Transitioning from Drobo to WD My Cloud Pro Series…some questions?

[nk_e]

Hi folks,

I back up everything…my main HD, a project HD, and all of my samples drives. All of those drives have a total capacity of 28TB. I’m probably using somewhere in the neighborhood of 16 - 20 TB.) I also have a separate 8TB project archive disk that I like to back up.

A part of my backup routine is to use my Drobo 5c as a huge TimeMachine disk. I’ve used Drobo for years and really appreciate being able to swap out bad drives or swap in larger drives to increase capacity. I also didn’t have to worry about using matching capacities. Because of the built in redundancy and its operating system, the drive automatically handles rebuilding the data on to the new drive and life just continues on. It has worked like a charm.

However, Drobo is now out of business. I’m stuck at Monterey since Drobo’s dashboard app for interfacing and configuring the drives is not compatible with Ventura and will never be. I’m just one update from potentially losing access to my back ups. Also, I will eventually buy a refurbed Mac Studio, so I need a new system.

It seems like the consensus here is the WD My Cloud Pro Series is the way to go. I’m looking at the PR4100. Just a couple of questions to make sure I understand this new world:

• I’m assuming that I can hang the PR4100 on my network and just designate it as a TimeMachine drive.

• I probably should configure the PR as a RAID 1

• To cover my potential storage needs, I will need four 16TB or 18TB drives (yielding 32TB or 36TB of RAID 1 storage) and I will need to have these WHEN I SET UP THE DRIVE. I placed that in caps because it seems there is no way to “grow” the storage capacity of the drive after it is established.

• If the above is true, the PR would appear on my network as two large (32 or 36 TB) drives and I would set up a couple of different TM backups to each? For example, my main, archive, project, and a sample drive to disk A, and a separate TM backup with the remainder to Disk B? Is that even possible?

Sorry if these seem like nube questions, but I’ve used Drobo for years and never really had to worry about redundancy or capacity. It was just a drive that could keep growing and healing and reconfiguring itself. It guts me that they went belly up.

Anyway, thank you if you’ve read this far. Any advice is appreciated.

[mikehalloran]

As my current setup is straining capacity, I am facing the same issues.

In your case, there are no 28TB HDDs that I know of and no one is recommending WD’s new 26TB Ultrastar for NAS. This leaves RAID 0 is your choice and, despite all the armchair expert warnings, a decent RAID 0 setup can be used. It’s one of the things that NAS boxes are built for. You want top notch drives and to set it up in the firmware of the NAS box — I would not trust “soft raid” solutions for this. You will want 4 drives so that you have a redundant backup. What I don’t know is if you can do this in one 4-drive unit or if you’re better off with a pair of 2-bay boxes such as the My Cloud Expert EX2 Ultra.

20TB or 22TB drives are large enough for me so RAID 0 isn’t necessary in my application.

I have an issue with the current My Cloud Expert EX2 Ultra. Although I can set it up JBOD, only one of the drives can be used for Time Machine. Yes I can set up both drives as RAID 1 (2 or more drives mirrored) or RAID 0, that just increases the noise and provides no useful benefit to me.

When I told support that I am able to do JBOD with each drive as a TM backup with the first gen My Cloud Duo, the person on the phone told me that I couldn’t have set it up that way. Well, I did and that pair of drives are still alternating hourly backing up every Mac except my iMP.

I am reaching capacity and intend to upgrade. If the Pro 2100 or 4100 will do what I want (or a pair of RAID 0 TM backups for you), I will get one to consolidate all four drives in the same unit. I connect via Ethernet only and have my units connected via Ethernet to my wireless router. I am disappointed that WD doesn’t have anything with 10GbE Ethernet — Apple has had it available or standard sine 2017.

My Apple Engineer son-in-law is saying with us at the moment and told me yesterday that he is really happy with his new Synology box. I know nothing about these other than I hear the name a lot.
https://www.synology.com/en-us/support/nas_selector

This DS423 can hold 4 drives and has 10GbE — may be a contender. If I can assign each drive as a TM backup, that settles it.
https://www.synology.com/en-us/products/DS423

It’s available diskless for $369.99 on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Synology-4-Bay-D ... ref=sr_1_1

If I can’t get a single unit to do what I want, I’ll throw 20TB or 22TB drives into the boxes I have now.

I don’t buy HDDs without 5 year warranties and WD’s customer service is excellent in that regards. I’ve been using the WD Red Pro for years. Now they’re available up to 22TB but there’s a sale on buying a pair of 20TB instead.
https://www.westerndigital.com/product ... #WD221KFGX

Since TM does not run 24/7, I’ll leave the Enterprise Gold and their higher price to others.
https://www.westerndigital.com/product ... #WD221KRYZ

I was burned badly by Seagate years ago but they do have excellent enterprise and NAS drives again.