Just a quick question to confirm something.
I’ve been downgrading my DroboFS storage slowly over the past week from 5 HDDs to just 2.
At the moment they occupy the 2nd & 3rd drive bay. If I was to turn off the DroboFS, and move them into the 1st and 2nd drive bay will this screw up my data or will it just work?
Thanks
If the Drobo is as simple as I think it is, it’ll screw up your data. In other words, if the metadata (that tracks which blocks are assigned to which files) hardcodes drive bays, your data will be messed up.
On the other hand, if your Drobo has completed the relayout for 2 drives, then it means it is simply mirroring data. In that case, moving the drive on bay 3 to 1 will, at worst, cause a complete copy from drive 2 to 1 (ex-3).
Warning: these are wild speculations. Consult Drobo support for an authoritative answer.
Thanks for the answer, will pop a quick email off to Drobo just to be sure.
My understanding is that the Drobo is not drive bay position dependent. I’ve certainly reorganized physical drives in my DroboFS without any ill results. They also state that for moving the Drobo you should remove the disk pack, but you don’t need to track what drive went in what bay - just keep all the drives together is all.
Just an update for future reference, moved my HDD in drive bay 3 to drive bay 1 and worked no issues.
Re-protected the drives (as I had removed a 2TB one previously) and now working great as per usual.