Migration from My Book Live (Single) to My Book Live Duo with OpenWRT – Possible?

Hi everyone,

I'm currently running OpenWRT on a Western Digital My Book Live (single bay) device, using an 8TB HDD where both the system and data reside.

I'm now planning to move to a My Book Live Duo (2-bay) unit and would like to know the best way to migrate the system and data without losing functionality or files.
From what I have found, the cooling is better in the Duo version (my single reaches 55º degrees or more) and I have a good oportunity of buying it used, cheap, without hard drives.

Here are my key questions:

  1. Can I simply move the 8TB HDD (with OpenWRT already installed) from the single bay model into the Duo and expect it to boot?
  2. Does the Duo require both HDD bays to be populated for the system to start? I’ve read reports suggesting boot failure if only one drive is present.
  3. The OpenWRT image for My Book Live is different from the Duo. Is there a hardware-level difference, or is it mainly a software/bootloader issue?
  4. Could I prepare a fresh OpenWRT install using the Duo image, then copy over my data and configs from the 8TB disk?
  5. Has anyone successfully performed this type of migration? If so, are there steps or precautions you’d recommend?

I want to avoid any RAID configuration for now and keep the system running on a single disk, ideally with the option to add a second later for backups.

Any advice or experience is greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

Hello, can anyone help? Thank you.