Does DroboShare handle drobo filesystem different to a normal computer?

Drobo - End of Sale Droboshare
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Hi,

Apologies in advance for this long post!!!

Have been using Drobo V2 with Doboshare for last few years.
In general it has run quite smoothly.
Of late, i was getting problems copying large files to Drobo (via droboshare) that i decided to connect the Drobo directly to my mac.

Upon connection the drive was working normally, but i still decided i should run Disk Utility… since it hadn’t been run in 18months.

After doing a verify, it said i had to do a repair.
After a repair, Disk Utility said the drive was corrupted and could not be fixed.

All i could NOW do was copy files off it… the drive was locked and NO files could be moved to it. I have read others on this forum with an apparent permissions issue which made the disk READONLY.
ie. i could NOW not run diskwarrior to do a directory repair.

It took me several days to copy off all the files and to reformat the drobo and copy everything back. I format in HFS+.

I kept drobo on my mac (firewire) for a week… using it to store new large files etc… and i’d run disk utility every second day with NO issues/problems being found.

At that point i decided to connect it back to DroboShare for network availability.

Then tried copying some large files too it, but unfortunately i was still having problems with it. The network file copies would fail.

I moved drobo back onto Mac (firewire), and again disk was fine to access and use… but for concern of failed file copies i thought i should run Disk Utility to correct any problems that may have occurred.

The disk utility found some issues, but i was back and square one.
The disk cannot be repaired, and its READONLY again.

Having drobo connected to mac directly for many days of usage did NOT cause any corruption… but 1 hour on droboshare, and now disk utility renders the disk readonly.

Does droboshare NOT know how to correctly write to HFS+ volume?
Has anyone else seen this type of issue?

Like many others i’m likely to NOT use droboshare again. It has been flakey of late, and seems to corrupt the filesystem somehow which makes running disk utility a bad move.

Any insights/input on this issue would be appreciated.
Would using FAT32 with droboshare be better?

If you are using droboshare with drobo, and have NOT recently run Disk Utility… DON’T DO IT!!!

ps. i use Mac OSX 10.6.7

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hi what was the main propblems when copying large files?

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The file copy would start and show 7mins to complete. As the copy progresses the time starts to increase… and then halts. After a few minutes the copy is terminated. Its possible there may be some network issue here… but these problems seem to start when disk pack reaches about 80% capacity.

This leaves a file on the drobo, but obviously it is not valid, so i have to delete it.

I’m not sure this actually causes corruption, but i can’t explain any other reason why the drobo would fail Disk Repair when it had been working fine prior to connecting to droboshare.

I’m now going to test it connected via usb to Timecapsule and see how it goes.

Can droboshare be used to connect other standalone usb drives?

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Hi all,

Further my story, after i formatted the Drobo i copied some files over (via firewire) and then attached it to an Apple Timecapsule for several hours.

I moved more files onto the Drobo over the network, and stopped copies midstream.

I then connected drobo back to Mac, and sure enough Disk Utility indicated the volume now had errors that needed to be corrected.

Instead of using Disk Utility which has screwed up my drobo the last two times, i ran DiskWarrior to repair Directory.

This is what was fixed by Disk Warrior :-
• 143 files had a directory entry with an incorrect text encoding value that was repaired.
• 21 folders had a directory entry with an incorrect text encoding value that was repaired.
• Incorrect values in the Volume Information were repaired.

Reran Disk Utility, and it now states :-
The volume Drobo appears to be OK.

MORAL of this story is, DO NOT USE the inbuilt osx Disk Utility, as it seems to corrupt the drobo when trying to repair it which makes the drive accessible by NOT writeable… so drobo has to be reformatted.

Weird that this only happens AFTER the drive has been attached to an networkable device (such as Timecapsule OR Droboshare)

My early assumptions of an issue with Droboshare may be premature.

At least i have a workaround (of using Disk Warrior).
I will move all my files back onto Drobo and hope Disk Warrior continues to give me a good way of repairing the disk structure.

Hope my experience helps other people.