As many of you know, I have been pleading for >16TB volume support on direct-attached Drobo’s for quite a while now.
Today, I got my answer.
[i]Thank you for contacting Drobo Technical Support.
To date there is no known plan to expand the direct connect Drobo to a Volume size above 16 TB.
It would be best to watch Drobo.com for any new developments or should anything change.
Kind Regards,
Stephen P.
Technical Support Agent[/i]
I’m out. Going to Synology.
I’m glad to be able to say that response isn’t accurate, we will be launching support for 64 TB volumes on Drobo 5D soon.
CTO Drobo
Seems like the Drobo people need to talk to each other.
Synology and you need direct-attached storage? AFAIK Synology have NAS products.
I recently reformatted my drobo 5N to use new 64TB volume. Works great. 
Y’all should create a sticky thread in the 5D forum letting people know about this. I’m one of a number of 5D owners that is unhappy to find out about the current maximum 16TB volume limit. I also think y’all should be more up front about this on the marketing info.
Any updates about this, Rod?
Yep I’m out too - Just ordered a Synology 1815+. I’ve been a huge fan of Drobo over the years (after I move on from homebuilt UNraid - had a 5FS and a 5N - over about 8 years), but frankly the thought of starting from scratch to get past the 16TB limit had me scratching my head and saying I might as well sell the old beast off while it has a minimal value and suck up the network transfer to a new unit. Felt like I got thrown the big middle finger by drobo. It’ll be nice to have something capable of transcoding in Plex (not to mention taking eons for everything to happen).
Good luck guys, I am just looking for something that is not near as finicky, has a modern CPU, and real support (drobo apps were a joke), where I don’t get ignored by everyone that works for the company in an empty forum.
For me, now that the 5D firmware supports 64TB volumes I’m pretty happy with that attached to a Mac Mini (2012, i7 CPU) which handles all the services like Plex, Time Machine Server, etc… just fine.
hi dschur, the decision is always yours to make, and thats fair enough.
for a moment there as i was reading your post i thought maybe all your other posts on the forum had no answers (which woundt be so good) so i looked at each and every thread but found multiple replies and discussions phew
Thanks Paul, I am all cut over to the 8 bay 1815+ now. It took a while as pulling disks out of the 5N had glacial rebuild speeds (100+ hours each - by contrast the new unit was able to rebuild during expansion in 16-24 hours). Near the end the Drobo gave up on rebuilds (thank goodness), and I was able to get all of my data off the unprotected array before it croaked.
The 1815+ is a world of difference - I get consistent 112MB/s uploads and downloads - 100% of the time with no mystery stalling that I saw on the Drobo 5N all of the time. At one point I filled the new NAS to over 99% capacity and no slowdowns at all - the Drobo would have been toast, any time it got over 75-80% it would start to crawl for me. The most frustrating part of my 5N was the constant random slowdowns with no idea what was going on, and no visibility, it was truly a black box. That and the fact that Drobo stranded me forever at the 16TB boundary.
Plex is killer on the Synology - transcoding high bitrate 1080p streams is no problem for me - but it does crank the CPU up to ~90%. The anemic cpu in the 5N could not handle any transcoding in Plex.
The tools on the new unit are amazing - I can do anything and have complete visibility into the current status and inner workings. It is so refreshing to have visibility and tools. Third party apps are plenty and 1st party support for additional apps is very good (I think Drobo updated plex like 5 years ago 
I always had to manually install updates). The ability to extend to 18 bays via expansion units means the 1815+ should serve me well for a very long time.
All in all it was a good choice for me. If anyone needs a spare/second 5N chassis in good condition, lemme know - I’m going to ditch this one for cheap.
Also, strangely after my last post my account was locked out mysteriously and I had to reset my password a few times to get access again to these forums again. That seemed rather odd to me.
Good luck to all of you on the Drobo path. For me I got tired of waiting for new and better solutions and the 4 year cycle of upgrades just wasn’t cutting it. To me Drobo appeared to by a dying (if not dead) company.[hr]
Also I should add that my comments about getting ignored by everyone that works for the company in an empty forum were referring more to Data Robotics participation, not that of end users - You and others have been very helpful, but the people from Data Robotics never participate or give answers/help. OK, I guess never is not accurate, more like 6 times in 7 years.
Another one to add to this thread.
My DroboPro has been marvellous for years now. Unfortunately, I’ve been tinkering with storage again and sort of accidentally set up a ZFS server.
My old desktop from 2008 (Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, a few added drive bays) running Linux with raidz2 across 6 drives sustains 50-60MB/sec over SMB and a bit less over iSCSI (and 100MB/s for rsync; it’s just a weak CPU). It doesn’t have that Drobo Cool, but it also doesn’t have that Drobo Encrypted Diagnostics or that Drobo Why Did You Rebuild Last Night. Or that Drobo If You Die, I Pray To the Gods of Online Used Marketplaces.
Once I migrate over, I’ll find a good home for this DroboPro. It’s a beautiful unit.
Well, it got me thinking about Drobo again, and reading the forum. Great to see some of the old-timers still around!