WD My Cloud EX2100 8TB
Disk storage giant WD has expanded its mid-range line of NAS boxes, adding some needed performance to the range with the new EX2100 and EX4100 models, offering twoand four disk bays respectively. The underpowered My Cloud EX2 and EX4, the original two- and fourbay models, remain but with these new additions to the Expert Series WD is promising decent file write performance – the Achilles’ heel of all budget NAS boxes.
The EX2100 is based on the My Cloud software platform, using a now-mature customisation of a Linux-based operating system that is rippling with useful features.
WD has adapted the versatile BusyBox Linux package, adding its own graphical interface, and feeding back its changes by releasing the modified source code as required by the GPLv2 licence. The version employed with WD’s current 1.06.127 firmware is based on Linux kernel 3.10.39, with BusyBox 1.20.2 from July 2012.
The hardware to house the disks and processor is more up to date and wholly new – a compact and neatly packaged black box with metal wraparound cover and gently moulded front plastic fascia.
The disks are easily accessible from the front, released by levers but with no additional locking to prevent prying fingers from popping a disk. Rather than mount the disks in extra caddies or trays, the raw disk slides into the bay, with a strong spring to keep it held firm once the door has been clicked shut. At the back of the unit is a single 65mm cooling fan, almost silent in normal use, and combined with the quiet operation of the WD Red hard disks inside we have a usefully low-noise storage solution.
Powering the EX2100 and helping to keep heat and noise down is a low-power ARM processor. The Marvell Armada 385 is a new system-on-a-chip with dual-core 1.3GHz processor, backed with 1GB of memory.
Two USB ports are available, both to USB 3.0 specification, one on the front and one on the back. There are two gigabit network ports too, available for use together for link aggregation to increase throughput or for failover security.
Power comes from an external laptop-style 48W mains adaptor, which connects to a single DC inlet on the rear.
Overall build quality is excellent, with high standards of fit and finish, making a sturdy unit with no creaks or rattles.
The My Cloud firmware is a comprehensive operating system and user interface. From the main page, you have a useful overview of the essential working parameters – starting with available capacity in huge numbers, a photograph of the hardware exterior and tick boxes to demonstrate system health and firmware version.
Along the top line is a running strip of icons for digging deeper, such as User, Shares, Backups, Storage and Settings. Also available is an Apps tab, where you can download and configure additional applications to expand the unit’s capabilities. Here we found offerings from WordPress, Dropbox and Acronis, as well as two more BitTorrent clients (aMule and Transmission) available as alternatives to WD’s own built-in BT software.
Under the Storage tab, you can configure the disk arrangement; with just two disks in the EX2100 you can set these to RAID 1; RAID 0 for largest single-volume capacity and best potential speed; and JBOD for separate addressable volumes. There’s also an option for Spanning, which combines the two disks in a linear fashion to swell capacity without striping.
The My Cloud EX2100 proved to be significantly faster than its cheaper My Cloud predecessors in sequential data read and write speeds. Where the EX4 struggled to reach 100MB/s read speeds, and limped along with writes down at about 37MB/s, the EX2100 came closer to filling a single gigabit ethernet link – that is, transfers up to around 120MB/s.
We tested the model with two 4TB WD Red disks in its default RAID 1 arrangement; first in Windows over SMB using CrystalDiskMark storage benchmark. Here we saw sequential transfer results of 103MB/s for reads and 109MB/s for writes. Smaller 512kB data flew by too, at 100- and 97MB/s respectively.
Digging down to the more challenging 4kB file level however, the EX2100 struggled to keep up its earlier pace – 4kB random reads and writes were down to 9.9MB/s and 4.2MB/s respectively. But these figures compare well with Synology’s budget DS115j, for example, which recorded similar 4.4MB/s read speed for 4kB files but just 2.7MB/s write speed. In the 32 queue-depth test for 4kB random data, write speeds were unchanged but random reads rose to 51.5MB/s.
ATTO Disk Benchmark reported sequential maximums of 118MB/s for both reads and writes for all data above 128kB in size. And 4kB sequential IO here was up to 26.8MB/s reads and 22.2MB/s writes.
Power consumption was low, as we would hope from an ARMpowered NAS drive. With the unit stressed with various file transfer tasks, we saw a maximum of 18 W power consumption.
Verdict
The EX2100 is a snappy NAS drive brimming with useful features. At around £200 unpopulated it’s close in price and performance to the Synology DS214. It’s perhaps testament to the progress WD has made with its NAS hardware that it’s now a tougher call to choose between them.