Drobo Repair not available

Drobo - End of Sale Drobo FS
1

Hi folks,
So I have 1 drive left from a 3 drive array that I want to attempt to read any data from. From the knowledge base article regarding “unable to mount share”, I should run “Drobo Repair.” However, when I go to the “tools” section on Drobo Dashboard, it is not available. Is there any way to get this to show up, or to read partial data from this one drive?

Thanks! Kris

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Hi Kris, what error are you getting again? I would expect the error “Too many hard drives removed…” since there are two drives missing. Of course, this is assuming that the Drobo was in the standard single disk redundancy.

If so, I don’t believe the Drobo Repair would be able to fix this, you will likely need to find those drives again and power up the Drobo with them in the Drobo (or at least one of them, depending on the situation).

Did something happen to those drives?

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Hi Caleb,
Yup correct. I added a 2nd disk (not one of the originals) just to see if I could get the Drobo to respond. It does, and the original shares now show up, but there’s no files. I’m assuming there’s some data on this one drive, but I don’t know how to view.

I repurposed the original two additional drives, so there’s no way of bringing back the array to its original format. I’m a little surprised that the Drobo can’t rebuild even partial data though.

Thanks!

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We don’t exactly know how Drobo arranges its data, but I’m pretty sure it’s more complex than simple spanning.

Data isn’t distributed on the file level, it’s distributed on the block level, so loss of a drive doesn’t lose full files, it loses bits and pieces of many files.

It’s much like losing random cells from a spreadsheet. Yes, there’s probably still data there, but unlikely that you’ll have an entire usable row or column.

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hi kris,
i was just wondering if you could mention a bit more info about the setups you had at the start, and what you did to end up where you are now?

eg, did you have files and shares
and did you move off those files, ending up with empty share folders
and then reduce the hard drives one by one (to repurpose them somewhere else etc)
and did you then just add another spare drive into the drobo, which it took,
and then you just saw the empty shares again?

(sorry if i misunderstood, but i couldnt fully understand all the scenario) :)[hr]
also:
how did you end up like this:
“So I have 1 drive left from a 3 drive array that I want to attempt to read any data from.”