Drobo First Gen all red

[Savona]

I have a Drobo 1st Gen that has been my reliable little pal for quite a few years now.  I had to disconnect it to make some hardware changes in my PC.  When I connected it back up all the drive bays stay solid RED, the power light stays solid red and the storage indicators are all solid blue.

The computer does not recognize it and it seems to just stay that way.

Any ideas?  Has my drobo finally bit the dust?

[Savona]

Any help would be greatly appreciated as I do not have the funds to buy a new one and I am worried about my data. 

[Savona]

One more question, sorry for the spam.   If I do buy a new drobo, will it recognize the old drives and make my data available?

[Peter Silva]

is this on linux or some other platform? when you say it doesn't show up, if you do lsusb, is it there?

four bad drive lights is not promising.   

Since you are a happy user, and this is likely a hardware thing, your best bet is to contact DRI.  Perhaps they have a trade up option.

Could be a physical problem in moving the drobo around: you could try... disconnect (usb AND power) the drobo, gently eject and re-insert each drive to reseat them, and then power up again.  POWER OFF during this process is important, because you do not want to trigger any re-builds.

Try another USB port... see if you can see it with lsusb.  The only idea on the software side is perhaps an fw upgrade, but it has to be USB visible for that.

If you get a newer drobo, and you take all four drives out of the old one and put them in a newer one, it should recognize the data.

Getting a new drobo sounds like the best bet. OTOH, I have some Gen 1's lying around unused for the past few years if you are really budget constrained. 50$+shipping.  I can check it before I ship, but no guarantee how  long it will work etc... If you depend on it, a new device is a better option.

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[Steven Vona]

This is on Linux and no, it doesn't show up in the output of lsusb. 

I already tried every imaginable power cycle, tried new USB cord, different ports, remove drives, etc...

I will consider your offer for the sales, do you have any second gen laying around maybe with firewire?  I am on a budget but can spare slightly more than $50.

Thank you much for your reply, although it seems I am in trouble. 

[Peter Silva]

I only have Gen 1's.  Seriously, if you value your data, you should just get a new one.  By the age of the unit, the old one served you well.  But before buying, I would ask the drobo.com people to confirm that the new one will read the old drives... just in case.  The only point of getting an old gen1 would be to get your data off it if you wanted to change brands.  the other option would be a data recovery company in Canada that posted a while ago.  just need to search the archive for that.  

The Gen3 version is USB 3 so the performance ought to be much more decent that what you have.  I'd actually be curious to hear if anyone has a Gen3 one.  I had given up on drobom because the company would not give me any specs for the SATA interface, so I could not support it, but now that they have a USB3 version, I'd be curious to know whether drobom works on that one.

[Steven Vona]

So after much research it looks like I can not migrate my data from the 1st Gen Drobo to a new Drobo.  Looks like I will be needing the first gen from you Peter.

[Nick Rothwell]

On 17 Jan 2015, at 21:33, Steven Vona <sav...@aivila.com> wrote:
> So after much research it looks like I can not migrate my data from the 1st Gen Drobo to a new Drobo.

Really? Looks kosher according to this:

http://www.drobo.com/resource-center/migration/

— N.

[Alex Upton]

While this is not directly related to this exact problem, given the scenario where the unit is unresponsive I'd try giving this guys infinite loop solution a try:

http://www.techknight.com/blog/2012/10/17/howto-fix-the-drobo-pro-infinite-reboot-loop.html

Hope this works out for you. I'm running a Drobo Pro Gen1 as well and I'm becoming increasingly concerned that its days are numbered... I haven't decided what I'll migrate my data to yet, but I'm considering Synology and QNAP.

Good Luck!

[Steven Vona]

While that migration page looks promising, I found this that makes it seem like an impossibility or at least a very chancy,

QUOTE "In order to migrate a disk pack to a newer unit the source Drobo must be in a stable state. Specifically you must be able to access your data and the bay lights must all be green.  If the Source Drobo is not working in any way contact Support before moving your drives - See more at: http://support.drobo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/274/~/can-i-move-my-disk-pack-(-drives-)-from-one-drobo-storage-device-to-another%3F#sthash.vTOLWLXo.dpuf"

http://support.drobo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/274/~/can-i-move-my-disk-pack-(-drives-)-from-one-drobo-storage-device-to-another%3F

Specifically the part about 1st Gen and 2nd Gen units.  I have no way of confirming which firmware I am on, and I definitely purchased the unit before JAN 2008.

I appreciate your help, unfortunately, it looks like a 1st Gen unit may be my only hope (and even that scares me).

On Sat, Jan 17, 2015 at 5:34 PM, Nick Rothwell <ni...@cassiel.com> wrote:

[Steven Vona]

Peter, After even more stressing and read I would like to purchase the 1st Gen from you if your still willing.  Please let me know.

Thanks,

Steve

On Sat, Jan 17, 2015 at 3:02 PM, Peter Silva <pe...@bsqt.homeip.net> wrote:

[salsa...@yahoo.com]

Steven, 

Sorry i'm a late participant, you can test the SMART data of each drive using Seatools . Shut the Drobo down and then connect each drive one by one, taking care to replace it in the same bay as before. You'll need to install Seatools on a Windows XP or Windows 7 machine first. That way you can check  each drive's SMART data for errors. Linux has a utility called smartctl or smartmontools which do much the same thing. 

You might find something.

I can see you're "on a budget" but maybe you should get a very big HDD, I don't know what size drives you have, and take DD images of each drive so they can be restored to replacement drives - a long shot.‎ Just make sure the drives are not written to.

One of my main concerns has always been ‎the proprietary format of drobo and what happens when you have this kind of problem. I would hope that Drobo might be of some help.

Temple

From: Steven Vona Sent: Sunday, 18 January 2015 3:53 PM To: drobo...@googlegroups.com Reply To: drobo...@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Drobo First Gen all red

[Peter Silva]

Seatools will not work on a drobo.  The individual drives are not connected to the host... So Seagate tools will not see it.

You would have to remove the drive from the drobo, and connect it directly.  I don't recommend this but it is what you would need to do.  Also the slots have no significance on a drobo.  As long as all the drives are present, it doesn't matter which drive is in which slot.

[Peter Silva]

I think you're reading it wrong. What they are saying is that if they can't be sure the data was good to begin with, they cannot say whether the migration will work... To any unit, even a gen 1.   I recommend you get a new one.

Regarding firmware... Some times you can only go from version x to version x+ y... It would be good to ask drobo about such a compatibility matrix.  I can put any version you want.

If you used drobom to update the firmware before it should be in
~/.drobo-utils you might be able tell what was on the Drobo that way.

[salsa...@yahoo.com]

I did say to remove the drives one by one. Agreed, you can't use them directly on the Drobo and definitely make sure you don't write to the drives. I use it to check my drives on my Drobopro - that's six drives - and it works fine. The Drobo didn't detect that a drive was failing last year but Seatools and gsmartctrl did.

Temple

From: Peter Silva Sent: Sunday, 18 January 2015 11:56 PM

[Peter Silva]

OK but I'd you do that, you have to leave the drobo powered off the whole time.  Otherwise it will rebuild on every ads/remove, which means a lot of writing ;-)

[Hylton Conacher (ZR1HPC)]

Hi,

I have had the exact same problem but do not know what generation my
Drobo is.

On 17/01/15 15:11, Savona wrote:
> I have a Drobo 1st Gen that has been my reliable little pal for quite a
> few years now. I had to disconnect it to make some hardware changes in
> my PC. When I connected it back up all the drive bays stay solid RED,
> the power light stays solid red and the storage indicators are all solid
> blue.

My solution was to power down the PC, then unplug the Drobo power,
restart the PC and then restart Drobo. In one or two cases just cycling
the Drobo power seems to kick it out of whatever dark hole it is in.

Good luck and hope you come right.

Hylton

[Steven Vona]

I tried that a few hundred times.  It is still all red! :)

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[Parfumeur]

My experience with this POS, is that you may have to wait 24-72 hours.... after the red for an indeterminate amount of time, then the orange rebuild kicks in....    Drobo was a pioneer in the black box design, with no interactive lights for the user.  Guaranteed to destroy your data sooner or later..... usually later, after warranty gone. AND YOUR FAULT for not making a backup.  Enjoy.

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[Parfumeur]

BTW, it never worked right as advertised with firewire.  It was a selling point, with claims that the wire you had was no good, the card YOU had was no  good, or the driver YOU used was no good.  Only real connection, is by USB.

On Tue, Jan 20, 2015 at 7:22 PM, Steven Vona <sav...@aivila.com> wrote:

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[Steven Vona]

@PArfumeur - Thanks for your interesting input.  You say the orange rebuild will kick in, does this destroy the data?

[Parfumeur]

No, no, no..... that is GOOD!  It means that an error occurred, e.g. Power loss, power glitch, or some other event, and Drobo is self healing.  But do bear in mind this is not unique to Drobo.  QNAP and Synology do a similar thing if a drive fails, or you add a drive.  It's just that this particular early beta <g>.... takes forever.

Let us know what happens.  BTW, the early releases of your model was badly engineered, end the power cord plug was misaligned, and would not go in all the way.  To make matters worse, when all  other computers had sockets with a hex negative wraparound contact, the Drobo had a single pressure point.  As such if you moved the Black Box while it was running, you had the opportunity to either loose power or create surges due to the loose connection. Ummmmm.... maybe a good Drobonesque tittle:  "The Loose Connection" ...

I