Every few days for the last couple of weeks, my Drobo FW800 has been reporting that it’s in a critical situation with a drive malfunction, then a few seconds later it goes into disk recovery mode and usually within a few minutes to 20 minutes depending on what it was doing, the disk pack is back to normal.
This is one of those problems I’ve had before some years ago but it’s frustrating now since my Drobo FW800 is probably out of warranty and getting it back in warranty is a little expensive. That doesn’t make me so upset in that Drobo Dashboard gives precious little information about what’s going on. For example, which drive gave it the problem? I finally saw the event happen in person (it was drive #1) but I don’t know if Drive #1 is always the culprit. The Drobo diagnostics are only decipherable by tech support.
I can pull drive #1 and send it through the Western Digital’s diagnostic program (it’s one of the 2 TB EADS Green drives) but again, I have no way to tell if I’m going down the right path or something else is going on.
contact DRI support, send them your logs and ask them to confirm which disk is faulty - then get that disk exchanged with the manufacturer/replace it yourself - seems pretty obvious.
I just didn’t know if DRI support would speak to me at all without ponying up $125 to verify logs I can’t read myself. Oh well, I guess I’ll make the phone call.
[quote=“misterlab, post:4, topic:1579”]
What? You have to pay to get them to tell you what’s causing a drobo to malfunction!?[/quote]
No, that hasn’t been established yet… the OP was just wondering if that was the case.
We assist any customer who calls or opens a case. If we find the drobo needs to be replaced, then obviously you need to purchase out of warranty DroboCare to get the Drobo replaced.
I understand that if the hardware is out of warranty then it would be down to the customer to repair/replace.
What I’m concerned about is the process of determining where the fault is. Since the log files are encrypted, a customer has no way of being able to make an informed decision of which component is at fault.
Can you confirm that there wouldn’t be a charge to determine the root cause of a problem if a drobo is out of warranty?
Thanks Jennifer. Indeed, support has been very helpful to me when I opened up the case. Out of warranty Drobocare to get the unit replaced (if it comes to that) is a fair trade. In the meantime, support has asked me to wait until the issue happens again so that we can get some recent diagnostics for support to examine. In the meantime, I may buy a new 2 TB WD Green drive in preparation to replace what seems (on first blush) to be a flakey unit.
BTW, I was told that the main reason why the log files are encrypted were to keep users from jumping to conclusions based on the data they were analyzing. I’m ok with that as long as someone can tell me what it’s says without having to pay out of pocket warranty costs for the work. Your out-of-warranty policy seems to help until the unit needs to be replaced or the drives need to be sent in for recovery. I think that’s fair.
Again, we will not charge you to tell you if the issue is with the Drobo or if with the drives. Our warranty does not cover drives. The drive manufacturers cover that.
I know. Sorry if that wasn’t clear in my post. The 2 GB Green Drives have 3 year warranties and mine should all be covered as of this date if there is a problem.