I initially formated my 1st gen Drobo for a 4TB partition. THe Dashboard says 'Maximum Capacity 4TB. I am currently putting bigger drives inside that will take the Drobo beyond 4TB. My understanding is that the additional space would not be available until I reformat the Drobo for a bigger partition (e.g. 16TB), even though I am currently only planning to put in 5TB. To be able to format, I would basically need to copy all my data elsewhere, reformat the Drobo and copy all the data back. THat would force to buy 2-3 additional drives just for the data transfer! Which I won’t do…
Is there a way to extend the Drobo’s max capacity by using a tool like iPartition? without having to move my data elsewhere?
From what I understand, you cannot change the drobo’s maximum partition size without reformatting it. Now also from my understanding the new drives that you put in that will take your drobo beyond 4TB will cause the drobo to create another partition of a maximum size of 4TB but you will not have to do anything. The drobo should automatically see the extra space and create another partition. The extra partion will look as if it is a full 4TB available but this is drobo’s “Thin Provisioning” feature. If you only want to have one large partition then I do not know of any other way then transferring all of the data off the drobo and reformatting it.
If anyone knows of any other method the change the maximum partition size (i.e. from 4TB to 16TB) without formatiing the drobo please let me know.
That is my understanding too.
Usually iPartition is somehow more powerful that other disk utilities and allows you to repartition disks that other utilities would mess up. So I was hoping it might be able to handle a Drobo repartitioning…
Well if anyone knows…
Im not sure if the drobo’s own volume management is available to the non-pro drobos
if it is… you could create ANOTHER 8TB partition - as wlel as your two 4TB ones… move everythign to the 8TB one… then delete your original two 4TB ones?