DroboFS - Bottom Drive is always marked as bad

Forum History General Discussion
1

Hello -
No matter what, the bottom drive bay for my DroboFS always marks the drive as needing replacement, “Red”. Here is what I have done to correct this issue.

  • Cycled power on Drobo, bottom drive bay failed.
  • Drobo Reset erasing all data, bottom drive bay failed.
  • Inserted brand new never used HST Server class HS, bottom bay failed.
  • Forced reload of Drobo 1.2.6 FS Firmware, bottom bay failed.
  • Drobo Reset unit and inserted only 1 drive in bottom bay, bottom bay failed. Confirmed that drive is spun up and accessed but drive marked as failed.
  • Drobo Reset unit and inserted only one drive in bottom bay, bottom bay failed.
  • Drobo Reset unit and inserted two drives - one in top bay and one in bottom bay, bottom bay failed.
  • Moved failed bottom drive from bottom bay to forth bay, success - the previously failed drive spun up and RAID was rebuilt.
  • Moved “Green” drive from bay 4 to bottom bay 5 - bottom bay failed.
  • Created a 4 drive RAID and filled it to 95% capacity causing Drobo to mark bottom bay as “Insert drive here soon, Yellow steady light”. I inserted a new drive to bay 5, the yellow steady light remained for 24 hours, no effect.
  • Removed all 5 drives and reinserted into a new random order, bottom drive bay failed.

This is the second time I have had this problem, I have never gotten the bottom bay to ever work. This is my second DroboFS, this unit was replaced once for the same issue.

thanks for any help.
Steve

2

Sounds like that slot on your backplane is bad.

3

Yeah - but twice? What are the chances of Drobo sending me a second unit with the exact same problem… I did check and the replacement units serial number did not match my original just in case they might have sent me the same unit back.

I guess when you have eliminated all possibilities, whatever is left no matter how improbable must be the truth.

4

There was a rash of Gen1, Gen2 and FS’s with slot 1 backplane failures years ago. IIRC, it was the way the board was designed, the bottom slot had more stress on the connector.

If they are replacing your FS out of spares it wouldn’t surprise me if the ‘new’ on had the same issue.