Keep on or turn off at night when not using?

Drobo - End of Sale Drobo FS
1

Hey guys, I am just wondering what you prefer? Do you guys keep your Drobo FS on 24/7 or do you turn it off at night when you know your not going to use it?

I heard that the drobo FS does stuff when its on and not being used that are beneficial but I am not sure what they are exactly. I would also like to know the opinion of one of drobo Staff who post here, is the device specifically made to be running 24/7 or not?

2

I don’t turn it off if I can help it because it tends to freeze on boot for me (new unit didn’t fix it, so it’s either a firmware bug or something the Drobo doesn’t like about my hard drives). Given how long it takes to boot even when it is successful, I’d leave it on all the time.

That said, I’d be interested in knowing what the idle power consumption is like since the fan is always running (for no reason whatsoever).

3

I leave mine on all the time, but I’ve never seen boot hangs at all. I have 4 drives in it, mixed WD and Seagate 1.5TB’s. Also booting is very quick on my end, less than a minute, with 5 shares and 2 TM’s. Whats your drive arrangement?

4

I have not seen any boot issues for the times I turned it off and turned it on, I have 5 drives in there, 3 1.5 WD green drives and 2 2TB WD green drives.

Thanks for the replies guys, I guess I will just keep mine on then.

5

Three drives:
1 x 2.0TB WD Caviar Green (WD20EARS)
1 x 2.0TB WD Caviar Green (WD20EADS)
1 x 1.0TB Hitachi Deskstar (pulled from Apple Time Capsule)

Booting for me takes at least a minute just to reach the capacity lights counting upwards; that stage takes at least a minute more. Heck, just authenticating and mounting a share the first time takes a minute.

Nothing here should be causing any problems; my feeling is if it’s the drives themselves causing problems, then that’s still a bug to be fixed by DRI, as the whole point of the Drobo is mix and match scenarios like this are supposed to “Just Work”.

Anyhoo - didn’t mean to take over someone else’s thread. I’ve avoided issues by just running it 24x7.

6

I shutdown at night…I have no need for it to run while I"m asleep.

BTW, my watt meter indicates ~12-15 watts when the drives are spun down. This seems to be in line with the drobo published spec of 12 watts.