Migrating drives from 5D to 5D

Forum History Drobo 5D
1

My new 5D, purchased 16 days ago, failed after a few days. The dashboard couldn’t find it (nor could I; no device recognisable as a Drobo in HWInfo) and my N: drive no longer appeared. So, I’ve opted for a replacement which should arrive in a few days.

I installed two 4Gb drives, and a 128Gb mSATA card into the first 5D before powering it on and attaching it to my system. The first thing that happened was that the dashboard updated the 5D’s firmware. Then a drive was created. A few days later I added a 2Tb drive, and a few days after that, the Drobo stopped communicating with my PC.

So, I removed my 3 drives, and mSATA card, and am awaiting the replacement.

What order should I use to get the newer 5D ready? My guess would be:
[list=1]
[]Power on/connect the 5D with no drives/card
[]Wait for the dashboard to recognise the 5D and perhaps update the firmware
[]Turn off the 5D
[]Install my three drives, and the mSATA card
[*]Power on the 5D and start using the 5D
[/list]
Does this sound about right?

I’m extremely wary about adding the drives whilst the new 5D is powered on, as I suspect the drives would get formatted and added to a newly created Virtual drive, losing all my data in the process.

2

That sounds like a good plan. When you put the drives in, I would put them in as a pack, all together (and in the same order as the old machine) and when it boots up it should recognize the existing Drobo partition.

3

“in the same order”… could be a problem. I took the three disks out, and stacked them carefully in a box. Then my dog came along and blundered into the box…

I know the two 4Tb drives go in the bottom two slots, and the 2Tb drive goes in the top slot, with two slots empty in the middle.

So, I have a 50:50 chance of getting the order right. I’ve seen posts implying that the order isn’t critical. Well, I may be about to find out the hard way…

4

Yeah I havent researched that issue enough to say definitively if it was critical either but I suspect you will be fine, otherwise it would be stressed more by others.