Just wondering what the best practice is when you get a red drive light?
I just got one this morning, Drobo FW 4x1TB drives. I’m copying data of a spare drive so I can swap out the bad drive (rather than wait for a new one to be delivered). But what’s the best option in the mean time, can I switch off the Drobo (in case another drive goes bad), or is it best to leave it running?
thanks
**Edit: BTW I’ve recently upgrade to Lion on both machines, and I noticed that Dashboard quits on restart. Any issues with Lion and Drobo that might have cause the Red disk?
OK - I removed the ‘flashing red’ drive. Popped it into an external USB dock and the drive is working and OS X can see it fine, although it asks to initialise it of course. No problems.
Next I popped it back into the Drobo, which has a solid red light (add a drive). However now the drive light is still solid red!
It can’t see the disk.
I suspect that the Drobo slot may be faulty??[hr]
EDIT: no it was dust in the SATA power connector for that slot! The disk wasn’t powering up when I reinserted. I pulled it and used a hoover to suck up the dust. Drobo can see the disk again but it still says its bad.
Can I try repairing and reformatting the disk in OSX and see if Drobo can use it?[hr][hr]
…continuing with the saga, I replaced the ‘bad’ drive with my spare and Drobo is now relaying out data. Phew! Although 29hours to completion.
BUT the bad drive is working just fine in my mac. I reformatted and repaired it - no problems.
Can anyone shed light on this? Is the drive bad really or is Drobo hyper sensitive? Should I mistrust this drive even though OS X Disk Utility has given it a clean bill of health?
When a Drobo identifies a disk as faulty, it records the serial number and will refuse to use the disk again in the future.
This is a good time to check and maybe update your backups of the Drobo.
When I have an apparently failing disk, I stop using it. Trying to force it back into a RAID set sounds like a recipe for tears.
A PHP script has been posted in these forums that will decode the diagnostic info from a 4-bay Drobo. This will let you see why your Drobo marked the disk bad.
For reasons known only to them and God, Data Robotics does not want their customers to have access to diagnostic info.
Thanks for the info rdo - I did not know that it marked a drive bad forever, good to know. I have swapped the drive for another as I said so it’s not going back in the Drobo.
I’ve used the php script in the past, I didn’t think to look at it to check why the disk was rejected.
I’m now wondering if it is OK to generate the report while relayout is in progress. Part of me thinks its best to leave the Drobo be until its finished.
[quote=“simond, post:6, topic:2784”]I’m now wondering if it is OK to generate the report while relayout is in progress. Part of me thinks its best to leave the Drobo be until its finished.
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While in theory it should be fine, like you I’m cautious about such things and would wait until the Drobo is finished saying its Ave Marias.
[edit: “in theory” it would be stupid. Thank you, Docchris!]
