What the heck is a Drobo?!

basically its a proprietary raid system, like any raid system if the raid controller dies the only way to recover the data is with the same type of raid adapter (not true of all raids) and because nobody else uses Drobo's format basically you need another drobo to get it back, and even then I dont know if its possible

so if the mainboard / controller inside the drobo dies you would have to buy another one or send it to them to repair it

I dont understand the problem you posted, you cant access them why? once your able to get back into them move them off / format it and move them back

try calling their tech support I would be curious as to their answers

and btw dont use this thing as the only place to store your pics ! I would say that for any drive but for a drobo especially

tekkie wrote in post #12131729
basically its a proprietary raid system, like any raid system if the raid controller dies the only way to recover the data is with the same type of raid adapter (not true of all raids) and because nobody else uses Drobo's format basically you need another drobo to get it back, and even then I dont know if its possible

so if the mainboard / controller inside the drobo dies you would have to buy another one or send it to them to repair it

I dont understand the problem you posted, you cant access them why? once your able to get back into them move them off / format it and move them back

try calling their tech support I would be curious as to their answers

Yeah I guess I'll call their tech support to try and move back my files from the drobo back into the computer. I am scared that I'll lose my RAW files.

What is the difference of using a drobo (or any raid system in that fact) when you can just copy your raw files into two separate hard drives that are connected to your computer?

raid places the files across multiple disks, this is supposed to make it more secure & normally faster... on the drobo its not faster its the opposite its slower which is my biggest complaint of it

if you copy your raw files to two different disks its 2 copies, imo that will be faster than using a drobo and nearly as secure, you can setup a simple script every night to copy all the data from one drive to the other, or you could put the 2 drives in a raid 1 which is a mirror and that will be faster than the drobo, most motherboards support that now without a raid adapter

but you lose the advantage of simple configuration, expandability etc.... like if you have 2 x 2TB drives now and 3 yearss from now you want 10TB on a drobo you could just add more disks to the system without having to backup data, format the drives and move it again

Marloon wrote in post #12131590
Hey Everyone,

Thanks for your help! i decided to buy the 2nd gen drobo S for it's E-sata connection. I brought it home with a smile in my pocket and a hole in my wallet. I loaded 2 2TB green drives into it.

Now this is where I am embarrased and in need for anyone's help. When I got home, I decided to move ALL of my 2009 RAW files into it. The drobo took it and wanted to do an update. I updated it, and it rebooted. The next thing I know, the drobo dashboard shows "320GB of used space and 1.68TB of UNALLOCATED SPACE. It says that in order to reclaim the unallocated space, I have to reformat the drobo which would lose ALL of my 2009 Work. I am glad that I didn't copy my other raw files into it. I am considering returning this damn thing. It was pricey and I am now at risk of losing my files. This thing was suppose to SAVE my files, not EAT IT UP. I cannot access the drobo and ALL of my freaking files are in that DAMN thing.

Now my questions...
- How do i get my raw files out?
- How do I reclaim the data on it?
- How do I reclaim the unallocated space without losing the data? Is that possible?
- Do you encourage me to call their tech support? I heard that I'll have a horrible experience.

HELP! PLEASE!!!! AHHH. i am so stressed out!!!!

No idea what you did and in what order.

There seems to be a step or 2 missing between taking it home and loading files onto it.

I called Support soon after I got mine for something (don't recall). Something to do with assigning a drive letter (doesn't work over Esata using their utility). You have to use Windows to do that or do it with USB attached.

It is on their web site so it's not a secret defect.

How many volumes do you have on the Drobo. With Windows 2tb limit (you can get around that), you should have 2 volumes on it now with one of them unallocated. Go into Windows and allocate it.

Call Support.

In the meantime you should be able to access your files and keep working.

PS: The Drobo does not work well with all Esata controllers but it sounds like you are ok, in that regard. Again, they have a list of tested controllers.

The Drobo Dashboard shows this right now...

The drobo recognizes that it has 301.81GB of space on the drive, yet i can't access those GB of data. Those are all of my 2009 RAW Files. SIGH.

It appears you have learned 2 very valualbe lessons:

1) Know and understand ALL your tool.s

2) Back up! Back up! Back up!

Have you tried connecting the Drobo via USB instead of eSATA?

Marloon wrote in post #12142520
The Drobo Dashboard shows this right now...

unfortunately, I can't pull files out of the drive because I don't have access to it. Drobo tech support has tried to do a check disk through command prompt and unfortunately, there is no drive name attached to it. The Manager utilities can't even recognize the drive letter. SIGH. I feel like an idiot for moving rather than copying files straight onto this drive. SIGH.

if you click the little pull down saying how is my files being used what does it say?

it has to be some usable format in order for the disk to allow the files to go on there

did you by chance copy the files before installing the drobo dashboard?

is it showing up as a drive letter? can you see it in disk manager?

how did you get the files on there ? using explorer cut /paste onto E drive or something?

At this point you have no drive letters assigned to any allocated space on the Drobo. How you managed to get files over to it, is beyond me.

Go into Disk Manager and look for any unallocated space. Allocate it and assign a drive letter to it. For any allocated space but no drive letter, assign a drive letter to it.

PS: I never, ever, MOVE files. I copy, then delete.

If you want any chance of recovering your files DO NOT do that

Your best bet maybe to try and recover the files from the computers drive where they were originally. When you move files they are not really gone, download au undelete app and I bet it will find them but you will likely need to buy an app to do it. Stellar Phoenix is good

Download the trial and see what it finds if it sees them it will be worth the 50 bucks

http://www.stellarinfo​.com/windows-data-recovery.php

Looking into purchasing a DROBO 5D - subscribed.

tekkie wrote in post #12124818
I didnt say I had a drobo S I said I had the original drobo the S is faster but I think the S stands for Slow

60-70Mbs is still really slow, a std 5400rpm laptop hard drive can do that

I have a 5 year old IDE 4 disk raid with 5400 rpm hard drives and its capable of doing 180Mbs and its cheaper than a drobo

a single run of the mill 7200 rpm desktop hard drive can do 80-90MB, a 1TB WD black is 110MB

if I am paying that much money I expect something fast

Please consider using an upper-case B for Byte and reserve a lower-case b for bit.

1Gb/s is the speed of todays network cables - 1Gbit/s.
100MB/s is a common speed for disks - 100MByte/s = 800Mbit/s.

By the way - the Seagate Backup Plus USB 3 disks manages (for me) about 165 MB/s which is a bit irritating since it's faster than almost all internal HDD.