Hi guys,
I’m thinking of putting my Drobo in another room in my house, due to its heat and noise.
Where can I buy an “official” Drobo USB cable extension, in the 20-30 ft range?
And is there are any performance downside to using a longer cable?
Thanks for your time.
Honestly, your Drobo should not be hot and noisy.
I would recommend opening a support case so we can take a look at that Drobo.
There is no official Drobo USB cable extension. We have tested up to a 24ft usb cable, with no extensions. Our testing department said it worked. I personally would not recommend that long of a usb cable.
USB 2.0 spec is 5-meter max (16.5 feet) so beyond that you should look at a USB active extension cable. The active part is important as it means there are electronics in the cable path to act as a signal booster/repeater.
Other alternatives would include doing USB-over-Ethernet (data packaging over network), or USB-over-Cat5 (this is a balun or media conversion and requires a dedicated Cat5 run - it can’t share with other devices). USB-over-network is less reliable and more prone to incompatibility compared to the balun conversion.
I copied 150GB to my Drobo and while I can hear the drives when I’m up-close, I don’t notice it at all while doing normal tasks.
Hi Jennifer, thanks for the reply:
Honestly, I don’t have air conditioning in my apartment and it can get quite hot and muggy in here. A/C is just too expensive for me right now. And after a few hours, the fan on my Drobo starts getting quite loud as it tries to cool down.
Because of the length of the cord, I have to keep my Drobo situated right under my desk, where it gets very hot with the computer on and has very little ventilation. Seems like the USB extension is the perfect solution for this.
bhiga:
I just measured it out and I think I can make it work around 10-12 ft. Can you point me to an example of a specific cable that would work for these purposes?
For example, how is this one?
reddyreal, let me repeat a suggestion I made well over a year ago. If you are bothered by heat and noise from the Drobo, the first thing you should do is check your drives. The Western Digital “green” drives run bout 4 watts, or half of what Seagate and other run.
Second, if it is just too hot in your office, look around for a small wine cooler. I’ve seen some that cost about $80 and will chill the Drobo to a cool 60F, which shouldn’t cause condensation (except under very humid conditions.) It will also isolate the fan noise.