"Accidentally" created 2TB volume with Mac...

Drobo - End of Sale DroboPro
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I know I should have checked the drobo website for the latest dashboard, etc., but even before the dashboard was up and running, when I plugged my DroboPro in, the Mac asked me if I wanted to format the new volume and I did.

The DroboPro had 2 x 2TB drives in it.

I was having trouble getting Dashboard to see the DroboPro–much later I discovered that the version of Dashboard I had was more than a full dot release behind and didn’t work with 64-bit Snow Leopard.

Anyhow I’d already put 900GB of data on it and then added another 1TB drive.

I used the Dashboard to create a 2nd volume, a 16TB volume, which is what I’d originally wanted. I copied all the data from the 2TB volume to the 16TB volume (there was enough room).

Then I deleted the 2TB volume and its storage just automatically got added to the total available space for the 16TB volume.

I thought I was golden! Go Drobo!

Later, as I was going through the manual, I discovered that Drobo recommends that if you “accidentally create a 2TB volume using the Mac, and you wanted to create a different sized volume, you should copy all the data off the drobo and start over”.

By the time I’d read that, I’d already added a LOT more data to my drobo, including adding another 2TB drive.

I’ve got a total of 5.4TB of disk space, with 3TB of that taken up with data. So, 2.4TB of available space.

My mini running OS X Server sees it as a 16TB volume with 14.29TB available.

Everything SEEMS to be fine, except that it took one reboot for dashboard to properly do live-updating of available space as I was copying more data to it.

Since then, as I said, everything is fine. adding new drives “just worked”. Within 10 seconds, the new storage just shows up.

My questions:

  • am I ok with this? Or do I need to buy a more drives and really start over?
  • is it normal for the Mac OS to report that much free space if the drobo only has one volume on it, or should the Mac be showing the same amount of free space that the Dashboard is showing?

thanks in advance

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i thikn what you were reading was in reference to regular drobos, not the drobo pro.

with a regular drobo the only way to change the volume size is to wipe it. with the drobo pro what you are doing is perfectly ok, you can manage your volumes however you like.

MacOS reports how much free space is left on the volume (this can easily be much larger than the actual space you have).

drobo reports how much physical free space you have on the disks you have put in drobo - this is the limit of how much data you can put on it

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Awesome!!!

And I just discovered on another thread that my drobopro had been connected at only FW400. This 5TB of copying I’ve been doing could’ve been going a whole lot faster.

Great day for me. :slight_smile:

Thanks for your feedback.