Death of a Drobo - DPChallenge Forums

09/09/2012 05:25:15 PM · #1

Well, just one partition. I have my 2nd Gen Drobo with 8TB of storage space split up in to two partitions. The main partition with all library is no longer mounting in OS X <10.7.4>, the 2nd is mounting. Disk Utility could not repair the disk. Stating in red the following: invalid sibling link, invalid record count, the volume photodrobo could not be repaired.

BTW, rebooting, etc., has not solved the problem. The Drobo lights are green, and dashboard says it is healthy . I have about 90% of that partition backed up on a mirrored drive and on CrashPlan, but I would like to get this thing working/mounted so I can update the backup before reformatting the drives.

My next step is DiskWarrior, but it's $100 so I thought I would ask for help first! And then I'm done with Drobo. Such a finicky device, although it works as advertised when I've had hard drives fail.

09/09/2012 07:08:23 PM · #2

For the Mac geeks out there

I swapped out the FW800 cables without luck. Then used a USB2 cable. Bingo. This is the second Drobo unit I've had where the FW cable caused problems. Anyway, what is most interesting is that the main partition is now showing up as a Mac OS Extended disk/HFS, which is correct. With the FW cable it showed up as an unmountable standard disk, non-journaled. I don't get it. It still has not mounted, but at least now the directory can be repaired/rebuilt with DisWarrior. However, in the past, I've had freshly repaired partitions on the Drobo take hours to mount.

Canon RF 24-70mm f/2.8 L IS

09/09/2012 07:55:24 PM · #3

My Drobo is flaky with Firewire, too, and I ran into a similar situation months ago where it wouldn't mount at all and one of the drives died right in the middle of that. The Drobo did recover from the drive loss, though, and Diskwarrior/cable juggling put me back in business. I think erratic behavior is either a sign or cause of a failing drive, but I'm not ready to blame Drobo for the Firewire issues (I've had occasional trouble with other external drives, too). I'm interested to see if Apple's Thunderbolt-Firewire adapter makes any difference. Wish they had a trade-in program for their newer models.

kirbic

Canon EOS R5

09/09/2012 08:03:57 PM · #4

I think Shannon is on the right track... it seems really odd that FW would be a cause of issues, however it might be more sensitive to them, so if a drive were failing, it stands to reason that it might cause earlier or more severe issues when running over FW. Even on the PC platform FW has a reputation for being sensitive to things like, for instance controllers. And let's face it, modern PC and MAC hardware are essentially from the same kettle of fish.

09/09/2012 08:44:03 PM · #5

Shannon, did your Drobo partition show up as corrupted?

Message edited by author 2012-09-09 20:44:42.

09/09/2012 09:49:56 PM · #6

I don't quite remember the details, but I think it did. Diskwarrior cleared that problem, and then the Drobo reported a failed drive (I couldn't even reformat it separately).

09/09/2012 10:45:07 PM · #7

Well I hope I get that far. No luck with DiskWarrior, still won't mount. Corrupted file is still reported by DiskUtility. Oh well. I'll try Drobo support tomorrow.

DrAchoo

Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5

09/09/2012 10:50:21 PM · #8

Will be watching this thread. Never had trouble with my Drobo other than an occasional random power off. If I'm reading clear, you haven't actually lost data right?

09/09/2012 11:29:11 PM · #9

I didn't lose anything, but it sounds like Ben is still working on it.

09/09/2012 11:58:16 PM · #10

I suspect this will be my first loss of data, in part because I got caught in between seeding my CrashPlan service (I'll lose May '12) and finishing the cloud backup. My mirror drive is full, and June '12 through current is on my iMac/CrashPlan due to Drobo trouble in early Summer. Overall not a huge loss, but I'm not happy about it. I've had 2 hard drive failures over 3 years with the Drobo, as well as a few toddler induced power outages without data loss.

I can't blame Drobo for not getting all my data backed up.

09/09/2012 11:59:11 PM · #11

Originally posted by bspurgeon:

Well I hope I get that far. No luck with DiskWarrior, still won't mount. Corrupted file is still reported by DiskUtility. Oh well. I'll try Drobo support tomorrow.

Are you connected via USB now? If not, try running these utilities over USB. Also, sometimes Disk Utility can work through the problem if you run it several times in a row.

You've got me looking into cloud storage now. Crashplan seems promising, but one reviewer said he backed up 1.7TB and it took 6-1/2 months!

Doh! Funny cross post. ;-)

Message edited by author 2012-09-10 00:00:33.

09/10/2012 12:05:49 AM · #12

I spent the money to seed the service. They send you a 1TB drive, and you can squeeze 1.2TB on there. It took several days to fill it up via USB2, and two weeks for them to offload the data. Much better than months! It now runs in the background.

Yes, running USB helped. I'll keep doing it until the Drobo folks say it's hopeless. BTW, the cloud is nice when your Drobo is flashing and reallocating the data after a drive swap. That has taken up to 4 days!

eta: sibling link error

Message edited by author 2012-09-10 00:19:39.

09/10/2012 12:39:16 AM · #13

I saw the drive service, but it's not cheap.

FYIâ�� DiskWarrior has some seriously heavy duty hidden commands under the hood. If all else fails, try calling Alsoft and see if they can help.

DrAchoo

Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5

09/10/2012 10:56:12 AM · #14

Originally posted by bspurgeon:

I can't blame Drobo for not getting all my data backed up.

Can't you? What is the Drobo for otherwise? I have it as my only backup and this is why I'm watching the outcome here.

09/10/2012 11:05:57 AM · #15

Originally posted by DrAchoo:

What is the Drobo for otherwise?

Uptime redundancy. A Drobo will reduce the chance of loss from a single drive failure, but that's about it. If the house burns down or the Drobo is hit by lightning you still lose everything forever. Real backup (unfortunately) requires multiple copies in multiple locations, and that's where cloud backups excel, albeit at the cost of convenience.

09/10/2012 11:15:48 AM · #16

Only 1 backup? I use the Drobo as my primary storage for photos, video, and music. Slow, but it's convienent protection against hard drive failures. My backups are on a mirrored drive and the cloud.

eta: slow to the post

Message edited by author 2012-09-10 11:17:34.

DrAchoo

Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5

Canon RF 24-70mm f/2.8 L IS

09/10/2012 11:31:49 AM · #17

Originally posted by scalvert:

Originally posted by DrAchoo:
What is the Drobo for otherwise?

Uptime redundancy. A Drobo will reduce the chance of loss from a single drive failure, but that's about it. If the house burns down or the Drobo is hit by lightning you still lose everything forever. Real backup (unfortunately) requires multiple copies in multiple locations, and that's where cloud backups excel, albeit at the cost of convenience.

Ok. I agree with this, but take a pragmatic approach. Nobody duplicated their negatives and kept them at a separate site. My concern is more a failure I thought I was protected against (ie. an electronic failure)

kirbic

Canon EOS R5

09/10/2012 11:44:17 AM · #18

Originally posted by scalvert:

+1

The off-site backup component is particularly problematic. I'm still not comfortable with cloud storage for backup, even leaving the upload time aside. I don't trust my data in someone else's hands. My data contains sensitive financial and medical records, essentially my whole life spread out before anyone that's able to access it.
The alternative to cloud storage is problematic too. The only workable solution I've found is to have a separate portable drive that gets moved off-site. The problem with this is that it never gets done often enough, so I have data that's at-risk because there are only two copies. I've had both my main data drive and my backup drive fail within 30 days of each other, and I can say it's not a pleasant experience; even though I lost no data, I still sweated bullets for a while.

ETA: I just ran the calculations; for a terabyte of data (I don't have that much because I have almost no video) it would take me 4.6 weeks to upload, using all of my upload bandwidth 24/7.

Message edited by author 2012-09-10 11:45:54.

09/10/2012 11:49:35 AM · #19

Originally posted by kirbic:

I've had both my main data drive and my backup drive fail within 30 days of each other, and I can say it's not a pleasant experience; even though I lost no data, I still sweated bullets for a while.

I've seen a RAID 5 and TWO backups fail at once. Not fun.

Canon RF 24-70mm f/2.8 L IS

09/10/2012 10:45:38 PM · #20

After several runs through DiskWarrior rebuilds it finally reported that a mechanical error has occured but that it was able to repair the directory and mounted a preview disk image. The message of doom goes on to instruct that I take whatever data I want from this preview [because it's going to vanish soon]. Ha. H.A.L can be polite when declaring the end of the world.

I'm now mirroring the partition which will take a couple of days.

So, anybody here think it was the Drobo hardware/software or a failing drive that Drobo could not predict? Or a file corruption wreaking havoc? Either way, I think I'll replace this unit and use it as a local backup.

Message edited by author 2012-09-10 22:49:50.

kirbic

Canon EOS R5

09/10/2012 10:48:47 PM · #21

Ben, I think it was a failing drive. I'm a little surprised that the unit doesn't closely monitor SMART parameters on its drives and let you know before there's an "aw shit!"

09/10/2012 10:50:43 PM · #22

I thought that the SMART parameters were not available from external drives?

ETA: BTW, I have 4 drives in the device. All are reporting as good per Drobo. Which is bad? ;)

Message edited by author 2012-09-10 22:57:32.

Sigma 120-300mm f/2.8 EX APO IF HSM for Nikon

09/10/2012 10:58:58 PM · #23

Originally posted by kirbic:

Ben, I think it was a failing drive.

Me, too. Sounds like the same problem I had. Drobo eventually noted the bad drive, and once I replaced it (and waited days for the rebuild) all was well.

HarveyG

Nikon D800

09/11/2012 03:28:40 AM · #24

I had a Seagate External HDD 750Gb when they just came out about 3 years ago. USB and FW400/800
I used it on FW400. It was reliable up till a specific date, when the Firmware went south on that date!
This happened into the 2nd year of a 3 year "warranty"
It was my only drive at the time, couldn't afford multiple drives and no cloud here in Africa.
I was busy writing data to DVD when the Seagate croaked. It cost me $400-00 for a drive recovery specialist to get SOME data off it and I am still sifting through it as the data was renamed during recovery.
It had to be broken open and the drive forcibly removed as these branded external drives are sealed shut.
In so doing I lost the Seagate "Warranty" and could not return it to get s replacement EXT HDD from Seagate.
Either you lose the data and get the hardware replaced or you lose the hardware and get your data back.
Never again will I buy a Seagate product or sealed unit. I now buy loose 3.5" drives and install them into external HDD cases. If it fails I can unscrew the drive from the housing, try recover the data, and then return the HDD for warranty replacement.

Giles