Seems my fan on my 2nd Gen Drobo is on the way out, its making way more noise than it ever has and the Drobo isn’t even busy doing anything and the room isn’t particularly hot. My wife is describing it as something taking off, and you certainly don’t want to be trying to work in the same room with it.
As I’m not yet at a point where I can replace the Drobo with a new one (waiting to get a new computer in a couple of months time with Thunderbolt and USB3), I want to replace the fan. I’m fairly confident with taking things apart & getting them back together, but I’d like to get a replacement fan before I take the Drobo apart
What sort of fan does it use / what are the specs for the fan in terms of size, power requirements and so on? I would ask in the old Drobo 2nd Gen forum but that seems to have disappeared. Searching turned up threads on DroboPro and DroboFS, but not the 2nd Gen.
I can order that from Amazon.de without issue though I see that technically the original NF-R8-1800 has been discontinued in favour of a “redux” version of it.
Am I as well going with the older NF-R8 (which costs €5 more) or the newer Redux version? Would I want the 3 or 4 pin variant? From the looks of it the Ulta Low Noise and Low Noise adaptors have been dropped in the Redux models. Would the Drobo use those?
I got exactly same problem with my 2nd gen Drobo since a couple of days and I´m also about to change the Fan. Anyone know if it´s possibly to change the fan?
I never got a response and haven’t attempted it yet. I did try asking Drobo how much it would cost to repair and got told $299, which given thats nearly the cost of the 3rd Gen Drobo I passed on the offer.
Hey guys, I successfully replaced fans in both of my Gen2s and it’s been a night and day difference and wasn’t really all that difficult.
I used these fans which I can barely hear even when on full blast. They’re variable so there’s three cables coming from the fan, but the trick is that the Gen2’s are either on or off, so one of the cables will be unused.
I basically followed the walkthrough on this page (or was it the one that tarasis mentioned?) and didn’t have any issues. I definitely recommend his tip of using these plugs to connect cables instead of messing with soldering things (unless you’re good at soldering, which I definitely am not).
I’m no expert but I can try and answer any questions you may have.
Don’t know how many of us yet with functional Gen2 Drobo’s (DR04D-D), but its fan death does need to kill the Drobo too.
Thanks to this thread, I replaced my noisy/dying fan with a much quieter Noctua NF-A9 FLX (the successor to the Noctua NF-B9 mentionned in the previous posts).
It replaced the original ADDA AD0912UB-A70GL, much noisier but slightly more powerful (101m3/h instead of 65 for the Noctua NF-A9 FLX).
I ignored and cut the yellow wire (PWM control) and soldered the red-black wires to the previous red-black wires of the original plug.
Also, I used this very well made tutorial to open the Drobo.
Less than 1 hour total, very easy. Many thanks to all previous posters :).
