Can someone please explain to me how is that an improvement?
Also, the device is out of the support cycle, why is there a firmware update?
Drobo Firmware: Version 1.2.3 [2.58.22137]
Fixes in this release:
Restrict the total available physical capacity to 32TB
W.T.H.?
OK, since nobody seems to know, I’m going to speculate that this is an (un)planned obsolescence attempt.
It seems to be a way to prevent the continuous expansion of those models beyond the “officially qualified” size: https://myproducts.drobo.com/article/aa-01124
Now, it could be that indeed the 10TB drives are not working in the Pro’s (I honestly don’t see any reason why the 10TB PMR IronWolf shouldn’t, when the 8TB work), or… it could be that DRI is interested in promoting the latest tech, and through the “update” wants to force some of the old clients to upgrade.
I’m not big on conspiracy theories, but I’ve seen worse… so I’ll assume the worst, therefore… unless I see some evidence of serious bugs (and the release notes show that the only bug is the one introduced right now by DRI themselves) it’s my strong suggestion that nobody updates their Drobo Pro past 1.2.2, block off connections to Drobo sites from the Dashboard to kill the prompt, and probably don’t update the Dashboard past the current 2.8.5 (MacOS). We dont’ want things being smuggled into our hardware do we?
Perhaps instead of alienating their clients Drobo should announce what they’re attempting to achieve with this.
I fully agree with you suggestions
So, does that mean if you upgrade to 1.2.3 you can’t add more than 32TB, or 8 x 4TB drives? What if I want to use, say 6TB drives? Would I need to downgrade to 1.2.2? I’ve looked around and can’t find a download for that… anyone have it?
Conspiracy continues when you look at the help section on the website. http://support.drobo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/308/~/what-are-the-limits-of-smart-volumes-on-drobopro%3F
Not impressed with the lack of information I have received aswell, spending a lot of money purchasing this box due to its future capability to be told half way through sorry but we cant offer you that anymore!
I quote their own words “DroboPro accepts a potential maximum of 256TB of actual physical storage (16 x 16TB). As of this writing, the largest hard drive on the market is 2TB, which means that DroboPro will hold 16TB (8 drives x 2TB each). Compatible drives (i.e., 3.5” SATA) will have to increase in capacity to 32TB before DroboPro hits its limit. The additional capacity expansion leaves you plenty of room to grow in the future.”
I agree that lack of clear and supportive actions and informations is suspicious…or at least unsupportive. Since all is well with MAC OS 10.12.5 and Desk top 3.0.1 and my 8 x 4TB (32TB = 29.10TB actual) setup, I’m not touching the firmware update 1.2.3 unless they saw specifically why I should.
I’ll update info when one of my 4TB departs and I move up to 5TB or 6TB.
New development.
Sierra 10.12.5 ejects my two volumed from my Drobo Pro using USB over night with any use activity.
Leaves two messages:
discs ejected improperly
Disk First can not fix the the volumes
I’m wondering if this is a Sierra issue or might the firmware update remedy this.
Has anyone with Sierra and Drobo Pro updated to Firmware 1.2.3?
I’m running Firmware 1.2.3 and successfully added three 12TB drives and a third 16TB volume with no apparent issues.
What happens when you fill the volumes though? There have been cases with other devices, & even operating systems (most famously Win 95) where owing to addressing limits, once you fill past a certain point you start overwriting existing data rather than using all the space. resulting in data loss.
It’s actually possible the firmware limitation is there to prevent such a scenario.
OSX seems to recognize the limits of the 16TB volumes. I’m going to attempt to copy three volumes worth of media onto this Drobo from another separate one, after ensuring that I’ve got enough actual real space to actually accommodate three full virtual volumes.
Nice. But if one 12TB die, a replacement will take months to rebuild…yike…