Is there any danger if I shut down my Mac whilst the “Data Protection in Progress” is flashing? I added a hard disk to my Drobo this morning. It says my data is at risk and it has 16 hours remaining to relay out the data. I was wanting to shut down my Mac Pro to install a new hard disk in the Mac Pro case.
Thanks
JBP
When Drobo was doing data protection on my unit it shut down itself in the middle of the process, after one of three HD’s failed (see my post below). I don’t have any access to my data for over a week and little hope to ever recover them. I think it’s a real critical stage when drobo is doing a relayout. Wouldn’t change any setup or shut down the computer then.
After all it’s not that safe and easy-peasy as in the instruction videos- hope you made a backup before going into relayout!?
My understanding is that Drobo does data protection independently of your Mac’s activity, so shutting down the Mac shouldn’t affect the Drobo’s data protection process. I would just make sure that the Drobo is properly unmounted before shutting down. (With my MacBook Pro, the regular shutdown process unmounts the Drobo just fine, but you could make sure it’s properly unmounted by closing all files on it and dragging it to the Trash before shutdown.)
yeah you can shutdown the computer, but drobo wont shutdown, so what you actually mean is “can i yank the plug out the back of drobo” which is a bad idea at the best of times!!!
That being said… i had a powercut during a rebuild and drobo recovered just fnie
I have a Drobo that is saying “data protection in progress” and I also need to take my Macbook Pro with me. What are the safe steps to be able to take my laptop with me? Would I do that through the Dashboard or another method?
Shut down your Macbook Pro.
Wait until the lights on the Drobo go dark (or wait a minute or so after the Macbook is powered off - depending on your connection type Drobo may not immediately go to standby)
Disconnect the data cable between the Macbook Pro and Drobo.
Go.
if data protection is in progress then the lighs on drobo wont go dark until its finished.
shutdown your macbook - once its shutdown you can disconnect the data cable and drobo will finish its data protection safely
Good catch Docchris - thanks! (And of course he’s right) 
No probs 
Thank you all so much for getting back to me so quickly. Since I got some eyes on this forum, I wanted to throw one more thing out there. I have moved my Drobo to my house in the past and then when I restart it at my office is goes into Data Protection mode. In this most recent case, I did the same thing but not only does it go into Data Protection Mode, but it also looks as though a hard-drive has failed. Has anyone reading this experienced this or heard about it before? I find it a bummer if I move my Drobo physically (While shutting it down correctly) leaves me in Data Protection Mode everytime.
Thanks
Yes. For me, this is common. The problem is that the “keeper” latches in the front of the Drobo that lock the hard drives in place aren’t strong enough, or machined to close enough tolerances, to really keep the drive seated in the Drobo. When you move a Drobo, you’d be best advised to pop out and re-seat all the drives in the Drobo before powering it up. Press in firmly on each drive after re-seating it to make sure.
If you do get a “failed” hard drive, or a drive not present, don’t power down the Drobo. Just pop the offending drive out and re-seat it, then wait a few minutes for the Drobo to catch up with reality. It can take about thirty seconds for the Drobo to get wise to what just happened. Sometimes I’ve had to repeat this several times. Sometimes re-seating a drive causes another drive to be jarred loose, forcing me to re-seat that one too. Pain in the butt. Long relayout follows. Nothing to be done about it (except buy a RAID with better mounting hardware).
Of course there’s always the minute chance that you really did kill a drive by moving the unit. In which case none of the above will help. In which case, oops. That’s why you have a Drobo, right? Pass GO, collect WD warranty, replace drive. Get out of jail free.
Data Robotics recommends removing the drives from Drobo prior to transport. Luckily Drobo drives aren’t order-dependent.
I transport my Drobo V2 once a month or so… probably 15-20 times since I’ve owned it. I always remove the drives. I’ve never had it trigger a data protection operation.
Since I always remove the drives my backplane may be in better shape than yours. I took heed of DRI’s transport advice and it’s served me well.