I read at drobo.com that firmware 1.3.5 has been released, although there is no date.
I have been having issues with my drobo V2 basicly the whole past year. Normally, once it’s up and running it’s stable, but when booting it, it goes into a constant reboot loop. I’ve found a workaround that used to work until today. It’s to unseat one or two drives (sometimes it won’t work if I only unseat one drive), and reseat them once the blue indicator lights start to “show progress”. At any time when I boot the drobo with all four drives in it, it will go into a constant reboot loop. I have tried the different techniques discussed at the KB on drobo.com, none helps.
But now, it goes into a constant reboot loop from previously running stable! That have only happened one or maybe two times before, but it happened two times today (right now I haven’t bothered to try to get it up and running again). It will mount if i boot it without my disk set in it.
Does anyone recognize my problems? Do you know when the latest firmware was released, and more importantly, how can I roll-back to the previous fw (which didn’t work good, but at least better than this it seems).
I will create a new support ticket for this issue as well, but I’d really like to hear your opinions, since emailing support is often like emailing an email bot. Whatever you type, you get their template answers and questions. Last time I had to deal with the support I literally banged my head on my desk, since the person I was talking to clearly didn’t know half of what I know about computer, but still treated me like an infant.
unseating drive sto get it to work was a bad idea to begin with - you should have contacted support and gotten that fixed
i think the firmware is about 2 months old
since you have booted with the new firmware - there is simply no going back the disk pack has been upgraded and will no longer work with the old firmwares
sorry, not much we can help you with im afraid, it will just be troubleshooting with support, and possibly either them replacing your drobo, or looking at your logs to find out why two f your drives were stopping you from booting successfully.
Docchris: I know it’s not a good idea, but it was my desperate workaround that was the only way for me to access my data, since the unit totally refuse to boot without getting into that continuous reboot state. The point is, it has never mattered which drive I unseated, the rule simply seemed to be “drobo wont boot ok with 4 drives”. The decision to try it was made after weeks being unable to access my data. I had also read about issues with the power bricks (mine is the appropriate one), and thought that maybe the power brick can’t deliver enough juice (i.e. enough amps) to spin up all four drives at once. I also thought that there must be some kind of “waiting period”, since different disks take different amount of time to initialize. And also, the electrical connection while it’s running shouldn’t be any problem, since SATA-drives are designed for hot-swap.
Anyway, to my enormous relief, my workaround proved to work.
I’m using Vista Ultimate (x86), connecting the drobo with USB (2.0 in the computer).
All drives have been diagnosed in my PC without anything indicating that something should be wrong with them.
I think theres some issue either with my drobo, or possibly the power brick (despite it having the appropriate P/N).
Support ticket now created: Question Reference #100114-000054
I hope this issue will be resolved, because I’d really really hate to switch to some other system, since i totally LOVE my drobo, when it’s working as it’s supposed to The last 5-6 months, I haven’t had many issues, since I never shut my drobo nor my computer down. The only times I’ve had problems have been after automatic updates, where my computer have rebooted, and so also the drobo. Whenever the drobo is connected to my computer, the computer will not boot, instead it locks up at the windows logo. I need to disconnect the USB-cable from the drobo in order to boot my computer. That’s a secondary issue that I will also create a support ticket for.
Yesterday i received the new 7.5A PSU, and my drobo booted right up for the first time in 11 months!
It did enter relayout state, but that I can live with as long as it boot as it’s supposed to! (I realize ofc that it won’t enter relayout state every time :))
I’m very curious about this statement… how is it you diagnosed the drives outside the Drobo, when any OS would see them as a drive with a damaged/invalid filesystem, because each individual drive is a portion of a striped set of a RAID volume?
Yes, tools used by the drive manufacturers look at the health of the drive. The blocks and sectors. They do not look at the file system, the data on the drives.
Are you sure it won’t eventually boot when left alone for several (like 10 or more) minutes? When I was using 16TB-formatted Drobo on Vista, it took the OS ages to initialize the volume and it was nearly completely unresponsive until it finished. Windows 7 made a world’s difference in that mater to me - it takes it just a while to figure out the volume on Drobo. So, what OS are you using and what is the maximum volume size on your Drobo?
The delayed boot thing is weird - both Docchris and I have experienced it with USB-connected Drobo on boot, though our OS experiences conflict. I have the delay on Vista x64, and not on Win7 x64, while he has it on Win7 x64, and our two Win7 x64 machines are quite similar.
I have experienced the boot delay earlier, usually it takes 10-20 minutes to boot. But I’ve left it in the “boot stage” over night a few times, but 6-7 hours later it was still stuck at the boot logo. I’ve been having this issue on and off for a long time, even before the drobo started acting up for me. I checked the boot log, and the last driver to load was AtiPcie.sys (actually, I can’t even boot in safe mode with console when the drobo is connected via USB. I have no FW-cables, so I can’t try that.
I’m using Vista Ultimate x86 on a quad-core AMD Phenom 9950 2.62GHz with 4GB RAM, and a helluvalot of HD-space
I’m not quite sure if I have the BIOS set to legacy USB, but I know I’ve fiddled around with that before, so it’s very possible that it IS set to legacy mode! Actually, when I think about it, I really do think it is! I’ll reboot and check that right away, if that’s the case, You’ve just helped me to solve my last problem!
The last 5-6 months, I haven’t had many issues, since I never shut my drobo nor my computer down. The only times I’ve had problems have been after automatic updates, where my computer have rebooted, and so also the drobo. Whenever the drobo is connected to my computer, the computer will not boot, instead it locks up at the windows logo. I need to disconnect the USB-cable from the drobo in order to boot my computer. That’s a secondary issue that I will also create a support ticket for.
