Comments on: Still Life with Drobo

By: Angel

Angel — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 07:18:50 +0000

My only issue was that I formatted using Windows and got two mapped drives (E: & F:). Reformatting via the Dashboard merged those two. I have since purchased a Windows Home Server for fileserving. The Drobo is currently a media streamer. I optimized it with a software cache. Hiccups during video playbacks are rare now. I don’t trust Drobo for anything else (not that it’s ever given me a reason). Since the floppy days, I do know for sure that if you’re working on a file copy it to your desktop first. Then copy it back to an external drive when you’re finished with it. The constant read/write while working on files located on externals, floppies, CDs et al can kill the media or drive.

By: Brian Dusablon

Brian Dusablon — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 22:21:41 +0000

I’m having the same hum cycle you experienced. Such a nice concept and a nice looking piece in my office, but the noise is unbearable. I will attempt to move it, balance it and pad it to alleviate some of the noise. Oh well. My warranty just expired, so I’m stuck with it’s current state.

By: Joe Mullins

Joe Mullins — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 04:38:45 +0000

As far as I can tell it does not do a low level drive format. The drives wouldn't be immediately available if it did.

When the first drobo was barfing, I pulled all the drives and wrote zeros to all of them just to be sure none of them were failing. All of them passed. Go figure.

Yeah it looked like the issues were pretty well taken care of, but DR decided to RMA it because apparently it was negotiating small packet sizes that were slowing it down. I think they might have just wanted to make me happy though after all my whining.

As I said, the new unit popped a re-layout pretty quickly, but it's been pretty much fine since. The drive that caused that re-layout may be bad too, or might just be pulling the whole drop off the bus thing and freaking out the drobo. Unfortunately there's no way for me to tell as I can't get diagnostic info out of the box.

By: Nic

Nic — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:09:38 +0000

Are you able to tell the Drobo to do a low-level format of a new drive, or does it do that automatically during the layout?

Seems to me you'd want a low-level format to make sure you don't end up with the drive dropping off at inopportune times.

So if I understand the saga so far, the first Drobo was RMAd perhaps unnecessarily if it turns out the culprit was the 320 drive? Or am I missing something?

Since I've been wanting one for a long time now, I'm hoping the new one you have keeps being solid with the drives that are in it now...