Drobo behaving oddly

Forum History Drobo
1

Okay, I have the original 4-bay model hooked up via USB to my Windows Vista machine.

Per earlier thread, can’t submit a customer service ticket.

I also don’t see how to attach my diagnostic here.

I had the bottom drive fail–no problem ordered a new drive. I go to put it in when I realize that my Drobo has “dropped out” of the Drobo Dashboard.

I reboot, and all of a sudden the Drobo, which had had 3 green lights minus the black bottom bay, goes into data protection mode–with a DIFFERENT drive showing “red” (second from bottom) . Fine, whatever. I let it finish data protection and take a diagnotstic.

I reboot.

Now, the Drobo is showing ALL red. I can’t cajole it to do anything else. I tried a few re-powers, and it showed various drives as black, not red.

In other words, I can’t seem to get it into a state where I can put that new drive in.

It’s acted up before.

If nothing else, I want to get my Drobo into a state where I can get the data OFF before I have to replace it.

Any ideas?

If someone from Drobo Support can contact me directly, that would be great.

Please help.

UPDATE: After some fiddling, got it to be recognized while in recovery mode again, squeezed off another Diagnostic on it. Still can’t contact Help.

2

hi moons,

when one of the drive bay lights came up as a solid red, i think that it was letting you know that in future you’d need to upgrade it with a larger one.
(this could have been because you went from working drives in slots 1, 2 and 3, and 4, down to just working drives in slots 1, 2 and 3).

but as you later had alll drives red (or blank), it could be something else.

can you power everything off,
and while power is still off, remove all drives from the slots (making a note of which slot they came from),
and removing the usb cable from the drobo (and computer).
and then powering up just the drobo with no other connections or drives inside.

… can you make notes on what does it do in as much detail as possible?
also do you have more information on the drives you are using please, such as make and size?

IMPORTANT: if/when you put the drives back inside - make sure all power is OFF!!

(in terms of attaching a ticket, i think because you are an infrequent poster/user on the forums, you might not be able to attach, but usually if you go to the support website, you can raise a ticket there, and that system should allow new users to attach)

Ultimately, if the drobo unit itself is damaged, i dont think support teams will give you a free replacement as its too old - you “might” be able to pay something for a replacement, but most probably they will advise you on a newer model to purchase, based on the findings from the diagnostics. (keep all diagnostic files that you have captured, old and new, as might have useful info overall) - i think if you show a genuine willingness to purchase a newer model (assuming the old one has broken) in order to be able to recover and migrate your existing drives/data to the new one, that they would help you.