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".