After waiting over 24 hours the Drobo finally finished doing whatever it was doing. Now it’s telling me I need to add a new partition. I guess I’m a little confused, but I was hoping it would just extend the one partition to incorporate the new disk capacity. Originally I was running a 750GB and three 1.5TB drives. I just replaced the 750GB drive with a 2TB drive. I really didn’t want the Drobo to appear as two different drives, I want it to continue to look like one drive.
Not sure it matters, but I’m running on the host computer W7 Ultimate 64-bit.
What do I need to do to have it appear the way I want it?
TIA,
JD
if you selected a 2tb partition when you first got your drobo then there is nothing you can do (except take all your data off and wipe it).
whatever size you pick at first - that is the size all the partitions will be.
as soon as your real disk space gets bigger than your partition size… then it will make a new partition.
if you picked a 2tb size… then once your get more than 2Tb of space, it makes a second partition (so you can use the new space). then when you get more than 4Tb it will make a third partition, more than 6Tb and it will make a fourth
if you had picked 8 tb as your partition size -then the additional space you just added would smiply be immediately available… and it would make a second partition as soon as you had more than 8tb of space… then a third partition when you had more than 16tb of space etc etc
you cannot resize drobo’s partitions (there are quite a few utilities which can resize partitions on normal hard disks - DO NOT try and use these on a drobo!)[hr]
these may be informative (but ultimately perhaps not useful!)
http://support.datarobotics.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/130
http://support.datarobotics.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/23
http://support.datarobotics.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/101
Thanks Doc.
Another question… windows disk manager says I must initialize the disk. Is there something through the Drobo Dashboard that I need to do to get it to ask me about setting a new partition again? Do I need to click the rename Drobo and volumes button?
Thanks,
JD
if you standby your drobo… then unplug and then reconnect the cable (to wake it back up) then dashboard should prompt you about your additional partition again
if not then yes you should be able to access it through the volumes button
Doc,
I just pressed the Format button… it says Drobo has detected a new unformatted volume. Which formatting option would you prefer?
- format the new volume only
- format all volumes
Obviously the first, but is this what I should do? Or do I need to trigger the partition message first?
JD
Just do the first option, but make the partition bigger then your drives (16TB recommended) then you won’t have to worry about going through this ordeal again until you have 8TB drives in your Drobo. Even 4x4TB will only yield you 12TB of usable space. 16TB partition will set you up for a long time. Best option in my opinion.