Hi there, I’ve just joined the Drobo club and so far I’m quite happy and impressed. I do however have a query about the speed of the fan and the noise created by the unit.
On Tuesday my brand new 2nd gen Drobo arrived (bought at sale prices with the arrival of the Drobo S imminent!) and I gleefully set it up and started transferring my data onto it. During this period and for quite a while afterward the fan seemed to be going full speed and was quite loud. I figure this is because there was quite a lot of reading and writing going on as everything was copied over and layed out on the Drobo system, correct?
When I arrived home this afternoon to find that everything had been copied from one of my removable drives, I inserted that drive into the Drobo and it got started again, presumably moving things around again for maximum data protection.
So my two questions are:
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[]Will my Drobo make this much noise every time there is any activity going on?
[]Is there any way for me to control the fan speed or set a maximum level?
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Everything is at the latest version, connected via Firewire 800 to my Mac Mini.
1.Will my Drobo make this much noise every time there is any activity going on?
It shouldn’t. Ours are pretty quiet even when data transfers or rebuildings are taking place.
2.Is there any way for me to control the fan speed or set a maximum level?
Not that we are aware of. The Drobo Dashboard has not implemented this feature. I’m curios to know how much did U pay for the Drobo v2? Did U consider the Drobo-S at all?
Both new models are too rich for me. I have a Pro sitting under my desk and if the price dropped further, I’ll probably pick up another one.
Welcome to the drobospace!
I got mine as a package with two Samsung 1.5TB drives for AU$879, but I’ve seen the Drobo itself available for around the AU$600 mark recently. Expensive, but we do pay the Australian tax for being in the middle of nowhere and that’s the cheapest I’ve seen it in the time I’ve been looking into this.
I am hoping that it settles down and is a little quieter in the future as I’ve got it sitting in our TV cabinet with the HT Mac Mini, and I can just make out the noise from the fan when we’ve got the TV on. It’s probably just because it’s a new noise and we’ll get used to it soon enough, but it’s definitely noticeable when the TV isn’t on.
I think it would be really useful to be able to set a maximum speed for the fan through the dashboard. Having a low, medium and high option would probably be enough.
Check the cover on your Drobo, there have been recent reports of covers rattling.
My Drobo is barely noticeable, and that’s only if I’m sitting close to it. At my typical viewing distance of 8 feet, I can’t hear the Drobo over the TV.
I think there’s one more thing which could potentially affect the cooling performance of the drives, related to the drives’ physical design. I wouldn’t even think about it until I’ve added an older 500GB drive to two 1TB ones I had in my Drobo:
As you can see, the two upper Samsung drives leave very little room for the air to flow between their lower edge and the bottom of the slot while the Seagate has much larger clearing, which I think affects the cooling to at least some degree. Honestly, while having only the upper two’s installed, I wondered if it’s not the fault in the Drobo design as the air has quite a hard time squeezing through these 1-2 millimetres of clearing until I’ve realized that not all the hard drives are designed that way. I’m not blaming Samsung as I’m not even sure if this design feature is consistent between various drive models of the various manufacturers - I’d just like to point out that such a minor details could potentially affect the temperature in the Drobo.
Air has a very low viscosity. The heroes never have any trouble hiding in the river, and breathing through a hollow reed. It works.
Imagine the other extreme, and the gap was a metre across. The fan would hardly move the air, and it would mostly remove the heat by convection.
