I recently got a 5C to contain my growing media collection. So far it's been a godsend. That is, until I reboot the Mini it is connected to. Upon reboot, I get to the apple logo and it looks like its starting, then the screen just stays black. Like its locked up...somewhere. I've left it a while and nothing ever happens.

So then I thought what is the ONLY thing that has changed? I added the Drobo. So I shut the Drobo off and rebooted the Mini manually. Voila! It booted fine. Tried it again. Worked fine. Then. At the desktop, turned on the Drobo and waited for it to pop up. It did. I tried restarting the Mini and it hung. So clearly the Drobo is doing something here. Or not doing something.

Google revealed some similar issues from several years ago. But the one i read on the Apple discussion forums claimed it was fixed with a Drobo Desktop update. But that was last year or the year before. My version of the Drobo software is much newer. So it's not that.

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__________________________________
Never underestimate the predictability of stupidity

That problem is not unique to Drobos*, could happen with almost any external device. Could be any number of things, but you've probably got a driver-conflict. Not clear from your post: Tried updating Drobo Dashboard?

Etrecheck might be helpful if you're looking for old and potentially-conflicting device-drivers to remove.





*The high failure rate of the power-supplies and the power-bricks is not unique to Drobo either, but is a very good reason to have good backups for any data on the Drobo, if the Drobo is not, itself, a backup device for a"good" RAID.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/10/2019 08:32AM by Sarcany.

Make sure your startup disk is set as your internal drive.

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I’d try a new cable.

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Edited 999 time(s). Last edit at 12:08PM by jdc.

did you contact Drobo tech support?

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space-time
did you contact Drobo tech support?

Drobo tech support is useless without a paid DroboCare contract which will cost 2-4x more than the device itself over its projected lifespan.

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Don't Drobos use a proprietary encryption on the HDs you install? It's my understanding that they do and, you can't just take a HD out of a Drobo and be able to read the data on it by using another enclosure. If (when) your Drobo dies, you MUST buy another Drobo to have access to your data.

Quote
testcase
Don't Drobos use a proprietary encryption on the HDs you install? It's my understanding that they do and, you can't just take a HD out of a Drobo and be able to read the data on it by using another enclosure. If (when) your Drobo dies, you MUST buy another Drobo to have access to your data.

That and some other noodlings was why my company bypassed Drobo as a contender back when. We'd had enough of proprietary in the past (mostly meaning proprietary cartridge-style and removables).

It's also one of the reasons I stay away from the newer WD "cheap" USB bus-powered 2.5s; the USB board is part of the drive itself. You can't move the drive to another case or go bare -- meaning, if the USB board fails, you will not be able to attempt retrieving data from the drive.

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Quote
testcase
Don't Drobos use a proprietary encryption on the HDs you install? It's my understanding that they do and, you can't just take a HD out of a Drobo and be able to read the data on it by using another enclosure. If (when) your Drobo dies, you MUST buy another Drobo to have access to your data.

That is true of just about every single RAID solution. It isn't encryption, but the way that data is split up between the drives and where each piece lands.

What is unique about Drobo is the way they go about splitting it up is vastly different than other RAIDs.

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C(-)ris
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Throwback Thursday Signature:

Quote
Sarcany

Quote
space-time
did you contact Drobo tech support?

Drobo tech support is useless without a paid DroboCare contract which will cost 2-4x more than the device itself over its projected lifespan.

he didn't say WHEN he go it, but it seems he got it recently, so it may be under warranty. Do they refuse support during warranty period?

I have some Drobos, one of them being a 5C, all connected to a 2012 mini.

Other then the time it takes them to wind up when booting or doing searches, I've had no hardware issues.

I do have one current issue with a Gen 3 4-bay Drobo. I updated the Dashboard and its firmware to the latest versions, and now that Drobo isn't seen by Mavericks. DiskWarrior and Disk Utility didn't help. Moving the Dasboard back to the previous version didn't help. I didn't update any other Drobos.

I put it on my 12" MB and it's all there, functioning as expected with Sierra and the latest Dashboard.

I emailed Drobo Support asking if the new firmware supported Mavericks, and was told to buy Drobocare and we'll talk. They couldn't say 'Yes' or 'No' without it. No thanks.

I've had maybe two USB cables go bad, ever, but that's what I'd check first.

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When a good man is hurt,
all who would be called good
must suffer with him.

You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.

There is no safety for honest men except
by believing all possible evil of evil men.

We don’t do focus groups. They just ensure that you don’t offend anyone, and produce bland inoffensive products. —Sir Jonathan Ive

Perfection is the enemy of progress. -Winston Churchill

-An armed society is a polite society.
And hope is a lousy defense.

You make me pull, I'll put you down.

Mister, that's a ten-gallon hat on a twenty-gallon head.

I *love* SIGs. It's Glocks I hate.

I have an older Drobo that has firewire and usb. I bought it because it had firewire. Unfortunately, there's an issue with how Drobo implemented firewire that has caused problems. The only real solution was to use usb which was noticeably slower. When I have some time, I'm going to migrate all the data to a Synology and dump the Drobo.

See, this thread would have been so much cooler if it had been about Dobros. Amirite, Joe?

I emailed Drobo Support asking if the new firmware supported Mavericks, and was told to buy Drobocare and we'll talk. They couldn't say 'Yes' or 'No' without it. No thanks.

Wow...

do they have a user forum or knowledgebase? maybe you can ask there and some other fellow drobo users could help you.

Knowing that this is how they treat their users, I will never buy a drobo.

My Synology seems OK for my needs.

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space-time
My Synology seems OK for my needs.

Synology is probably the better choice for a NAS, but if you want local HFS storage with a bit of RAID redundancy, it's hard to find a good solution that's also economical and Drobos are a half-decent compromise on that front.

I have a Promise RAID on my server and a Drobo as a backup for it. Once or twice a year, something gets messed up with the Drobo and I end up having to erase it and start over with it. If I had the cash, I'd just have two Promise RAIDs. Promise is d@mned good.

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do they have a user forum or knowledgebase?

It's pretty hit and miss. And I've answered far more questions than I asked.

I've never got an answer to what I asked, just suggestions to do something that I didn't want to do with the typical 'How come you don't just...' preface, with no explanation why I might be in error. It's the 'this is how I do it, and that's the way you should do it too' attitude. Annoying as hell.

So I haven't tried asking about Mavs and the current firmware.

That should be an easy question to answer. You'd think that information would be in the Read Me/Release Notes. But no. So that Drobo, for the moment, is somewhat 'bricked'.

It seems I could get it working by updating to a newer OS. I should but I've still got software that won't work past Mavs.

They make an app called Dashboard for managing Drobos. While there's a version for Mac and Windows, the app doesn't look like a Mac or Windows app. They're basically too lazy to make one look like it belongs on the platform. I talked to a sale rep about that and he laughed. 'Yeah, both Mac and Windows people complain about the interface'.

While I've never had a hardware problem in all the years I've used Drobos (the firmware thing comes close) I wouldn't recommend them solely because of their customer service.

---

When a good man is hurt,
all who would be called good
must suffer with him.

You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.

There is no safety for honest men except
by believing all possible evil of evil men.

We don’t do focus groups. They just ensure that you don’t offend anyone, and produce bland inoffensive products. —Sir Jonathan Ive

Perfection is the enemy of progress. -Winston Churchill

-An armed society is a polite society.
And hope is a lousy defense.

You make me pull, I'll put you down.

Mister, that's a ten-gallon hat on a twenty-gallon head.

I *love* SIGs. It's Glocks I hate.

It's pretty hit and miss. And I've answered far more questions than I asked.

I've never got an answer to what I asked, just suggestions to do something that I didn't want to do with the typical 'How come you don't just...' preface, with no explanation why I might be in error. It's the 'this is how I do it, and that's the way you should do it too' attitude. Annoying as hell.

that's pretty much what happens here on this forum, isn't it? LOL

Bingo.

LOL!

---

When a good man is hurt,
all who would be called good
must suffer with him.

You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.

There is no safety for honest men except
by believing all possible evil of evil men.

We don’t do focus groups. They just ensure that you don’t offend anyone, and produce bland inoffensive products. —Sir Jonathan Ive

Perfection is the enemy of progress. -Winston Churchill

-An armed society is a polite society.
And hope is a lousy defense.

You make me pull, I'll put you down.

Mister, that's a ten-gallon hat on a twenty-gallon head.

I *love* SIGs. It's Glocks I hate.

I didn't ask Drobo b/c I was aware of their customer service reputation. Thats why i asked here. I've not tried a new cable. But it's the same cable I'd been using with several other externals before with no issues. I'll check the drivers. That sounds like a likely culprit.

About choosing Drobo. I didn't want a NAS. And to my knowledge, Synology doesn't make a DAS. Otherwise they were first on my list. My Mini is basically my "server". It runs Plex. The Drobo is connected to it to store all my media. It is backed up to another RAID (albeit smaller) in a OWC enclosure. It also backed up to the cloud via Backblaze. Which was another reason I didn't go with Synology. With my personal account it costs me like $50/year to back up EVERYTHING. Even my TB's of movies. You can still back up to Backblaze with a Synology but it costs WAY more b/c you cannot use a personal account.

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__________________________________
Never underestimate the predictability of stupidity