Use HD from Mac in Gen 3 Drobo?

Drobo - End of Sale GEN 3
1

Usually I buy and install new HDs in my Drobos. I have 2x6T (WD) and 2x4T (HGST, Toshiba) HDs in a Gen 3 4-bay DAS.

Getting low on space (no warning yet) I decided to take a little used 6T (Toshiba) HD from a Mac external enclosure and replace a 4T drive. As it was a boot drive, it was formatted with Disk Utility via Yosemite, journaled, with the GUID partition map. It checked out fine with DU’s First Aid and worked well.

Replacing at 4T drive with it caused all the drive bay LEDs to flash red and yellow with the 6T’s bay LED flashing red. This went on for several hours with no change. I put the 4T drive back in (Green/Yellow flashing LEDs) and eventually all returned to normal.

Connecting the HD to my Mac again showed it needed to be formatted formatted. Obviously the Drobo tried but apparently couldn’t. The drive worked fine after formatting and I could move files on and off and read them from the HD.

I shut down my other Gen 3 Drobo, pulled the drives, and inserted the reluctant 6T HD. It’s bay LED is now flashing red and the other empty bays’ LEDs are steady red.

Drobo Dashboard sees the drive and shows the Drobo Health as Critical but clicking on the drive bay says the 6T HD’s Health is Good. ?? My guess is that if I let this run awhile nothing will change.

Is there something I should have done or should do to use this formatted-for-Mac HD in a Drobo?

Drobo Dashboard 3.0
Drobo Firmware 3.5.4
Connected to Mac running 10.8.5

2

hi macgui, if you get a chance could you post back some more details about that particular 6TB drive?

can i also check if you removed the 4TB drive (while the drobo was running), and the flashing red and yellow (not yellow and green) took place, but not until the 6tb was put inside, also while running?

3

What details would be germane?

4T drive was swapped out for 6T drive in standard manner, just like always. No weirdness until the the 6T drive was plugged in. Up until that moment, the swap and resulting lights looked like any other normal, successful HD swap.

Is there something I should have done or should do to use this formatted-for-Mac HD in a Drobo?

4

thanks macgui, it was just to know some more like model number and firmware number, in case there was anything special about that drive (like in some of the larger sizes they use SMR which is not recommended) like initially there were some issues with certain 4k sector drives (depending on native or emulation mode)