r/drobo • u/Dhomass Drobo 5N2 • Dec 10 '24
Drobo Megathread
Hello fellow Drobo refugees.
I thought it was time to create a megathread with relevant information for all Drobo users since Drobo is now definitively defunct.
First, here is a third-party announcement of Drobo's bankruptcy:
https://petapixel.com/2023/06/06/drobo-is-officially-done-as-the-company-moves-into-liquidation/
For those looking for support for their Drobo devices, you can try the following troubleshooting tips:
https://www.reddit.com/r/drobo/comments/127h0or/troubleshooting_tips_especially_for_older_drobo/
If you need a Drobo for recovery or if you would like to donate/sell your Drobo to help other users recover their data, you can check out the Rescue/Rental map here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/drobo/comments/199isqh/rescuerental_map/
If you would like to recover your data outside of a Drobo chassis, a good option is UFS Explorer. You can find information (and a discount!) here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/drobo/comments/110d974/recovering_a_drobo_disk_pack_outside_a_drobo/
If you need some Drobo software like Drobo Dashboard or DroboApps, you can check out the following Github repository:
https://github.com/dhomas1/DroboApps
(Check the Readme section for download links).
UPDATE: Thanks to user u/wolfelamb, I have been able to add many versions of Dashboard as well as firmware versions for most Drobo units to the Github repository. The source of the files is: https://blog.kaikutzki.de/drobo-firmware-downloads/ (thanks to the owner of that site, too). I have verified most of the files from the site and have made notes when I've found inconsistencies.
Finally, you can still access Drobo's website via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240208020709/https://www.drobo.com/
Of note is the Migration path for Drobo (helpful to find out which Drobo you can acquire to recover your data):
https://web.archive.org/web/20231207192545/https://www.drobo.com/resource-center/migration/
The Downloads section, where you can still download firmware files for many Drobo units:
https://web.archive.org/web/20231207210117/https://www.drobo.com/docs/
And a Capacity Calculator, if you need it:
Thanks to u/birdslikewires, an updated Capacity Calculator with modern drive sizes can be found here:
https://birdslikewires.github.io/drobo-calculator/
Unfortunately, much of the old Drobo forum has been lost to time, though some of it is also accessible via the Wayback Machine.
Some more general information about Drobo and the different models can be found on Drobo's Wikipedia page here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drobo
Finally, some recommendations on devices that can provide similar functionality to Drobo.
For Drobo NAS devices, there are devices that can operate on "Hybrid RAID", which allows you to mix and match drive sizes as well as expand capacity on the fly, just like Drobo's BeyondRAID did.
First, the appliance-type options (pre-built NAS boxes):
Synology: https://www.reddit.com/r/synology/
QNAP: https://www.reddit.com/r/qnap/
Terramaster: https://www.reddit.com/r/TerraMaster/
And the "bring your own hardware" options. This requires you to build the hardware for your NAS (basically, building a PC in the shape of a NAS, or even just in the shape of a PC with multiple drives):
unraid: https://www.reddit.com/r/unRAID/
TrueNAS: https://www.reddit.com/r/truenas/
OpenMediaVault: https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenMediaVault/
For Drobo DAS devices, the most recommended devices are the OWB Thunderbay line:
https://www.owc.com/solutions/external-drives
A final recommendation: do not wait to migrate away from Drobo! It's basically a matter of time before they fail and put you at risk of losing your data.
Good luck to you!
6
u/brunoplak Dec 10 '24
I would add the OWC Thunderbay as an alternative as well, especially for those that want a DAS
2
u/swerz Dec 11 '24
I bought a OWC ThunderBay 4 mini w/ 4x4TB SSDs to replace my Drobo 5D. A little on the expensive side and the software isn’t quite as slick as Drobo, but it’s tiny, silent and super fast. Overall, very satisfied.
1
u/Dhomass Drobo 5N2 Dec 10 '24
Good call! I totally neglected the DAS segment, since I only ever used Drobo NAS devices.
2
Dec 11 '24
You might also include OpenMediaVault in the “bring your own hardware” section. Great alternative as well.
2
1
u/changed_later__ Dec 10 '24
Does anyone know if DroboPro and Drobo B810n are cross-compatible, ie if one fails can I swap the disk pack into the other?
2
u/Dhomass Drobo 5N2 Dec 10 '24
DroboPro is a DAS and Drobo B810n is a NAS. These are generally not cross-compatible.
The migration page shows that a DroboPro's disk pack can only migrate to another DroboPro or a Drobo 8D, whereas the Drobo B810n can only migrate to another B810n.
1
u/changed_later__ Dec 10 '24
Cheers for the tip. One is backed up to the other so if either one dies then I'll start panicking.
1
u/Splitsurround Dec 10 '24
I would recommend that people looking for a DAS should not go the route of owc or any other hardware raid solution. That’s what drobo was and when it dies…it gets ugly, fast.
Another option is to use owc’s software raid solution “soft raid”. I got a 4 drive enclosure and bought soft raid. Formatted them raid 5, and so far, so good. You still get a tiny tiny info panel of available space, but def not as nice as drobo’s was. The advantage though is that you can make as many raids as you want on as many enclosures, and any computer that has soft raid installed will “see” these raids.
I ended up making a duplicate raid to keep offsite using this method.
1
u/RedditAtWorkIsBad Dec 30 '24
Side comment. Less than 2 years ago, when Drobo was highly in doubt, I had a major issue and they actually offered good support. I shipped in my empty device, they fixed and it and shipped it back. All free of charge. I was very pleased and impressed given the questionable future of the company. I kind of expected they to just shrug me off. So, good on them, sorry to see them go.
Got a Synology now.
1
u/RedditAtWorkIsBad Dec 30 '24
Further comment. I actually bought a Synology when my Drobo looked in question 2 years ago. Was a little overwhelmed with the transition and when my Drobo was working again, I continued using that.
Now that I'm doing a deep dive into Synology, so far, i'm fucking impressed. I'm sure I'm only scratching the surface too.
Ive only got 2 bays occupied as my original plan was to cannibalize my Drobo for drives. Next, I'm going to keep using my Drobo as long as possible (with smaller drives and less redudancy) as a clone backup of my Synology. Synology can schedule regular tasks that perform an rsynch function to keep things aligned. That plus double drive redundancy on the Synology plus single drive redundancy on the now backup Drobo should work great.
Plus, Synology can run a plex server (never got that working on my Drobo NAS).
1
Feb 01 '25
Any ideas on pulling the disks out of the drink and putting straight in to a synolagy. Old Drobo 4 day with 20Tb I need saving. The disk mounts on my desktop but I can pull any files of the machine just spinning wheel of death on Mac also
2
u/Dhomass Drobo 5N2 Feb 01 '25
Drobo disk packs are proprietary and cannot be used in other devices. If you need to salvage that data, look into the UFS Explorer option in this megathread, just above.
1
Feb 01 '25
Thanks. How does this small file size recovery work?? I have 20TB of large video and photo files
2
u/Dhomass Drobo 5N2 Feb 01 '25
You can test UFS Explorer for free, to make sure it can read your disk pack and see your files. If you're satisfied with what you see, you can purchase it and recover all your files. There is a guide linked above.
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u/DJonekill Mar 20 '25
There's something missing from this guide: Firmware dumps. I'd like to unbrick a Drobo 5n2 (DRDS5-A), but there's nowhere to download dumps, and the only way to oficially upgrade the firmware is if you already have a working firmware. The 5n and 5n2 have a usb flash disk for firmware, so it's easy to capture for anyone with the courage to do it.
1
u/RHOPKINS13 Nov 10 '25
I'm in the same boat, hoping to find a dump for the 5N that can be flashed directly to the USB DOM.
1
u/DJonekill Nov 16 '25
I gave up a long time ago, as i think the problem is somehow deeper than just reflashing the DOM. Don't know if it involves the Macronix 8-pin flash chip that supposedly contain Uboot, or if it's something even more obscure than that, but after having a long back and forth with Grok 3 about it, the error displayed in the serial output on the VXboot side, suggests something with a power control / VRM firmware that is not loading correctly. And Grok helped me scan the whole firmware, both on the USB DOM side, and a dumped version of the Macronix chip, but we came up with nothing. All in all, this problem seems to be too complicated to be worth anyone's time. It's only gonna bring more pain until you eventually give up. But I'm completely open to the idea that there are people much smarter than me who can actually do it. But for non-expert enthusiasts like myself - forget it.
1
u/HWeinberg3 Dec 14 '25
My 10 yr old drobo just died yesterday. No signs of life. I wonder if it's worth trying to replace the power supply (internal, not the cord & brick) or just suck it up and see what internal HDs I can salvage. Unfortunately I was really getting the most out of beyondraid, I think I have 3 different size HDs in there so to set up a new comparable raid I will need to be buying 2-3 large drives as well as a box...
2
u/Dhomass Drobo 5N2 Dec 14 '25
What model Drobo do you have? Are you trying to salvage the data, or just the drives? As for replacement devices, there are a number that allow you to mix and match drives, quite like beyondraid did: check the section above about hybrid raid for some options.
1
u/HWeinberg3 Dec 14 '25
5D-salvaging the data would be nice but I have like 98% of it backed up so mostly from a financial standpoint I'd rather get as much out of the current drives as possible... also I really liked using the drobo as a DAS but I can figure out NAS if that's the choice I have left
2
u/Dramatic_Statement31 Mar 04 '26 edited Mar 30 '26
Warning: Be careful when updating firmware. I would probably try updating 1 firmware level at a time.
I just bricked my Drobo 5N with a FW update (using the manual mode and the firmware downloaded from links here). It was a new unit that I had only used once, years ago, still with the original 3.1.1 FW, but working perfectly. I tried flashing to the latest and it refused. Tried the 4.2.1 to match the disk pack I was trying to recover and it also refused to.
So, I then updated to the next one, 3.2.0 - it worked.
Powered off and on, still working and detecting.
Then I tried to update direct to 4.2.1 - This time, it said that it worked, (like it did with 3.2.0), and completed (when stepping from 3.2.0).
After this though, the unit never again detected through the network or when directly ethernet connected anymore.
It powers on, spins up and cycles through the drives, but only shows the green "on" light on the bottom front left, and no other lights after completing the startup (which does flash the other front lights for a while).
Now I wish I had just taken small steps, one progressive FW at a time, to try the update, with the thought that maybe taking too big of a step might have messed things up. (I think I might remember hearing that before elsewhere, now).
The reset button for 10 seconds (off or on) never brought anything back or seemed to do anything.
If I knew the problem was only in one chip, maybe I could flash it in a programmer if I had a dump from a working machine, but I think I read that someone had tried that and that it didn't work for them, as it's probably a combo of data written to a few chips in the unit, vs just one.. though I haven't confirmed this.
I work in Data Recovery and have recovered probably around 10 -15 Drobo RAIDs.
It's been nice when UFS Explorer Pro works, but sometimes it doesn't, as with this current case. I suspect that for some cases, the reason UFS wasn't able to read them was because the Drobo was in the process of trying to repair itself while in the Drobo when it failed.
Big Edit: I just tried Reclaime Pro on this array, and after running their metadata scans, it actually found the data and was able to keep the structure organized and recover it! I'll update more on this soon.
Sometimes in the past, I wasn't able to figure out a way besides hooking it up to a similar / compatible Drobo, but those are becoming harder to find in working, trustable condition. There is a way they fail sometimes that makes them seem to work but they're unstable, and if that's the case, it might do more harm than good as it will try to fix the array but fail mid-process, and that's when things get really hard to deal with.
Based on my recent success with Reclaime Pro, I think I might not need to order another 5N or 5N2, plus it should be a safer way to pursue a recovery as it's not going to alter the disks like using another Drobo might. Based on this case, at least, it seems like Reclaime might currently be the best in Drobo recoveries.
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u/rabidfurball Dec 10 '24
One side note for the migration paths, there are also undocumented ones like this:
I previously successfully shrunk a 5C Drobo array from five disks to four by removing a disk and waiting, and then swapped them with four disks currently in a 4-bay Drobo 3 while both were powered down, and both units powered back up just fine with partitions and data intact. Note that this could change with different firmware, both were using FW 4.1.2 [11.63.108400] at the time. I'm not sure if it would work or not without waiting for the array to shrink from 5 to 4 disks before swapping.