More Problems with Drobo

Background

Ugh. A little over a year ago I got a Drobo. Very soon afterward, I began experiencing seemingly random Drobo restarts and eventually the Drobo volume got partically corrupted and refused to mount. It was a pain to get it fixed because the journal was screwed up, and Disk Utility would not repair this. Anyway, I ended up fixing this volume and after several weeks got Drobo to send me a replacement power converter, which stopped the reboots.

A Fresh Set of Problems

Now I've got this frustrating problem where every time the Drobo starts up it thinks it's out of space. It sends out a "Critical" level e-mail saying I'm risking data loss and Drobo is dangerously full. Then, Drobo Dashboard starts up and after a minute or so it realizes that it is not in fact full and the dialog boxes warning of impending disaster disappear. After reflection, Drobo reports it's less than 80% full. Is it? I don't know whether to trust either one of the readings.

I listen to a number of tech podcasts where the hosts are effusive with their praise for Drobo, but my experience has been anything but positive.

Drobo + UPS = data corruption?

Updated on 8:58 AM by Chris H.

Updated on 2:10 AM by Chris H.

Updated on 5:33 PM by Chris H.

Updated on 5:22 PM by Chris H.

Drobo Fails

I've got an APC XS 1300 uninterruptible power supply unit which I keep my desktop plugged into to prevent data loss in case of power failure. I recently replaced my RAID5 with the 'Data Robot' (Drobo) v2 and naturally, I plugged that in to my UPS as well. This worked out fine for a couple weeks, and then all of the sudden my Drobo disappeared from my desktop. Basically this Drobo webpage explains what happened to me: my drive showed up as Unlabled and refused to mount. Disk checks and repairs failed. Pretty bad news.

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