Forum Discussion

Aspirant

Apr 19, 2016

WD Compatibility

Two questions: 1. I have two WD Elements and one WD My Book. I did a brief search for compatibile drives with the 104 and only came up with about three for WD. Is that right or was I looking i...

Adding Disks

dschwartzer

Luminary

Apr 19, 2016

The WD Element probably has a WD Green drive inside. The WD MyBook probably has a similar drive. These are considered "desktop" drives which are not recommened for use in a NAS because the are not designed for the constant uptime that a NAS often has. In addition, the drives in those enclosures are probably 5400rpm drives. It is usually recommended to get NAS quality drives (like WD Red or Seagate NAS drives), which have a longer MTBF rating and spin at the faster 7200 rpm speed.

You can certainly try using the drives in the readyNAS and I suspect they will work. The question will be, for how long.

In any case, any data currently on the drives will be erased when you install the drives into the ReadyNAS so you should back up anything currently on the drives that you want to save.

Hope that helps.

David

StephenB
Guru - Experienced User
Apr 19, 2016
dschwartzer wrote:

The WD Element probably has a WD Green drive inside. The WD MyBook probably has a similar drive.

I've never opened one, so I don't know. If they are WDC desktop drives (green or otherwise), then WD's recommendation is here: http://support.wdc.com/KnowledgeBase/answer.aspx?ID=996
- LDG
  Aspirant
  Apr 19, 2016
  StephenB wrote:
  dschwartzer wrote:
  The WD Element probably has a WD Green drive inside. The WD MyBook probably has a similar drive.
  I've never opened one, so I don't know. If they are WDC desktop drives (green or otherwise), then WD's recommendation is here: http://support.wdc.com/KnowledgeBase/answer.aspx?ID=996
  
  Well that's frustrating. Anybody have an alternative? Something that won't require the drives to be formatted? Something that allows them to be connected to the network without having to go through a computer? I'll take them out of their enclosures...that part I don't care about.
  - StephenB
    Guru - Experienced User
    Apr 19, 2016
    Some routers support direct connection of USB drives - for instance the Netgear Nighthawk line. Reformatting shouldn't be required with the Nighthawks - they support ntfs.
    
    The NAS also supports NTFS on USB-connected drives. So if you get one suitable internal drive for the NAS, you can also install that, and connect the existing USB drives up through NAS USB ports. You can then copy some data onto the NAS, and perhaps expand its internal storage later.