WD My Could EX2 Ultra - JBOD Setup

[THRobinson]

Hey guys, upgrading my media server, and downsizing the space. Replacing a pair of giant old desktop cases running as HTPCs, with a NAS attached at the router (all ethernet Cat6e connected not WiFi) and Android boxes that I'll use to run CoreElec or LibreElec with KODI 18.

I just got the WD My Cloud EX2 Ultra yesterday.

My HTPC has a 32GB SSD drive for the OS, and a pair of 3TB HDDs inside. Both I believe are Seagate, but different models, both SATAIII and 7200rpm. I want to say both are Barracudas, because I almost always buy those, but not at home right now so can't check.

I plan to setup a JBOD. Both drives show as individual drives, not a RAID. Hoping I got the terms right, since never set this stuff up before.

Basically, I want 1 drive for Movies, 1 drive for TV Series. I want them to appear as individual drives because I also have a pair of WD 3TB external drives that I backup mirror copies to. I backup every other month, unplug them and stick them on a shelf... that way they're safe from power surges, or viruses etc.

Will this setup work? Anything I should know before proceeding?

Figured ask now, in case the answer is no or there's a trick to it... nothing worse than spending hours and getting frustrated trying to make something work that will never work. 😀

 

[hang-the-9]

JBOD is setup when you want to combine storage space of all drives into one. So if you have a 50 gb, 100 gb, 1tb drive, JBOD will give you a single volume with 1.15 gb.

Form what I can gather here, you want to use your two 3TB drives and put them in the WD enclosure? You can go through the manual and see what options that enclosure has. If it forces you to join the drives together, really all you need to do is create two folders for Movies and TV shows, no different than having separate drives.

 

[THRobinson]

JBOD worked... eventually.

One of the HDDs said BAD (SMART Error 03) and that's it. And stupidly, because NAS not setup yet, stuff like Scandisk was greyed out. I pulled the drive and stuck it on a PC and Windows was able to scan/repair a cluster.

Once in the NAS, JBOD was an option and formatted the drives to 2.68TB each. Was able to map them as network drives on my PC.

That said... been non-stop issues with speed and access ever since. Connection speed of the Android Box is showing about 78Mbps up/down... but accessing the WD My Cloud is insanely slow. Even just adding it as a link in KODI, bringing it up takes over a minute, system looks like it's hanging... then clicking ok hangs for over a minute, the clicking to open and see files hangs over a minute. I have a shared folder on my PC and on Android, accessing it is lightning quick.