid 1 and have 2 drives for that and have two drives set up like the ISCSI or just 2 seperate drives?
What raid device would you recommend for higher write speed for video editing?
No schedule backups for the external drives? That's killed it then for small business. Massive oversight.
I think that this is what I need.... but I think the EX 2 is more in my price range.... unless this one has dropped in price then it would be worth it. thank you for the information!!!
Yo Lon, I'm looking at a 24TB version of this MyCloud EX4. Would you still recommend this in 2019? $1,000 for 24TB, or do you have another recommendation?
Hi lon, I had WD my cloud before and i had good experience with it but now i went to buy EX4 so do you think that wd my cloud ex4 is worth it in your honest opinion.
Does this NAS have a brick on the ac adapter? Do all diskless 2 bay and 4 bay NAS have bricks on the power supply? What is the best budget 2 and 4 bay NAS without a power brick just a simple power cord?
Hi, I have a somewhat multi question for you. I have a previous generation Mac Pro and am preparing to upgrade to the new Mac Pro. I currently have a very large 1080p movie collection which i use on apple tv that is at the point of exceeding 4tb, I am looking for an external drive that I can both access in a cloud and use as an attached external drive on a new Mac Pro. Will this device work for what I am trying to achieve, and if not do you have any recommendations for a solution?
Nice videos, I watched all 3 but I was wondering, I'm sure I can set one of these up in r10 and have the drive visible as another drive wetter "local" or "removeable" but my question is, can I get a 12tb one (or bigger) and divide it into 2-r10 (2@3tb=6tb useable total) (maybe upgrade to 3-r10s eventually to acomidate a 3rd drive backup) and use them as seperate file backups (drag-n-drop version) for seperate internal drives I have in my system (s)?
Hi Lon, You would reccomend this one or the QNAP TS-420?
I Love the WD Interface, it's seems simply. QNAP have the AirPlay App that interest me, but I think both Download Center of QNAP/WD don't support Torrent Download with RRS. The TS-420 do not have Plex, so for me it's a tie. Thanks
*****
Thank You very much! yeah I saw all of your reviews! Keep up the good work and thanks
Have you try connecting 2nd NIC on the WD MY Could to your network to see if the speed increase?
hi, great review. Just that i was wondering if i wanna running this device in my office and i have my own software which i wish to running on network. does this device able to handle the job?
Thinking a little for that I may need to do that via that iSCSI feature, but I'd rather just use the drives raw in raid10, please let me know your thoughts/ideas though.
Thx
Hi, great video on the My cloud ex4. Just wondering if there was a way to go from 16TB to 32 TB and upgrade as you need to. I would guess that you would need to replace all the drives and reload the data form some other sources. hopefully there is an easy way to deal with these growing pains. Many thanks
hello, any word on why EX4 stops responding from the app and Web browser? I have no alerts in the log file or any indication of a problem either. after a restart, works for a while and then nothing...
Thanks for any help...
Tanks !, I´m going to use it for movies storage, 3Tb x 4.
I´ve only one drive in the NAS full of movies. May I add 3 HDs and make it raid 5 ? or do I´ve to format this disk to build a 4HD raid 5 ?
Hi
Do You Know Why Do I Get Drive Failure From Bay 3 And 4 If There's No Hard Drives Inside? Once There Were But Now They're Empty.
hi Lon just wondering is it possible to upgrade the EX4's hardware, eg CPU etc?
cause i like the OP that's allowing us access worldwide but want more storage than just a max cap of 4 drives...
thanks in advance :)
***** that is a shame but thank u for ur time anyways.
hi Lon is this going to be considerable with windows 10 ? and what hard drives can be put in it do thy have to be WD's and what sises 1TBs to 8TB ?
Any idea on how well this would "scale up". For example, you have 4, 2TB drives. What if one wanted to increase the capacity - 3TB or 4TB per drive. Is that possible?
Hi! I have an old MyCloud EX4 and a more recent My Cloud 4100 and was thinking of connecting them together and make them appear as one. but not sure how to make it happen.
So far I was using 2 small UPS's which I would like to change with 2 bigger UPS but not sure if I would be able to signal the second NAS to shut down with only one USB cable connected to one Nas. Is it possible to make these two Boxes work together and also shut down together with just one USB cable connected to the UPS?
I would appreciate if you would consider doing a video on this.
Thanks
Steve
do these use hardware or software RAID?
Lon, watch all your videos on the my clouds. I have one question you spoke in regards to the EX2. Not sure which video it was but I remember you said when you were talking about Mac users how Itunes will not read music from a external hard drive. Since the EX2 can create a Virtual hard drive where it will actually trick the Mac to think theres an actual new hard drive connected to it, not just think its an external but actually think its part of the mac; will Itunes be able to read music thats stored into that "virtual" drive? Or will it still not allow it because its external.
***** , you just made my imac and ex2 purchase easy! Will be ordering both soon. Thanks again.
Thanks dear. I have 2 Qs plz.
1) I want to set this in my coffee shop to allow customers view my videos (wireless) on local network rather than consume internet bandwidth, the Q is : do they have to install an application on their devices (Android, IOS, PCs) first to be able to view and play the videos ? if yes then this will be a withdraw issue.
2) is there a limited number of devices that can access the cloud all at a given time ?
Thanks
does it uses a lot of energy at idle? I'm looking to get one of this but I don't want to reciebe a crazy electric bill at the end of the month.
Ion or anyone who can help really. Im looking at purchasing this for my small office. Can you tell me please is this product compatiable with the latest OSX and also would I be able to access all the data remotely when away from the office. Forgive my ignorance as I know nothing about computers and need something that will allow me to access my many files whilst away from the office via my macbook pro ?
This crossed my mind until I saw the Qnap series.... If I can't add a 10Gbase-T in an open slot... then i'm not interested. After all, it doesn't cost WD anything to give me a free slot.
Does it use the same trick to quickly copy files off a USB 3.0 drive as with the single drive My Cloud? Write all your data to an external USB drive, plug it into either of the two USB 3.0 ports on the back of the 4-drive MyCloud, then copy or move those files over to it? Since it is running Linux is there support for 2.5 Gb or 5Gb Ethernet dongles over USB 3.0? If so you could attach a powered USB 3.0 hub to the back of any WD MyCloud, then you'd effectively have added faster Ethernet connectivity for file transfers bypassing the slow 1 Gb Ethernet port(s).
Does anyone know what is the format type of these WD NAS drives? I got a good drive which came out of an archiver and when I put that in my WD my book NAS drive as only drive, it sits with standing yellow light. I tried formating it in ex32 and NTFS, but no help.
Hi there I am new to NAS and I have just bought a WD My Cloud Expert Series EX2 and I expected that I could pick up all my files via Os5. I was wrong I can only open PDF and Pictures as I wanted to open Microsoft Word and Excel. It appears that I can only download these files which makes it very difficult to open a file alter it and then save it back where it came from.
Am I asking too much or is there a way that I can use the NAS via the cloud (Os5) and it appears like a normal drive on say a laptop with MS installed? Is there a solution and I want to pick and administer my MS files on a laptop and then store it back on the cloud?
Hi !
Thanks for the video.
Do you know if I can access this device though the network so I can back up the data on tape ?
Server = Win2012.. Tape = HPMSL4048... BackupSoft = Yosemite Server Backup.
If I set this up in RAID 10 does it give me the option to hot swap a drive if one should fail and automatically build it back up or does that only work with RAID 5? Thanks.
When are you going to do a review on EX2100 and EX4100?
Backup stored in Amazon S3, how can that be recovered ?
Can any external S3 tools be used to look at backed up files. Because S3 uses buckets (not files)
hi there this system looks great I do have a question or too.
firstly I have been running a laptop with a 4TB drive just for iTunes + I use 2 Apple TV's. if I was to in vest in this unit would I still need to have a computer running all the time with iTunes going as to access movies on apple tv
your help would be great cheers John C
I really appreciate the information you provide here. Thanks a lot.
Can I interface the storage directly to computer via USB and just treat as a local storage device?
Have you got the active directory/domain to work? seems to have a few issues with domains just wondering if you or anyone else has gotten this to work on a domain
I get 15MBs write speed. Is this normal? is very low!. My synology get 60-80 MBs write speed. Very anonying. Anything I can adjust?
***** we try from small 8 port gigabit switch to 48poe cisco managed switches. we confirmed gigabit connection and still an frustrating 15 - 20MBs copy speed. With the same scenario and just switching the EX4 for a Synology DS412+ we get 80 - 112 MBs write speed. The WD Forum is full of low speed complains!
can I use all difference capacity hard drive for this WD EX4? like 2 X 4TB and 2 X 6TB hard drive. thank you.
Hi Lon Seidman. I have an iMac and a MacBook Air actually it is my mom's laptop. Basically I love time machine. My mother though doesn't connect her backup disk regularly. I was thinking of buying a nas device to actually backup my iMac and MacBook Air. I would like to also share files in my local network. So can you recommend a nas for this purpose. I would prefer the WD disks and a cheap one. Thanks
Is the WD My cloud ex2 fine or should I take a mirror
Is there any Plex support? I'm a graphic designer that have a lot of files. I also have lots of movies that I currently access via my Roku 3 streaming from my desktop through Plex. I would love to offload all my media to something like this.
Great Video!
***** Thanks!!!
looking forward for ex4100 review
thanks for the detailed review
are you using all your NAS devices simultaneously?
Wow! Those read/write speeds over a gigabit network are PATHETIC! Absolute garbage! Almost purchased this, but after your review I'll be looking at something that can take full advantage of gigabit transfer speeds. Thanks for the video! You helped me dodge a bullet.
Each time you post a new Nas/Raid video review it gets me more doubt, WD, Sinology, Qnap or Drobo??
Can I put 4 2TB drive using JOBD with out formatting them using WD My Cloud EX4 Diskless or will the WD My Cloud EX4 Diskless format all my drives
Any info on the MyCloud series encryption capability?
Thanks in advance.
I'm having a problem accessing my dashboard, user is: admin ? and the password is which? or how do i set up admin password? please help
I am realy willing to keep my photos and videos of my family forever and scare of loosing them.
I am confused about the storage space it provides...
lets say i have 3gb harddrive and 4 of them installed...
now.... what is the total size of the storage available in raid1, raid2, raid5 or others??
can you clarify this? it may be a silly question but it is very important info for me.
Great review of WD's EX4, but the RAID presentation is not good.
we are looking at getting this for movie and photo storage at home. If i connect it to my Cisco Wireless Router (using the RJ45), will I be able to access this and all it's content via my wireless blu-ray or wireless streaming devices? I do not have smartTV's...
By the way...Awesome review...i wish more people did reviews this way...very in-depth...
Dear Lon
possible to connect this storage with Domain active directory??
WD my cloud ex4 active directory failed to join Domain, What is the Problem?
how I can I manage the users access if |I made it as a shred file to backup all laptop and Pcs documents and critical staff
i have a question for you ***** first of all the review is awesome second i purchased WD my cloud ex4 Diskless and i know that the maximum storage is 16TB but i found this new model of HDD that is 6TB so if i install 4 HDD 6TB on the 4 Bays would it show that i got 24TB or only 16TB?
and i got linksys 1900ac router connected to a cisco SG100 24 port switch is it ok if i connected the ex4 to the switch or should i connected to the router?
thanks in advance
***** thanks man that really helped
Great job, very well reviewed. Thank you.
Great review, helped make a decision, thanks!
can you connect the ex4 with 2 ports ? What is the 2nd port for ?
Could this device steam 1080p videos with shutter or playback lag?
Thanks a lot.. finally it helped me to select this.. over Seagate Business Storage :)
Can I setup different raid configurations for different bays? For example I would like to have RAID5 for disks in bays 1,2,3 and JBOD in Bay4. Or do all bays have to be the same raid type? -thanks
***** Yeap this does work, I had a slight issue, since I had to upgrade my firmware to the latest version in order for this to work. The problem with the firmware upgrade is WD removed NFS support. So now all mounts must be shared out via cifs/smbfs. thanks.
George Flaherty Hi George, I have had the EX4 up and running in a 3-Bay RAID 5 since the summer of 2014. I have been thinking about doing the same thing you describe in regards to having a separate drive (non-raid) in Bay4 as well. I just happened to come across Lon's post while researching and was happy to see your comments. Can you point me toward any information, problems, or tips/tricks you came across while going through this process please? The firmware is already at the latest V1.05.30 as of today's date. Thanks in advance!
Thank you,
Brian-
AmherstNY GIS
Brian, yeah the big thing is the firmware upgrade. If you have it upgraded to the latest 1.05.30, then yout should be able to drop an extra (empty, else it will be formatted) drive in bay4 and create a JBOD volume just on that additional drive without issue. In my current setup I have RAID1 in bays 1 & 2, JBOD in bay 3. I originally was going to use RAID5 but one of my drives died on me so I went to RAID1. As for documentation, I really didn't find anything on this. I only knew about this configuartion by watching some other video on the EX4 and they mentioned this configuration style. Hope this helps.
where to find iSCSI from Mac client. for imac 2010
Why my ex4 12TB shows 8.83TB only
Raed Al-Brahim Because most likely it has 4 3gb drives set to raid 5.
Hi Lon,
Can you advise, if you know, how to manually install Joomla on WDMyCloudEX4.
Thank you,
Nicolae
hola el wd my cloud ex4 funsion con un solo disco?
Can I only use two hard drives for now using raid 1?
Do you have a review of the wd my cloud ex2???