★★★★☆ Easy Network-attached storage

Western Digital My Cloud Ex4100 network-attached storage

Western Digital My Cloud Ex2100 network-attached storage

In 2015 I bought a Lenovo Thinkserver. I installed a linux OS, and I bought four 4 TB hard disks and installed them. In 2015 4 TB was a big disk. I configured them as two RAID1 arrays, giving me 8 TB of two-fold redundant hard disk storage. I thought at the time that was a lot.

I use that system directly, and also as a network fileserver for Windows machines. Recntly the disks started to fill up. To fix that problem I bought a Western Digital My Cloud 2100 diskless network-attached server . I put two 8 TB disks I had lying around into it. (Yes, I keep spare hard disks at home -- doesn't everyone?). I configured them as a two-fold redundant array. That gives me an 8 TB network disk. If one of the physical disks breaks, the network disk will continue to function while I replace the broken disk. Note that this is not the same as backup. In my experience the main use of backups is when you discover that you just stupidly deleted that presentation you've been working on for two months. The RAID1 redundancy doesn't help with that -- it just saves you from hardware failures.

I was so happy with this that I bought a Western Digital My Cloud 4100 diskless network-attached server and put four 16 TB disks in it, configured as two redundant arrays. That gave me two 16 TB network disks.

I have not used any other brand of NAS, so I can't compare. I am, however, quite happy with these systems. Under the hood these are linux system, like the one I set up on my Thinkserver, but optimized to be used as file servers. You can't really use one for programming, etc. But as file servers they are quite nice. SATA hard disks just snap in. You needn't use WD disks -- all mine at the moment are Seagate, and they work fine. There is an easy to use web interface for configuring the disks. Each device also has three USB 3.0 receptcles. You can plug an external USB disk into any one of these and back the My Cloud disk up on it. Also, any external disk plugged into any of the USB ports is shared automatically as a network drive, which is very handy.

In most respects the 4100 is like the 2100. The main difference, of course, is that the 4100 has four hard disk bays and the 2100 just two. Also, the 4100 is taller and has an LED display that you can use to find out handy things such as the IP address and free space left.

It is relevant that I have been administering unix and linux systems for thirty years. I know what I'm doing, and it helps. Someone without *nix experience could figure it out, but it might not be trivial.

Amazon.ca review of 4100, Amazon.com review

Amazon.ca review of 2100, Amazon .com review

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