I should clarify that I don't think the Drobo is at fault, but here's my story (sorry it's so long):

I have a client who gave me a simple directive: they were running out of space on the computer where they store all their files (on an internal HDD), and they wanted to move their data to something that:

- had more storage
- had stability
- could be backed up on their Carbonite plan

It's that last part that always throws things for a loop. I'm a long-time user of Crashplan, but if there's one big flaw that is shared by it and every cloud backup service I know of, it's that none of them back up NAS drives. Otherwise I'd set up an Synology, share the folder with the other computers on their network, and be done with it.

Instead, I opted to go with the Drobo 5D, attach it to the computer they were already using to serve all the files, and share the drive with the other computers that way. It seemed like the best option at the time, since Carbonite is capable of backing up external USB hard disks and that was probably their biggest request.

Right from the get-go, I was not pleased with the results. First, I couldn't get the computer to even acknowledge that there was a device attached until I came across an article on Drobo's own site stating that their USB3 cable they shipped with the drive should be RMA'd if problems occur. As soon as I swapped it for another USB3 cable the drive was recognized.

But there were two serious problems, the first being that Carbonite could kill the drive in minutes. It would start up fine and back up a couple files very slowly, but then everything would freeze. Eventually it started being more than just Carbonite that could freeze explorer and require a restart.

But the second problem was much more severe: the drive stopped being loaded properly by Windows. I'm not sure how to describe this other than the symptoms:

- where there was once a drive in Computer called Drobo (X:), there was now a Local Disk (X:)
- if I tried to open this drive or even right-click it to see its properties, explorer would freeze up and the system would need to be restarted
- if I tried to go into disk manager, it would never load anything
- in device manager under "Disk Drives" there was an entry for "Drobo 5D" and I had the option to eject the drive through the system tray
- the Drobo Dashboard would claim that no Drobos were detected or attached

I called Drobo and they had me do several things and send them log files. The only way the Drobo Dashboard would see the Drobo was if it were started up with all the drives ejected. If I brought the Drobo back up with the drives inserted, I'd get the same behavior as before. Aside from that, all the lights on the Drobo look fine, and Drobo support says there's nothing in the logs that says there's a problem.

My next step was to try setting the Drobo up on another computer in my client's office. I wanted to find out if it was the Drobo or the first computer. Sure enough, I could not get the Drobo to show up in the Dashboard and it didn't even show up in explorer as a drive at all, let alone as "Local Disk." At one point, though, I was poking around in the "Drobo 5D" entry in device manager, went to the "volumes" tab and just for the hell of it I clicked the "populate" button. Voila! I saw the Drobo volume in Explorer! I then stupidly reconnected the Drobo to the first computer and tried the same thing, but that didn't do anything. I reconnected it to the second computer and now I was seeing the exact same behavior as the first computer, "Local Disk" and all. The weirdest thing was that when I turned the Drobo off OR unplugged the USB cable from the computer, the Drobo 5D would show up in the Drobo Dashboard. The first couple times it would stay there, but then it would go away after a few seconds.

Not wanting to give up (even after 4 hours of banging my head against the wall), I took the Drobo home to see how it fared with my own systems. Sure enough, I hooked the Drobo up to my computer...and it worked flawlessly. My PC saw it as any old external drive. I installed the Drobo Dashboard and it was able to see the device with no issues. I could transfer massive amounts of data to and from it.

I brought the Drobo back to the client and used one of my spare PCs as a type of server to share the files, but I'd like to reclaim that computer.

So my question to you good people is: what the heck is going on?

It seems like all the computers in my clients office were affected by something that has rendered them unable to load this Drobo's volume properly. Why? Any ideas? I'd love to wipe these computers and start fresh, but that might not be an option.

Does the problem present regardless of share settings? If not, how do the various share settings compare?

-jk

Are the correct USB drivers installed on your client's pc? And by that I mean effectively the manufacturer's driver (especially if it's an external usb 3 chipset) and not just the driver that Windows installed automatically when it was first installed?

I'm asking because I once have solved similar issues by doing this. Took me ages before I found the problem. Granted, this was not with a Drobo, but the problem was very similar.

Thanks, guys:


I don't think it has anything to do with sharing settings. On the second computer I connected it to there was never any sharing set up from the Drobo. And when I took it home I plugged it into a computer that never had anything shared from it.


If you're talking about the USB chipset drivers, then yes, they should be the correct ones, installed from an accompanying disc. If you mean for the Drobo, then unfortunately I don't see any driver downloads on their site. I suspect they didn't think there would be this much trouble connecting the drive to a computer. On normally functioning computers, the process looks exactly like plugging int a thumb drive.

Don't trust a Drobo, I've lost data because I trusted Drobo.

Start again and come up with another solution, Drobo sucks!

Cheers

Cris

I am disappointed to see that Synology doesn't have a Carbonite backup app. But they do have a few other cloud backup options, including one that sounds particularly clever: http://www.symform.com/

If done correctly, their concept of unlimited free peer-to-peer backup could be amazing. I don't think enough people will buy into it though. Personally, the idea that all of my personal data is residing on someone else's disk drive... even if I know it's encrypted... is scary.

I dunno, Snowden and all that. I'd be much happier having my stuff encrypted on some kid in Minnesota's PC, than unencrypted on one of Google's or Amazon's.

Peter

You've got a real good point there.

Here's the thing, I get that people have had bad experiences with the Drobo, but it seemed like this was one of the better options in this case. Besides, the whole thing is getting backed up so the Drobo isn't the only place this data is going to live.

Besides, if I went with any other USB-attached storage device, I'm not so sure I wouldn't have the exact same problem.

In the end, I'm thinking the answer might be the old "nuke from orbit" approach...


Thanks for the suggestions, Tony. I've seen that page and those options didn't really appeal to me. Of the three options (Time Backup isn't a cloud backup), the only viable one seems to be Amazon Glacier.

Symform simply wouldn't fly with my clients.

HiDrive is both too expensive and not big enough. My current client already needs about 700GB of backup space, and they top out at 500GB.

Amazon Glacier is appealing and shouldn't be too costly... but it's just not what I'm looking for.

Really all I want is a Crashplan app for Synology. I would sell so many Synology drives and Crashplan subscriptions if this existed. Crashplan is far and away my favorite of the cloud backup services, and I've been really impressed with Synology's products. If I had the two of those together it would be perfect.

There has been some effort from users to place the Crashplan backup engine on Synology devices, but they're just not all there yet (unsuported and tricky to install).

Oh well, I'll keep trying. I've been checking in on the computer I set up for the client, and it's running like a top. I've had it backing up to Crashplan every night and so far *knocks on wood* it's been working great. IMO, this means that the Drobo isn't at fault here...

For what it's worth, I went with a LaCie 5big Thunderbolt enclosure. It exports five disks as just that and nothing more. You do all the RAID and everything in software. At that point, it's just another mounted filesystem and all your favorite backup tools will do the right thing. Obviously, this is a bit easier to wrangle on a Mac where you've got a Thunderbolt connector, but it looks like a PCIe Thunderbolt card can be had for well under $100.

Similar enclosure solutions exist with eSATA and USB 3.0 interfaces. I use a pair of 4-bay Mediasonic ones here, with Linux+xfs+mhddfs.

With a capable operating system & software, I feel this type of setup is superior to "hardware RAID" (really, firmware RAID) boxes: if the box dies or screws up, the drives are still perfectly readable using any other connection I can find. USB2, USB3, eSATA, direct SATA inside the box, etc.

Cheers