Drobo

Drobo 5D stuck in data protection + a bad drive

#1

Hi,

I have a Drobo 5D (in dual disk redundancy mode) reporting that it is running data protection (and has been for about 3 weeks) with 6TB used of 8.12 TB in total usable capacity.

there is no indicator of how long is left for data protection that I can find (dashboard doesn’t seem to show that anymore?)

I have 2 slightly contradictory error messages in dashboard (plus 2 emails a day):

#1 - Warning, Data protection in progress. NO NOT remove any drives [until done…] - I also get this twice a day on email.
#2 - Warning: Drobo has detected a failed or removed drive. Your data is now protected by only one additional drive failure. Please add or remove a new drive soon.

Drive 3 is showing “Warning” for health. so I assume that’s the bad one. (Drive 1 is showing as “Healed” and has done for at least 6 months and the other 3 are all showing “Good”

(also orange / green flashing lights in dashboard and for all drives not he Drobo itself).

Do I remove it and put in the nice new 8TB one that I’ve had sitting on top of the Drobo for 3 weeks ? Do I wait longer? if so, how long?

I’m close to pulling the probably bad drive out but wanted to see if anyone can advise on the best course of action?

Many thanks for any advice.
Lee

p.s. the whole lot is on backblaze but I don’t really want to spend a coupe of months downloading it all if it goes horribly wrong…

#2

I remove “Warning” drive and firmly plug in new drive. Then give it time…

#3

So I did pull out the bad drive and put in the new one -

first the Drobo didn’t seem to recognise the new drive (no lights came on next to it and the Drobo Dashboard didn’t show anything in that bay).

around 24 hrs later it had appeared and was part of the “drive protection in progress” lights flashing green/yellow.

Finally, a few days later all the lights are green and it looks good again…

I’ll swap the “Healed” drive for another new 8TB drive next month I think.

Is it generally best to power down the Drobo change 1 drive and power it back up again so that it doesn’t immediately start changing to single drive protection?

thanks for the advice…
Lee