Question 1

when drives are full can i remove and replace with new ones?

Accepted Answer

While I am not WD and therefore cannot speak for them and I have not yet done it myself.... If you pull the WD drive utilities off the MyBookDuo first, e.g. on to your 'C:\" drive, then you should be able to 'repair' which would be to replace one/two failed drive(s) with other 'new' drive.... So given that, you should be able to replace both drives at the same time and initialize a new Raid 0 or 1 and use it immediately. I was actually going to do exactly this w/ an 8Tb model and use two new 8Tb drives when I decided the 16Tb pricing was 'good enough' and just purchased the 16Tb model instead. NOW, I WILL replace drives because I have two enclosures and for now that is enough for my 'portable' needs as I have qty:6 eSata external enclosures for non-portable storage (also with various WD RED drives in RAID 0/1/5 configurations). So I'd say 'go for it'!!!

Question 2

Was it hard to take out internal HDD's?  Was it destructive to the NAS shell they were originally installed in?  They are WD 8TB Red's right?  It's cheaper to buy one of these and extract the HDD's versus buying two bare WD Red 8 TB HDD's...

Accepted Answer

Hi Mike
WD MB Duo are user serviceable drives.
Inside Duo 16TB are two WD Red 8TB drives.
It's relatively easy to remove these drives simply just by pulling them out.
For details please check User Manual available on the WD site.
Unfortunately WD red 8TB drives are noisy ones, so if you do not need such a large capacity drives you should rather consider WD Red 6 or 4TB.

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