In a Black Friday sale, I treated myself to FINALLY upgrading, to a Drobo 5D
It arrives tomorrow, and I plan on migrating all the data off the 1st gen. I know that I can’t just do a disk-swap from reading the knowledge base, because the formatting is different.
So it’s my plan to just hook up both drives, and copy all the data between them.
HOWEVER – I’m a little confused. Because to do this, obviously I’m going to need to install the latest dashboard (2.6.3) on my Mac, in order to properly format/use the Drobo 5D.
Yet I’ve stayed on 1.8.3 for years now, because Drobo Support pages said that that’s the version that I need to use for the 1st Gen Drobo.
So what do I do? Will the 2.6.3 dashboard ‘work’ with a Gen 1 drobo? At least enough to let me copy the data off it?
Basically, Dashboard 2.6.3 may work with the Gen 1 Drobo. However, it may not work correctly.
Please, don’t ask me what that means, it is what I was told by support staff.
it doenst really matter whether it “works” or not… as dashbaord is only required to actually setup and configure the drobos.
you could complete uninstall all versions of dashboard and still copy between the two drobos as they will each just show up as regular usb (or thunderbolt) drives
Docchris – Thanks, that actually makes a lot of sense and I didn’t think about it that way.
So I should be able to: Uninstall all Drobo Dashboard. Install the new drobodashboard. Use it to configure the new 5D … and then copy all files from the old to the new.
Just need to make sure that I never attempt to ‘change anything’ about the old Drobo v1, via the dashboard.
I wonder if I should even go one step ‘cleaner’? And uninstall, install, configure new drobo. Then hook both of them up to a completely different machine with no Drobo Dashboard installed, and do the data copy? Eh, that sounds overly complex and probably not needed.
hi i think dashboard is also used by users who are taught the “safely shut down your drobo” method…
in which case, as far as i can tell, if you do not have dashboard, you might need to log off and shutdown your computer fully first, and then to wait for the drobo to enter standby mode with no accesses, then to disconnect the usb cable from the computer, and then to power off the mains to drobo (for me at least on windows and my drobos).