DroboCopy jobs frozen/undeleteable

Drobo - End of Sale Drobo FS
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First post …

I will refrain from criticising the dog’s breakfast that is the UI for drobo and drobo copy and get right to the point.

On a Mac (latest everything), and using drobocopy and all my jobs are f*cked up. They won’t work, they won’t delete, and they won’t remove themselves.

Since deleting the data off the drobo could take about a week, and since I’ve already had to reset the stupid thing three times, can anyone give some advice on how to re-set the job list on drobocopy?

Is there a plist somewhere that can be zapped? I realise the app is probably some java-script nightmare and that it’s not really a Mac app, but there must be some way to reset the list of copy jobs.

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Please tell me you have an iMac with ssd. I’ve been having the same problem with mine dashboard v2 and up will not work with my ssd drive, my MacBook pro v2.0.2 works fine. You will have to down grade to version 1.8.4 and redo the drobocopys. Please reply or pm me with make and model of computer I’ve been dealing with them for the last month about this.[hr]
Also you can start the drobo copy and it won’t start then shutdown dashboard , then restart dashboard from apps folder and you will notice it is now running

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[quote=“lilmill, post:2, topic:2698”]
Please tell me you have an iMac with ssd. I’ve been having the same problem with mine dashboard v2 and up will not work with my ssd drive, my MacBook pro v2.0.2 works fine. You will have to down grade to version 1.8.4 and redo the drobocopys. Please reply or pm me with make and model of computer I’ve been dealing with them for the last month about this.[hr]
Also you can start the drobo copy and it won’t start then shutdown dashboard , then restart dashboard from apps folder and you will notice it is now running
[/quote]No, sorry no SSD in my MacPro yet.

I’ve had this POS DroboFS for two weeks now and it has never successfully backed up anything. I’ve tried two versions of Dashboard, updated firmware, and done pretty much everything on can think of but all to no avail. Nothing works.

Drobocopy jobs just silently stop working about halfway through a job (I’ve never had a job make it past about 4-500 Gigs or so), and all the reboots and resets and cajolling won’t make them work again.

Drobocopy is just astoundingly bad software. I’m actually shocked at how bad it is. There is no way to even tell if your job is working except looking at the read-write light on the machine itself.

Besides the fact that I’m having to babysit all my backups, it’s so slow that the net effect is like when we did giant tape backups in the early 90’s.

Message to drobo … I don’t actually like sitting watching my drobo back up for 4 hours only to have it fail a half hour minutes before the end of the job on some unknown error. That’s why I don’t use tape backup anymore in the first place.

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hi Prof, what is your main aim?
timemachine stuff, or just wanting to have certain folders synch copied onto the drobo?

maybe there are some other base o/s (mac) tool that you can use, which can treat the drobo just like a basic drive letter and do the actual work themselves?

eg on a pc, i use SyncBack SE and it works great, i use it to synch copy my v1 folders onto the v2

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[quote=“Paul, post:4, topic:2698”]
hi Prof, what is your main aim?
timemachine stuff, or just wanting to have certain folders synch copied onto the drobo?

maybe there are some other base o/s (mac) tool that you can use, which can treat the drobo just like a basic drive letter and do the actual work themselves?

eg on a pc, i use SyncBack SE and it works great, i use it to synch copy my v1 folders onto the v2
[/quote]Well, I’m pretty fed up so if drobo customer support fails to come through (and based on what I know so far I’m assuming they will fail), my only option is to explore the whole Linux BusyBox thing and perhaps use a simple rsync script to back up to the device.

I don’t want to though. I hate Linux and I’m not interested in learning a minor implementation of it (busybox). I feel that the manufacturers of a $700 device (loaded with almost a thousand dollars worth of hard drives) should provide simple management tools themselves.

In my daily life I actually manage several file servers and each one has their own silly little management tool like the drobo Desktop but at least they work. I’ve never seen anythign as bad as drobo Dashboard before.

Crucially, it’s a management tool for the device and for backups to the device, that can’t even tell you what’s currently happening on that device. For instance the DroboCopy backup list can be fiddled with all day, stopping and starting jobs etc., but it never updates the UI. You click “start” on a backup job and nothing happens at all in the UI. If you restart the dashboard app you will find that something did happen, it just didn’t communicate that back to the dashboard.

This is un-forgiveable, childish and extremely unprofessional IMO. I don’t know how any real professional houses deal with this mess. I have to assume that all the real pros simply use some other software for backups because drobo’s “Dashboard” is a joke.

Edit: I should say that I’m not interested in Time MAchine, I’m just using this as an NAS to back up the three main drives from my MacPro. The jobs are like “copy drive x to folder y”.

Not once in two weeks has drobo sucessfully backed up a single drive. it gets about 400 Gigs into it and then just silently stops working. Every time.

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have you looked at the logs for the failed drobocopys.lately mine is failing when trying to delete file that are not on source. And when you read the logs it tells you that. also if you dont mind the the idea of a sparse image carbon copy cloaner is working for me as a backup to drobocopy. i really like the fact the drobocopy keeps the original file structure but it is painfully slow

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Quite. I advise clients to steer clear of Data Robotics until things get sorted out.

Besides the entirely decent FreeNAS and other “appliance-like OS’s” one can run on a PC, there are NAS devices from Synology, QNAP, and Netgear.

For what it’s worth, I’ve seen Netgear’s ReadyNAS devices used alongside NetApps as lower-cost storage. Despite the consumer brand name, their software and support really do seem enterprise grade.

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[quote=“lilmill, post:6, topic:2698”]
have you looked at the logs for the failed drobocopys.lately mine is failing when trying to delete file that are not on source. And when you read the logs it tells you that. also if you dont mind the the idea of a sparse image carbon copy cloaner is working for me as a backup to drobocopy. i really like the fact the drobocopy keeps the original file structure but it is painfully slow
[/quote]Well to continue the rant … :slight_smile:

All of my drobo logs are encrypted for some reason so I can’t even tell what’s going on. This is again kind of sad from a profesional standpoint in that the first thing drobo asks for on a troubleshooting exercise is the logs and diagnostics. I have 4TBs of sensitive information, the last thing I should be asked to do is send an encrypted log file to DataRobotics. The whole idea of sending a report on your sensitive data to whomever, without the capability to read what you are sending them is problematic at best.

I think I’m giving up at this point, it’s just too stressful and it’s making me angry and I don’t like being angry.

Thanks for the advice about Carbon Copy Cloner. I did think of that, but I want the backups to be automatic in the middle of the night so probably rsync and a shell script would be best if I’m going to have to fiddle with schedules and so forth.

Thanks for answering my questions and thanks to Paul as well. Part of the frustration is the impenetrable “support” Data Robotics seems to offer. It helps just to know that someone is listening.

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FYI ccc can be automatic you can schedule task to run

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[quote=“Prof._Peabody, post:3, topic:2698”]
I’ve had this POS DroboFS for two weeks now[/quote]

Best advice - send it back and get a Synology, NetGear, or other device. Seriously, the pretty case just isn’t worth the aggravation.