QNAP and Synology have ever been on my radar when it comes to pre-built desktop NAS devices. For more a decade at present they've been developing some of the best dwelling house and business network attached devices coin can buy and today I consider them both pretty unbeatable.

Despite being considered industry leaders and having been in business concern for well over a decade now, neither Synology nor QNAP are well known brands -- they certainly aren't mainstream, fifty-fifty in the tech world.

One of the bug for adoption has been retail price. A basic two-bay model with decent performance for a dwelling house user is going to cost around $300 in diskless form. Add in a couple of difficult drives and the overall expense is akin to that of an entry level PC, though this is essentially what today's NAS devices are.

A more familiar name threw its lid into the ring around four years ago when Western Digital began developing its Red series hard drives for 24/vii functioning in NAS servers. Today they have not i only 2 drive series targeting NAS devices: the Red and the Blood-red Pro. Not stopping in that location, in 2022 WD launched its own range of desktop NAS boxes that hail from the company'southward My Cloud range. The devices themselves expect dainty and they are impressive plenty from a pricing standpoint.

The base model My Cloud 2TB costs simply $130 or $230 for the 6TB model, not to mention the My Deject Mirror 4TB for $350. None of these WD units accept hot-swap bays and although they come in a number of pre-configured capacities, a diskless version doesn't be -- or didn't, anyway.

In 2022 the visitor released its My Cloud Expert serial with the EX2 and EX4, both of which can be bought with or without disks, diskless costing $155 and $230 -- once again, both are affordable.

Frankly, since then the WD NAS lineup has get a fiddling confusing as information technology now features a large range of products that all take similar names and features.

Today we'll exist looking at the newly released My Deject EX2 Ultra, which is essentially a more than consumer-friendly version of the existing My Cloud EX2100.

WD My Deject EX2 Ultra

Like the previous EX2 model, the new EX2 Ultra can exist purchased in a range of capacities besides equally without drives. We have the 8TB model on manus but information technology's possible to purchase this device in 4TB and 12TB configurations also. For those wondering, WD uses its Red serial drives and each pre-configured model comes with two hard drives of equal size, meaning our review unit includes a pair of 4TB drives.

The device measures 165mm tall, 99mm wide and 157mm deep, which is extremely compact even for a two-bay device. Empty, it weighs merely 0.8kg, though expect that to be as much as two.4kg once loaded with a pair of 6TB drives.

The device itself looks quite sleek, with a curved jumpsuit grey front console that wraps around either side. Embedded in the front end panel towards the bottom is a black strip which features the WD logo, product name and more importantly some LED indicators that testify drive status/action and a power button. If all is well these LEDs will light upwardly blue but if at that place is a problem such as a drive failure they will turn red.

The top and lesser are covered past black ventilated plastic panels. Internally the drives are mounted vertically and at first in that location appears to be no active fan, which is surprising every bit the WD Red drives can get quite hot. As it turns out there is a small fan mounted in the front of the device, though I am not certain how effective it is. The airflow is mostly restricted and despite making quite a bit of dissonance, I had a difficult fourth dimension detecting any airflow at all.

The slotted vent panel pattern continues around back, though there aren't actually any vents, information technology's merely a pattern. What's of import here is the small I/O console which features a single gigabit Ethernet connector, two USB iii.0 ports and a 12v DC input. This is the beginning and stop of the EX2 Ultra's connectivity as there aren't any front panel connectors.

On height of the unit congenital into the ventilated panel is a thumb-sized indentation that looks a bit like a ability button you might discover on a PC example, the irony beingness that the EX2 Ultra doesn't really have a ability button. This button releases a catch which allows the top panel to open on a hinge.

Within are a pair of 2.5" bulldoze bays and they're occupied by the ii Ruby-red 4TB hard drives which are locked in place past a small metal bracket that can be removed using a single tool-less spiral.

The drives slot into place using a pair of custom screws which are attached to the rear mounting holes in the drive and one of them features a pull tab for removal.

Betwixt the hard drives sits the guts of the EX2 Ultra which includes a Marvell Fleet 385 1.3 GHz dual-core SoC and 1GB of DDR3 memory.

The Armada 385 is an SoC that we're familiar with as information technology has been used extensively by Synology, most recently by the DS216, a unit we'll mention again shortly as it'due south a direct competitor to the diskless My Cloud EX2 Ultra.

For at present, there isn't much else to say about the physical design of the My Cloud EX2 Ultra, so let's move on to the software side of things.