Drobo issues

[Michael LaVoie]

My Drobo S Pro of 5 years has finally stopped turning on. So today I went and picked up a Drobo 5D. Just so I can load the disks I had, pull the data off the drives onto an OWC array, and then return the 5D unit, toss the old SPro and finally say goodbye forever to Drobo and their parent company that bought them not too long ago.

 

It was a horrible unit, a terrible customer experience and after doing my research to weigh whether I should give the new 5D a fighting chance, as well as talking to many former Drobo owners, I'm definitley not going to bother. I bought it to get my data off only. Far too many awful customer experiences and bad reviews of the product to even consider keeping it.

 

Anyone else have any problems with Drobo? Hairpulling frustration over their support portal and ridiculous lack of tech support? Feel free to vent.

 

Also voice any preferred alternatives for Raid arrays meant for PC use. I've been using a Mercury Pro Elite from OWC. No issues so far.

 

[Phil Rhodes]

My approach to RAIDs is to build from scratch if they're permanent install, then you can at least fix it if it breaks. Otherwise, G-tech are the favoured child, but to be honest, all you're paying for with branded storage is the extended warranty - which doesn't cover the data, only the (almost meaninglessly cheap) hardware.

 

You will find horror stories about any brand of storage, because people vent when they lose data - not because there's anything wrong with most of this stuff.

 

The solution - the only proper solution - to storage reliability is backup. Buy an LTO deck. Yes, they're expensive.

 

P

[Michael LaVoie]

I got the new Drobo 5 so I could migrate the disks of the old one but the new 5D couldn't read the disk set of the old Drobo-S because of firmware issues. So Drobo had to rent me a temporary replacement S to get the data off.

 

Which I did, then returned the new 5D, the old S pro rental and now have everything on an OWC with a new OWC at the ready in case that housing fails in a similar fashion.

 

But wow, what a horrible experience all around with Drobo. The only reason they helped at all was cause I was a new customer and had bought the 5D (which I returned after). If I hadn't bought a new device, this whole experience probably would have cost hundreds of dollars.

 

So the lesson here is if your warranty is up, do a buy / return of a new product. Only way you'll get any kind of real customer service from Drobo.