I posted another thread yesterday, but had a different thought overnight, which might be worth something.
I have a DR04DD10 Drobo Beyond Raid 4-Bay USB 2.0/FireWire 800 SATA 6GB/S Storage Array attached to a Mac mini Server (Mid 2011) (Yosemite) connected by FireWire. It has been attached for several years, no problems.
One folder has disappeared from the Drobo. I don’t know what happened to it. I recently shut down the whole system, including the Drobo and stored the drives in a safe while I was away from the house for a while. When I got back I put all the drives into the Drobo exactly where they were before, and then turned the whole system on. Everything else seems to be in order, except for that one folder.
So, my thought is: In May I replaced a drive, that had become too small, at Drobo’s request (it was signaling that it should be replaced). I still have that older drive, and if I understand Drobo technology properly, I think it likely has a copy of that folder on it. Is there a way to see the content of that drive?
I’d be afraid to plug it into the Drobo, lest it get overwritten, but I put it into a separate enclosure, and it wouldn’t mount.
I’m afraid not. Drobo-formatted drives can only be read by another Drobo, and then only with the remaining disks in that pack. Drives cannot be read individually, except perhaps inside the Drobo labs…so we assume.
Thanks for the message. That’s too bad to hear. I’d thought I was pretty clever to think of it. Do you have any idea what would happen if I inserted that old drive in place of one of the existing four-pack? I’m curious whether it would add that content to the newer drives, or if it would just delete the whole thing.
At best it would reformat the drive and assimilate it into the existing pack. At worse, since it was originally part of the disk pack, it might corrupt your other drives instead. It’s best to re-format any old Drobo drives you wish to add back in.
hi, just a thought,
if that folder had thousands of pdfs… have you tried powering off the computer and then drobo (or using dashboard to safely shutdown drobo first). and then after a few minutes with all off, to then boot up just the drobo without any connection cable, and then to boot up the mac?
i remember a couple of times when some folder or volume hadnt appeared in windows, and i rebooted all and waited a bit more and then it came back.
if that doesnt help, and if you are sure that you (or another person with you) did not delete that folder, then maybe you can try the mac equivalent of chkdsk? i think its diskwarrior but if you havent used it before maybe try a search on the forums to see how best to use it etc.
Thanks for the reply, Paul. I’m not sure if I’ve tried that order of steps yet. I’ll give it a shot! If it works, I’ll be sure to reply again, so that others might benefit from that tip in the future.
By now, I’ve come to terms with the fact that there will be a gap in my chronology, but it’s not as large as I’d first feared, and a number of these files have been easier to “recreate” than I’d thought. Still, this would be fabulous, if I did find them with your help. Thanks again.
It is unlikely Drobo would remove or lose one folder. I would recommend you run data recovery software on Drobo. You can run Data Rescue by Prosoft, R-Studio or Stellar Phoenix. These utilities allow you to scan for free, once the scan is complete you will see a list of files that were found. If you wish to recover you pay for the software.
To answer your question you will not be able to scan an individual drive from Drobo for data.
ok cool, and maybe the utils from drobomod can help too.
(if you have any family members try and ask them again just in case they did a scooby doo on your folder by mistake)
