Recommend 2TB drives for a Gen 1

Forum History Drobo
1

All,
Was running out of space on my Drobo 4bay Gen 1 and looking into upgrading to a Drobo 5bay FS when I managed to score another Gen 1 new off ebay for £129.

The problem is that I need a couple of additional 2TB drives to go in it as well as a couple of Seagate ST32000542AS drives I already own. The thing is a lot of the new drives are Advanced Format 4k which my old drives do not so I’m a little bit concerned about mixing and matching. I have also read a lot of bad reviews about the Samsung and new Seagate Green drives so I’m really confused now.

Please can someone recommend me a drive that would be compatible with the above scenario so that I can start moving my data between my two Drobo’s?

Thanks.

Glyn Jones.

2

i nevr had any problems with 4k drives in my drobo pro

i would avoid seagate

the wd’s seem ok - but you should definitely burn them in for a week first - i bought 20 and a lot of them died in the first couple of days (like 3-4!) but the rest have been running 24/7 without problems now[hr]
and mixing and matching is exactly what drobo was designed for

3

I have no problems with mixing drives just worried about mixing Advanced Format 4k with the older 512k as I read some people have had problems with mixing in their drobo’s.

4

i thikn they were complaining about problem sni general - not just with mixing - drobo talks to each drive seperately - i woudl epxect you to be ok - and if there is a problem with mixing then, you will need to make th ejump to 4k at some point anyway , so put in yoru new 4k drives - if they work great, then great, if they dont, then ebay the old 0.5k drives and get a new 4k drives

5

That sounds like a good idea.

Looking at the WD and Hitachi ones now so thanks a lot for your help :slight_smile:

6

I have had a mix of 512 and 4K drives in my Drobo Gen 1 previously, and it worked fine. At one point I had a Hitachi 1TB 512, a WD Green 1TB 512, and two WD 1.5TB 4K drives. Over a couple of swaps they are all 4K WD Greens now, and I’m very happy.

Stick with the “Green” drives or equivalent low-power ones from other manufacturers in the Gen 1 though, the cooling is weak and when I had 3 of the Hitachis in there is would shut down on hot days. No such trouble with the Greens.