Question 1

how many hard drives come in the box?

Accepted Answer

Hello,

Thank you for contacting us in regards to your question.

The best way to confirm specs is actually by checking the manufacturer's website (that's where we get them). Click on the Specifications tab on the item page, and look in the Quick Info box on the bottom of the page. You'll find a link to the item on the manufacturer's own site with the most up-to-date details.

Thank you, 
Newegg Support

Question 2

What size drives come with the 8TB 4 Bay?

Accepted Answer

It comes with two 4Tb drives.  WD red series.

Question 3

For the 8TB capacity model, can I add 4 x 8TB drives?  Is 8TB the max size PER DRIVE?  It was not clear that the unit shipped with 2 x 4TB drives... and I need more space per drive.  We would like to set up Raid 5, and need a minimum of 4TB of free space per drive.   Thanks!

Accepted Answer

Hello.  If I recall correctly, the maximum size per drive is 6TB, so you cannot add any 8TB drives.  You can remove the two 4TB drives it comes with and add four 6TB drives to get the maximum storage space of 24TB (in spanning or JBOD modes).  RAID 5 requires at least 3 drives and only 2 will hold data (the extra drive holds parity bits), so if you buy one more 4TB WD Red drive, you can set up a RAID 5 array with an 8TB volume size.  I personally bought two more 4TB drives and set up all four drives on a RAID 5 array for 12TB of total usable space.

Question 4

I'm a newbie at advanced network storage, and want to expand to the 24 TB size gradually, as finances permit.

If I buy the 8TB version, how is expansion handled?  Can I add a 6TB drive one at a time, do I have to expand two drives at a time, do all drives have to be the same size?

Accepted Answer

Hi John,

I actually already bought two additional 4TB drives (16 TB total) and installed them as recently as yesterday, so I can answer your question! :)

You can put in any size of drive (up to 6TB) into any of the bays.  However, if the sizes (and possibly manufacturer/models) of the drives are mismatched, you will not be able to set up RAID arrays over them -- you would be limited to JBOD ("just a bunch of disks") or Spanning (one volume distributed over multiple physical disks) solutions for the mismatched disk sizes.  So if you plan to have a RAID array over all the disks, you should buy all the same size, manufacturer, and model -- otherwise you don't need to care.  The drives that come with the NAS box are 4TB WD Red drives.

So for example, if you had two 4TB drives and added a 6TB drive, you could set up a RAID 0 or RAID 1 array on the two 4TB drives, but you could not include the 6TB drive in that array -- the 6TB would have to be in JBOD mode and have its own volume + shares.  You also could not set up RAID 5 or RAID 10 since those require three identical-size drives.  If you added two 6TB drives, you could have two separate RAID 0 or RAID 1 arrays -- one over the two 4TB drives and one over the two 6TB drives.

Also, if you build a RAID array and then want to add a disk to the array later (say you add a third 4TB drive), I am not sure how much trouble you will have with that.  The NAS box comes preconfigured with a RAID 1 array over the two 4TB drives that it comes with.  When I added the two additional drives, it presented two options -- reformat all the drives for a new RAID array (destroys data), or to "migrate" the RAID array.  I do not know what the migrate option means or how it works -- you may want to contact WD support to ask.  It *might* allow you to redistribute the existing volume over the additional disks.  I chose simply to reformat all four disks into a single RAID 5 array since I wasn't storing data yet.

Hope that helps!

Question 5

Is this system compatible with Windows 10?

Accepted Answer

I had some issues finding it but it works just fine.

Brand	WD
Series	My Cloud Expert Series EX4100
Model	WDBWZE0080KBK-NESN

Port RJ-45	2 x 10/100/1000M
Port USB	2 x USB 3.0 expansion port rear 1 x USB 3.0 port with direct copy front
HDD Interface	4 x 3.5 inch hard drive bays, hot swap capable, tray-less design

Form Factor	4-Bay
Operating System	Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Mac OS X El Capitan, Yosemite, Mavericks, Mountain Lion, or Lion operating systems.
Processor	Marvell ARMADA 388 1.6 GHz dual-core
Installed Memory	2GB DDR3

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WD 8TB My Cloud EX4100 Expert Series for Mac/PC & iOS/Android - NAS (WDBWZE0080KBK-NESN)

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