Volume danger question

Forum History Drobo
1

hi guys,
as some of you will know, i recently added a 4th drive to my drobo (4-slot, v1 drobo).

Each one is a WD10EADS, which gives me around 3TB to play with, spread over 2 volumes (which have been initially set up as NFTS 2tb max). That max limit is ok for the time being but the main scenario and concern i have is below:

SCENARIO
Currently, i have all the latest dashboard and firmware
(v1.7.3, and v1.3.7) and the drobo shows up in My Computer, as follows:

drive letter for 1st Volume:
Total size = 1.99TB
Free space = 115GB (most of my stuff is here)
&
drive letter for 2nd Volume:
Total size = 1.99TB
Free space = 1.99TB (nothing much here yet, just 30mb so far)

Drobo Dashboard reports things as follows:
Storage Capacity = 2.72TB
Used Space (pie) = 1.88TB
Free Space (pie) = 853GB

1st volume here in dashboard shows:
Used Space = 1.88TB
Max Capacity = 2TB
&
2nd volume here in dashboard shows:
Used Space = 150MB
Max Capacity = 2TB
(maybe recycler and hidden system volume information dirs taking up more space etc which is why it doesnt match with the 30mb of actual data i put there but thats ok i think)

CONCERN
Recently, ive been dumping my data off old media/drives/cds/zips etc onto the 1st volume…

Total blue capacity lights on the drobo are 7 (eg 70% used)

I read bit of info from several people with warning for not saving more then the free space, as it lets you but you shouldnt etc, or dont make manual volumes larger than something etc… but i guess what i’d like to know or better understand is… can i keep on dumping data without worrying, or is there something i need to watch out for?

eg will windows recognise when the 1st volume has no more space, and then i simply manually use the 2nd volume, or am i running the risk of potentially dumping more data then i should, and could loose it etc?

many thanks in advance, am still new to things :slight_smile:

2

i thnk there are two different issues hre

regardless of how you format your volumes… you can obviously never exceed your actual physical storage (total available space)

as long as you keep drobo below about 80-90% used, it doesn’t care which volumes you put data on - you could fill one volume totally - 100% - that would be fine, as long as you keep your total used across all volumes (as shown in dashboard/across your blue lights) below 80-90% then you will be fine)

if you store more than that, it doesnt really matter, but your drobo will start to slow down

3

thanks docchris,
in that case i’ll keep using the 1st volume until all 2tb is used up, and then carry on with the 2nd 2tb volume.

(am i right in assuming that if 1 of my 4 1tb drives was to crash, no volumes would change (eg as per the single drive failure redundancy feature?)

edit thanks docchris :slight_smile:

4

correct