I’ve had my Drobo for 3 or 4 years now, and I have run it of 4 machines in that time ( mainly macs, but a win7 pc too) and its never worked properly with the FireWire 800 connection?
I run it of USB no probs, and generally on FireWire the Drobo just won’t fire up, just sits in standby. In the past it may have booted via FireWire, but very randomly I’m sure, that’s why I run it via USB.
It is of course not the FireWire port, chances of 4 diff ports on 4 diff machines being dud is not happening.
It’s worth pointing out that I’ve not used the Drobo dash for many years now… Could that be it?
Or do I need to do something else? USB the Drobo boots pretty much as soon as I hit the power button on my iMac.
Yeah, just the cable that came with my Drobo. Definitely did work at some point, cos I remember comparing speeds between USB. But stopped using it cos it just wouldn’t boot with the mac every time.
The FireWire connection should boot the Drobo when the mac is powered up right? Just like the USB? Or does the FireWire kick in once in os x?
The firewire will cause the drobo to boot with the mac, same as a USB.
It sounds like either a bad cable(more likely) and/or a firewire port on the drobo. You can use either firewire port, and for troubleshooting just have drobo hooked up on FW, no other devices. If just one port works, just make the drobo the last device on the firewire chain. I am primarily a PC guy, and from my quick testing there is not much difference in speed between a Gen 2 Drobo on FW vs USB. The drobo is the bottleneck in speed. I know there is a difference on host CPU utilization though…
