Comments on: Tales of Drobo Tech Support

By: eric

eric — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 18:24:01 +0000

I read the 2TB default last night when i got my drobo and wasn't sure what the consequences where for making the partitions larger. I read above slower speeds, anyone have any bench tests so i get an idea of how much slower it will become? That would help me decide between 4tb and 8tb..

@john

I read something about formatting the drobo in the manual last night. You have to push in the secret button with a paperclip while it's booting. The button hole is somewhere on the back. Hope this helps

By: @luomat

@luomat — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 18:12:43 +0000

@John I’m not sure, but recommend you contact Drobo support at http://www.drobo.com/Support/Index.html (I don’t know why they have a capital “I” in “Index.html” but they do.

By: John

John — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 08:10:33 +0000

Hello, Maybe a stupid question here…It seems that I set up my drobo with the 2 TB limit. How do I reformat for an 8 or 16 TB limit?

By: Doctor Awesome

Doctor Awesome — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 04:11:37 +0000

Nice. I’ll keep this limit in mind when I set up my own Drobo due to arrive on the 19th!

By: Luis

Luis — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 08:22:08 +0000

It is disappointing to hear of your negative tech experience. I would have immediately called Drobo and asked for a manager and had the person written up, sent to anger management or released. Unfortunetly, many cases like this probably never reach the people that can make a difference, and the result is loss of a customer, bad reputation, and an employee that continues to get a paycheck even though he/she doesn't deserve it.

Here is why the settings are there for your choosing(hope this helps):

The limitation settings (2, 4, 8, 16) is set to give you the option of speed vs versatility (i.e. expanding to max volume size).

If you choose 2TB, you get faster data transfer speeds and startup times but are limited to 2TB volumes. When total drive capacity exceeds 2TB, the system will make the additional space into another 2TB volume.

If you choose 16TB, you get one big 16TB volume in trade for some speed and delayed start up.

A good trade off is 8TB, and that is what I tell most of my clients to choose. By the time most people reach the 8TB size limit, they are ready for an upgrade (maybe a new drobo that does gigabyte wi-fi and osmosis transfer capability).

I think you have something there. Drobo is designed to be easy to use for any user. It would seem to me that this question would through off any user who doesn't have some significant knowledge of data storage techniques. I think the solution here is a question that ANY user would understand. For example:

Please choose the following usage for your Drobo: 1. I am using the drobo because I have lots of data, and tend to run of out disk space very quickly. (16TB) 2. I am using the drobo just for backing up data. I probably won't fill it up very quickly. (8TB) 3. I make lots of media (I.E.: movies, games, music, large graphics/pictures) but want to work directly from the Drobo and need the speed more than the space. (2TB)

What do you think?

By: TJ

TJ — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 04:32:55 +0000

@Stephan - Sure, it's in the manual.

How many of us really read the manuals?

Yes, when you setup a Drobo, it does ask, but it doesn't make it clear that this can't be changed.

It wouldn't take much to say "Look, this can't be changed, there are tradeoffs, for more information, checkout the manual. "

What had I done? I had watched the Drobo intro video.

Watch the Drobo intro video and they'll say words to the effect of "Hey! All you have to do is shove hard drives in there, voilà! It'll just show up as a giant hard drive!"

Or two.

Depending.

Or more.

Depending.

Better to throw up a clear warning "Hey! This can't be changed!" than say "Hey, it's one big drive! Except when it isn't!"

That's all I'm sayin'

By: Stephan

Stephan — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:28:26 +0000

Come on, TJ. It's right there in the manual. I can't believe how "{expletive deleted}" lazy you were not to even read the damn manual and then have the Gaul to blame it on the Drobo not being user friendly enough.

The upside is, that with a 2TB partition, the drobo only takes two minutes to boot up, not four (as would be the case with a 4TB partition. That's also in the manual. I'm hoping I'm blowing your mind here.

Stephan

By: TJ

TJ — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 15:42:04 +0000

That's a good question.

The Help file mentions something about there being trade-offs in the "boot time" of the Drobo.

Personally, mine lives on a UPS and will probably never be turned off at all, versus a 2TB limit I will have to live with every day.

By: dave

dave — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 15:31:52 +0000

Why put the limitation in there at all if it doesn’t need to be there? Just have it default to max… that is a strange setting, IMHO.