I have a Drobo GEN 3 and I’m getting the dreaded “Too Many Hard Drives Removed” error along with 4 solid red lights.
I shut every thing down, reseated all of the drives, and now the unit boots into an endless loop. The blinkenlights run for a bit and then it reboots after a minute or so.
Before I start down the Tech Support path, has anyone ever recovered data from this situation, or should I go ahead a slit my wrists now?
I was halfway through a cloud-based backup when this happened, so I have signifiant exposure here.
Have you contacted Drobo support? Though they do check these forums, you’d get a quicker response contacting them direct. Hopefully something can be done. And do let us know how you get on.[hr]
Sorry, just re-read your post and saw about not contacting them yet. Go ahead and do it. Don’t slit your wrists just yet. E
“Too Many Hard Drives Removed”: Occurs when the Drobo is in a rebuild and a drive fails, the rebuild stops and all drive bay lights turn solid Red. Because the rebuild needs to run and complete ( data protection mode ) with the drive set that is currently in Drobo a drive more than likely needs to be cloned. If you are out of entitlement ( out of warranty and no DroboCare ) you can do the following:
Block Level Clone all the drives in Drobo
If you are successful in cloning all the drives, insert the cloned drive set into Drobo and then see if your data is accessible
If you are uncomfortable performing a block level clone there are data recovery houses.
If your Drobo reboots during the rebuild ( data protection mode ) it is like a drive is building up a number of bad blocks or experiencing ‘time outs’ which is preventing the rebuild from completing.
You can try putting the Drobo into Read Only mode to see if this stabilizes:
From the Dashboard do keystroke “Control Alt Shift R”, you will be prompted that the state of Drobo has changed and will prompt you to reboot - reboot the Drobo. You will then see “RO” next to the name of your Drobo, if this stabilizes immediately begin copying your data off of Drobo. To take the Drobo out of Read Only mode, use exact same key stroke commands and reboot the Drobo - you will no longer see RO.
when trying to reboot my drobo S as read only mode as recommended, I inserted the original disks ( including the one who failed) and felt some resinstance inserting. When I pulled one of the disk a ring rubber band 3mm thick showed uo and detached. I was a a squared rubber ring, drobo size. And then the miracle. Suddenly my drobo is working pretty normal even with the " deceased" disk. Thanks for the help. I share the experience for your information and amusement…
