i’ve always wondered how the drobo would react to a powercut, (because sometimes we get them from time to time) but i never had the need to simulate one to see…
well… for reasons of tiredness, ive actually done it… on both my drobo v1 and v2 simultaneously LOL
Every so often i need to reboot the machine, and i usually do a windows shutdown, (which then puts the drobo’s to sleep) and then i do a drobo shutdown and leave all things off for at least a few mins…
…then i power up the drobos and let them run through the led capacitance sequence… followed by windows.
HOWEVER… my shutdown of windows didnt work, and there was a popup waiting for me to click on something… and when i came back to the machine the screen was off and i thought it shut down (BUT) it was a black screensaver, and i UNPLUGGED the mains cable on the v1 drobo, and a couple of seconds later the v2 drobo!!
DOH
then when i powered them back the v2 was on instant readyness (must have been out of power for less than 30 seconds… but the v2 was all blue capacity lights, and all red leds (a couple of times)
i then realised the windows machine was still on, so i force powered it off and shut all down again…
… and as an actual, unintended test, it looks like the machine and both drobos all lived to tell the tale!! PHEW
(i’ll still be running a full chkdsk later on on all 2 (x2) partitions to play safe though - but so far a Thumbs Up from me
In theory quite good - it has a battery internally so it wont loose any data IT has in its cache - but you will still end up with some file system corruption due to the OS not bein able to finish writes - which is jt like any other drive
thanks docchris, so far 1 volume on each drobo checked out fine with the usual chkdsk /x (no errors reported)
am using the other 2 volumes currently but will get those ones done probably overnight the next couple of days or so.[hr]
btw i think theres a bonus to having each volume at 2TB max…
we can run the chkdsks volume by volume, without dismounting others, and also seems much quicker too
I would enjoy seeing your continuing Drobo tests. Maybe if they set up a Test Forum, you could perform some 3 foot drop tests. And then someone could take a Drobo for some vibration testing, like a mobile DJ, who stores all their music on the Drobo, and Drobo rides in the trunk bouncing around for thousands of miles a year.
friendly.
You are one person doing some sane testing. And are confident in what you are doing.
Sharing those results is much helpful to all of us. It sometimes seems that many posts here are from people who got their Drobo working and don’t want to mess with it. The rest of the people accidentally messed with it and now it broke/don’t know what to do.
Because is the Drobo really so fragile that we have to walk on eggshells around it? I get the impression that alot of folks feel that way. Maybe it’s just me. So I appreciate you sharing.
I have personal experience with a Drobo and three DroboPro’s and they’ve all been rock-solid in terms of data reliability. Various units themselves have had to be RMAed for things like reboot loops, but they’ve survived about a dozen individual drive upgrades, numerous drive crashes, power outages and more and the data is always there, no problem.
@goodcow- That’s good to hear, too.
I have had mine stop responding one time, I tried to shutdown windows and restart multiple times to get it to respond. Nothing happening.
Windows XP was my setup at the time, and each start up, it went CHKDSK, said it fixed something. Then it never actually was usuable. Windows would show the Drobo as a drive, but when I attempted to open a folder, it would timeout / never open. I waited twenty minutes or longer. I started giving it power reboots. I tried different combinations of starting the computer with Drobo attached and unpowered, then with Drobo already powered. I finally got it started one time where I was connected with Dashboard, but hadn’t attempted to open any folders. I was able to do a reset to factory and started over.
That would have really hurt if that was the only place my 4TB of data was.
Likely yours may be in the default state of Optimize for Quick Removal, but just wanted to throw it out as a variable.
For USB (and I think Firewire too? Don’t have one hooked up to check), the device properties in Windows default to Optimize for Quick Removal, which means write caching by the OS is disabled, which is the safer, but slower access option.
Less data gets lost if power is cut to Drobo or the connected system.
I had a real power cut the other day
lasted about 5-10mins
when i tried the drobo v1 it came on with all lights red, but luckily after around 15mins, it was ok as i did a restart and the v1 (and v2) came on as usual again with capacity led animations and when i did a checkdisk on all 4 volumes (total) they were ok - phew :D[hr]
(at no point in having some quirks from time to time, did i remove any drives… i think thats a key part, + being patient (as much as the above 15mins goes)
next step is to get a UPS i think for the computer, and 2 drobos, since both drobos share the same power source currently so if theres some power spike or a synchronisation taking place between the 2 of them when another power cut happens, its fairly risky.
First of all thanx Paul for starting this thread because this issue was my main concern! I hope this thread would grow and that I will find helpful insights among users based on their own experience.
I was on the fence whether to buy this expensive device for a storage or not. Have read a bunch of reviews about it, some were good but more were negative. And one time I read that someone lost all of his/her data because of unexpected power interruption which made me more hesitant. But I am a gadget freak and crazy about modern electronics (such as this Drobo) that in spite of the not so good feedbacks I have read, I took a risk and finally purchased one yesterday.
I am one of those people Yoyoma was referring to as treating the Drobo like a baby mainly because I just got it. But reading this post made my mind a little bit at ease (although I am still not 100% confident if mine will survive such power failure/failures especially I am from a developing country that power interruption are a normal occurrence). Cannot afford to buy even a cheap UPS anymore, the cash all went to datarobotics hehehe. And in my own humble opinion, the makers of this product should have designed Drobo to survive sudden loss of electricity without any flaws since its main purpose is to protect data. I read their support site stating that Drobo can handle power sudden power cut but also advised the consumers to use a UPS which in my end is another expense although I am aware that it is necessary (call me cheap if you want hehe). I have no problem losing data I am currently using (reading/editing/transferring) at the time of such power failure but losing all of it would really be frustrating.
Just bookmarked this page and plan to drop by time to time to hear from others about their experience with sudden power loss.
BTW, this is my first post on any forum on any site and sorry it was a long one.
drobo in itself can survive a power cut - it has a battery and memory to store what was written to it
the issue is that when you are transferring data to ANY storage device - if you only transfer half a file the stop that transfer by disconnecting/power cut then obviously you will get corruption, there is no way to design around that im afraid.
incidentally i have had drobos and drobopros either have power fails or disconnects (including during a rebuild!) and i have never had any noticeable corruption
welcome to the boards diego
(do check out the other sections as well as this page as im sure you’ll find lots of good info here (including many an answer provided by our resident doctor, docchris)
interesting, i found some info in the diagnostic log:
"
bat OFF, ver: 1.254.30359(1.3.7) RELEASE BUILD (GCC) (RD-88F5281-88SX6042 LE MMU ARCH 5
Thu Jan 01 00:00:29 1970: No stored reboot reason - possible powerloss
"
(has no entry for powercycle, and then about a month later this could be when i had the powercut…
"
bat ON, ver: 1.254.30359(1.3.7)
Thu Jan 01 00:00:28 1970: No stored reboot reason - possible powerloss
Thu Jan 01 00:00:40 1970: DPM::packViable: numDisks = 4, missing = 0, critMissing = 0, update NOT NEEDED
Thu Jan 01 00:00:50 1970: SM: POWER CYCLE WAS NOT DONE FROM STANDBY
"
