DroboFS - problem

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steakman1971

2[H]4U
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Nov 22, 2005
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Alright, I know the general advice on this forum is to steer clear of the Drobo products do to proprietary RAID, custom hardware, etc. Right now, wishing I would have listened. Anyway...

My DroboFS was working fine. I saw a sale on 3TB SAN drives so decided to replace a 2TB with a 3TB to give myself a little extra space. After switching the drives, it starts to rebuild the array and said it'd be about 20 hours. Sounds about right.
After the 20ish hours, all of my drive indicators are showing solid yellow. The Drobo is seemingly frozen. I can't ping it and have to remove the power cable to cycle it.
If I remove the new drive, I can at least access my data.

I thought the new drive might have an issue, so I exchanged it for a new one. Tried the new one - same problem.
Drobo does not have any info about the problem except to "contact them". I did this, I'm out of warranty so they will not help me. Bastards.

Any body with a Drobo that has any advice on this? I guess I'll start pulling off the data and think of plan B to replace the Drobo. Right now, thinking about a Linux box with a RAID controller.
 
Which Drobo do you have and what firmware level is it at? Look here to see the minimum firmware you need installed for >2TB drive support
 
I have a DroboFS. Firmware is 1.2.6 [4.44.64324]. I should have shared that I already had a few 3TB drives in my Drobo. The original layout was 2T+2T+2T+3T+3t. I pulled the first 2T out and replaced it with a 3T.
I'm currently pulling files off the Drobo. I kind of don't trust it right now. I might put back in the 2T I took out and see if it is usable.
 
Regarding warranty, I have a 6 bay Qnap that is 5-6 years old, way out of warranty and I had an issue a few months ago where my RAID volume became inaccessible, I contacted support and had an engineer setup a remote session, he ssh'd into my Qnap did a few things and started a recovery process, he later reconnected twice to complete it and fixed it. Pretty bad that Drobo won't help you even if you are out of support, another reason I'd never ever touch their products. Hope you get it resolved.
 
I emailed Drobo for other options since I can't even buy extended warranty (site says not available). I'm curious to what they might say.
I paid about $500 for the DroboFS 2.5 years ago. It's worked pretty well until I decided to switch out the drive recently. For that same amount of money, I could have built a much better file saver. However, at the time I wanted to use my mismatch of hard disks I had laying around. Live and learn.

At least I can still get to my data on it. I'm copying it to other locations now. What a pain.
 
As suspected, Drobo emailed me back and said I'm out of warranty and they cannot help me. They did offer to help me pick a new Drobo unit with warranty support. No thanks, I'll pass.
 
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