Ever since the new Drobo S was new, it was always a challenge to get it started. It would frequently get stuck in the reboot cycle. This is apparently a common issue because they provided a knowledge base article to cover it ( website link ). The procedure involves removing the power cord during a startup sequence and removing the drives. It is a very risky procedure and it made me nervous every time. It always got going but I just learned to never turn it off.
I shut it down to blow out the dust but was unable to get it going again after hooking it up again. I followed the familiar startup procedure but it was still stuck in the reboot cycle. Time to get in touch with the dreaded tech support again.
Due to an upcoming vacation, I was in a small time crunch. I put in a support ticket online and hoped that they would respond soon. They didn't. I had to call them, just like all the other times. Because of my frustration and time restrictions, I wanted an advance replacement. I wanted them to send me a new unit and I would ship the defective unit back in the same packaging. They only offer advance replacement to customers who have purchased 'Drobo Care'; their version of extended warranty. Did I mention that it is $250???? In so many words, I told them that they can stick their Drobo Care up their asses and they can send me an advanced replacement at their cost in consideration for all my time and frustration. The low level employee on the phone wasn't able to grant this request but promised a call back from a manager. I was skeptical.
After two days and no phone call, I called them again. They promised a call back the same day. Within an hour, I was on the phone with the RMA administrator. He informed me that he would not grant my request. After a heated discussion of the facts and history of problems, he was very understanding. They sent out a new Drobo S on a courier the same day at their expense (both ways). I pre-authorized a visa but it would not be charged unless I don't send the defective unit back. It was pretty nice of them to finally see things my way, but it was two days too late and I did not get the unit before I went on vacation. Oh well...
Thursday, December 9, 2010
New Generation
After a few months, Data Robotics released a new generation of Drobo storage devices. The Drobo S has capacity for 5 drives and includes an eSATA interface. I was in the market for a new storage device for my home and I thought I would give the Drobo another try. After all, home use is a little different than office use. It also won't be network attached. How bad could it be?
It was pricey to say the least. After shipping, it set me back almost $750. I bought it directly from Drobo just to give me a little more leverage if it gives me trouble. I also bought a couple new drives to fill it up. Again, I'm in this thing for more than $1000.
For the first few weeks it worked fairly well. I had a little trouble getting it started, but I'll discuss that in another post. Starting about a month after I first used it, the drives would randomly start to rebuild themselves. The exact cause was not reported on the Drobo Dashboard. When these random rebuild sessions started locking up the Drobo and / or the computer, I requested support. They reviewed the log files and determined that one of the drives had failed.
I can live with a drive failure. None of the data was lost and, in a convoluted way, the Drobo did its job. Unfortunately, I had to deal with their exhausting tech support to determine that a drive had failed. Again, according to the bubbly website rep, Cali Lewis, a failed drive should have been indicated with an obvious red light. Instead I found out through multiple restarts, computer lockups, hours of array rebuilding and phone calls and e-mails to tech support.
I replaced the failed drive and everything was back to "normal".
It was pricey to say the least. After shipping, it set me back almost $750. I bought it directly from Drobo just to give me a little more leverage if it gives me trouble. I also bought a couple new drives to fill it up. Again, I'm in this thing for more than $1000.
For the first few weeks it worked fairly well. I had a little trouble getting it started, but I'll discuss that in another post. Starting about a month after I first used it, the drives would randomly start to rebuild themselves. The exact cause was not reported on the Drobo Dashboard. When these random rebuild sessions started locking up the Drobo and / or the computer, I requested support. They reviewed the log files and determined that one of the drives had failed.
I can live with a drive failure. None of the data was lost and, in a convoluted way, the Drobo did its job. Unfortunately, I had to deal with their exhausting tech support to determine that a drive had failed. Again, according to the bubbly website rep, Cali Lewis, a failed drive should have been indicated with an obvious red light. Instead I found out through multiple restarts, computer lockups, hours of array rebuilding and phone calls and e-mails to tech support.
I replaced the failed drive and everything was back to "normal".
Data Corruption and Drives
By now, I am into this Drobo and Drobo Share for more than $1000 and that doesn't include the hard drives or countless hours of frustration. At least the office is getting some use out of the system and it is relatively stable. I regularly need to restart it to reestablish the connection but it always seems to get running again. But there is a new problem that I just can't explain, random file corruption and folder oddities.
The majority of our office work involves AutoCAD. Some mornings, the AutoCAD file I was working on the previous day is corrupt and I am unable to recover it. Restoring a previous backup file was necessary to keep working. I thought it could have something to do with the nightly backups so I continued to monitor the situation. Eventually the random file corruption started happening throughout the course of the day. We were constantly having to restore backup files all over the place. Another complaint was placed with tech support.
Over the next few weeks of screwing around with log files and tests with tech support, they finally sent me a replacement unit c/w drives. It was at this time that admitted that they don't recommend certain hard drive brands and models. One of the main reasons I purchased a Drobo was because I could use any drive and any size. At least that is what their perky Cali Lewis website demo videos explicitly say.
I hooked up the new Drobo and Drobo Share and installed the new drives directly from Drobo with high hopes of success. When the first file became corrupt, I took it out of service immediately. In the end, I only had about two weeks of working 'up' time for the three months I owned it. I was able to get a refund from the reseller but with a 40% restocking fee. I purchased a real NAS (Seagate BlackArmor) and all new drives. It has been working flawlessly for almost a year without even one minute of down time or maintenance.
Over the course of the Drobo experiment, I lost $400 on restocking and countless hours of troubleshooting and headaches (100+) which I will never recoup. Not impressed.
The majority of our office work involves AutoCAD. Some mornings, the AutoCAD file I was working on the previous day is corrupt and I am unable to recover it. Restoring a previous backup file was necessary to keep working. I thought it could have something to do with the nightly backups so I continued to monitor the situation. Eventually the random file corruption started happening throughout the course of the day. We were constantly having to restore backup files all over the place. Another complaint was placed with tech support.
Over the next few weeks of screwing around with log files and tests with tech support, they finally sent me a replacement unit c/w drives. It was at this time that admitted that they don't recommend certain hard drive brands and models. One of the main reasons I purchased a Drobo was because I could use any drive and any size. At least that is what their perky Cali Lewis website demo videos explicitly say.
I hooked up the new Drobo and Drobo Share and installed the new drives directly from Drobo with high hopes of success. When the first file became corrupt, I took it out of service immediately. In the end, I only had about two weeks of working 'up' time for the three months I owned it. I was able to get a refund from the reseller but with a 40% restocking fee. I purchased a real NAS (Seagate BlackArmor) and all new drives. It has been working flawlessly for almost a year without even one minute of down time or maintenance.
Over the course of the Drobo experiment, I lost $400 on restocking and countless hours of troubleshooting and headaches (100+) which I will never recoup. Not impressed.
Sleep Time and Backup
So the Drobo at the office has been hooked up to the server via USB and has been working reasonably well for a couple weeks. During our normal operations, I discover that the Drobo tends to sleep relatively fast (around 10-15 minutes, I think). The data would still be accessible, but the lag time was getting to be a little bit annoying especially after a short break such as lunch time. At that time, there was no function to disable the automatic sleep.
Some of the more sensitive corporate information was still stored on the server and was periodically backed up to the Drobo at night. The backup was an encrypted zip file created by the built-in windows backup software. It was discovered after many discussions and headaches that the built-in windows backup software would abort a backup if the destination was not accessible. The sleeping Drobo was considered inaccessible when it came time to do the backups and, hence, the backups always failed to start. The only thing that seemed to work was a batch file that would run just prior to the backup that was designed to wake up the Drobo. This only worked some of the time and we never did figure out a good way to keep the Drobo awake.
I researched a solution and it turns out that the Drobo Share (no longer available) could be loaded with some custom scripts and programs called Drobo Apps. These programs range from media servers to hosting software. There was a script that would keep the Drobo from sleeping so I though I would give it a try. It would also offer the advantage of having network attached storage rather than relying on the server. So I dropped another $250.00. Long story short... the Drobo continued to sleep, the Drobo Share would constantly drop the connection, the Backups continued to fail, and the Drobo Dashboard would not communicate to it. Because there was no power switch, I would have to pull the power cable and risk the data every time it would freeze or drop a connection (which was NEVER ENDING). It was at this time we discovered that it also started corrupting files during normal operation. Read the next post for details.
Some of the more sensitive corporate information was still stored on the server and was periodically backed up to the Drobo at night. The backup was an encrypted zip file created by the built-in windows backup software. It was discovered after many discussions and headaches that the built-in windows backup software would abort a backup if the destination was not accessible. The sleeping Drobo was considered inaccessible when it came time to do the backups and, hence, the backups always failed to start. The only thing that seemed to work was a batch file that would run just prior to the backup that was designed to wake up the Drobo. This only worked some of the time and we never did figure out a good way to keep the Drobo awake.
I researched a solution and it turns out that the Drobo Share (no longer available) could be loaded with some custom scripts and programs called Drobo Apps. These programs range from media servers to hosting software. There was a script that would keep the Drobo from sleeping so I though I would give it a try. It would also offer the advantage of having network attached storage rather than relying on the server. So I dropped another $250.00. Long story short... the Drobo continued to sleep, the Drobo Share would constantly drop the connection, the Backups continued to fail, and the Drobo Dashboard would not communicate to it. Because there was no power switch, I would have to pull the power cable and risk the data every time it would freeze or drop a connection (which was NEVER ENDING). It was at this time we discovered that it also started corrupting files during normal operation. Read the next post for details.
WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF... DROBO!
Anyone who has purchased a Drobo will recognize this heading from the Drobo packaging. For a small office, I purchased a 2nd generation Drobo. I originally connected it to the network server via USB. Although all the data was located on the Drobo, the network traffic and sharing was handled by the server.
After only two or three days of 'up' time, there was a power outage overnight. When I returned to the office in the morning, the Drobo was unresponsive and the data was inaccessible. After days of correspondence with tech support, it was determined that all the data was corrupt and I would have to start again from scratch. Since the Drobo was not shut down properly, it caused massive data corruption. Thankfully, we still had external backups.
Fine... I guess it was my own fault for not placing it on a UPS. I guess it is too much to ask that an external hard drive can withstand a power outage. Whatever.
I purchased a UPS, reformatted the drives, transferred the data and reestablished the network shares. The Drobo is back online and working (sort of).
WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF..... PAIN!
After only two or three days of 'up' time, there was a power outage overnight. When I returned to the office in the morning, the Drobo was unresponsive and the data was inaccessible. After days of correspondence with tech support, it was determined that all the data was corrupt and I would have to start again from scratch. Since the Drobo was not shut down properly, it caused massive data corruption. Thankfully, we still had external backups.
Fine... I guess it was my own fault for not placing it on a UPS. I guess it is too much to ask that an external hard drive can withstand a power outage. Whatever.
I purchased a UPS, reformatted the drives, transferred the data and reestablished the network shares. The Drobo is back online and working (sort of).
WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF..... PAIN!
Welcome!
Through years of frustrations with Drobo, I am finally sharing my thoughts with the world. It is my hope that this blog will be the definitive source for all complaints directed at the Data Robotics storage devices. I have completely given up on trying the use the Drobo. Here is my advice:
If you own a Drobo...... Buy an external drive or two, transfer all your data, and sell the Drobo for whatever you can get for it.
If you want a Drobo...... STOP. Forget it. Buy something else.
If you had a Drobo previously...... Post your experience in the comments here.
Read my future posts to learn about my experiences. My only wish is that you don't make the same mistake I did.
If you own a Drobo...... Buy an external drive or two, transfer all your data, and sell the Drobo for whatever you can get for it.
If you want a Drobo...... STOP. Forget it. Buy something else.
If you had a Drobo previously...... Post your experience in the comments here.
Read my future posts to learn about my experiences. My only wish is that you don't make the same mistake I did.
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