Drobo going to sleep and won't wake up (Vista 64 bit)

Forum History Drobo
1

Since a couple of weeks I’ve had two problems with my Drobo. This is the second.

After not using the Drobo for a while (not measured the time) it goes to sleep and don’t want to wake up again. If I try to access files through the Windows Explorer, I can usually browse some stuff in the file system (probably cached), but after drilling down a bit or trying to opening a file I get the Vista “Wait Circle” mouse pointer and Windows Explorer locks up.

If I disconnect the power plug to Drobo and attach it again, it works as it should.

However, because I’m running Truecrypt and have not had the chance to dismount my Truecrypt volume before pulling the power plug (Truecrypt also locks if I try to dismount the mounted Drobo volume, and then I have to restart the computer), I usually have to perform a very time consuming “Repair Filesystem” after restarting.

This problem just came out of nowhere (or maybe some unknown auto update from MS) a couple of weeks ago. Before that this has been working flawlessly for several weeks.

Anyone having the same problem or an idea what might be causing it?

I’ve tried “most” combinations between these versions with the same result:
Firmwares: 1.3.3, 1.3.4, 1.3.5
Drobo Dashboard: drobodashboardinstaller_1092_v1-2-4, drobodashboardinstaller_20000_1-5-1

The OS is MS Vista Business 64 Bit.

I am using a Sunix IEEE 1394B Express Host Controller (FWB3414) said to be compliant with “1394 Open Host Controller Interface Ver1.1”. Which is to say I am using FW800.

The driver I am using is v5.5 of UniBrains “Windows 64bit Driver for 1394A to 1394B”

2

Sounds like a drive isn’t spinning up.
Try reversing the order of your drives.

Or opening a support case so we can look at the drives.

3

I think you might be right. It’s like the drives are about a second to late while spinning-up, something somewhere times out - and then the catalog I was clicking at on the Drobo gets corrupt. Which makes me need to run CHKDSK before I can access the content again.

The problem is now sort of solved by disabling the Vista power save functionality for hard drives (turn of harddrives after X minutes). Because the drives never go to sleep, they never have to spin-up.

But what would be the difference if I changed the order of the drives, all drives still need to spin-up after going to sleep mode don’t they?

4

Well if the first drive in the array is the one that is slow to spin up, that would cause the issues you are seeing, if the drive is last in the array you won’t experience the problem. Unless you want to replace that drive for it being slow to spin up?