What do the lights on drobo indicate?

Officially resigned as moderator, am selling (or have sold) my drobos. Thanks for all the fun guys and gals. Email me at drobospace@crazyhat.net to get in touch if you need anything.

ALso getting these in the Console: 1/23/08 7:08:02 PM [0x0-0x66066].com.datarobotics.drobodashboard[610] NetSocket::Accept: got error 9 accepting connections 1/23/08 7:08:02 PM [0x0-0x66066].com.datarobotics.drobodashboard[610] didn't get connection 1/23/08 7:08:02 PM [0x0-0x66066].com.datarobotics.drobodashboard[610] NetUDPSocket::Shutdown: got error 57 shutting down socket 8 1/23/08 7:08:02 PM [0x0-0x66066].com.datarobotics.drobodashboard[610] NetUDPSocket::Shutdown: got error 57 shutting down socket 6 1/23/08 7:08:02 PM [0x0-0x66066].com.datarobotics.drobodashboard[610] NetUDPSocket::Shutdown: got error 57 shutting down socket 5 1/23/08 7:08:02 PM [0x0-0x66066].com.datarobotics.drobodashboard[610] NetUDPSocket::Shutdown: got error 57 shutting down socket 7

My first impressions so far:

- Great that one can now chose the size of the Drive, i.e. 1,2,4,8,16 TB max.

- Ability to get warnings e-mailed. Nice feature. 

- When doing a factory reset, one no longer seems to get the green blinking light after 30sec. wait

- The Drobo still does not seem to work at all with the Samsung HD501LJ SpinPoint 500gig drives, which is very unfortunate as tech support had promised that "feature". When booting the Drobo with 4 of those disks installed, it just goes into continuous reboot mode. When turning the power off, and removing all drives, then powering the Drobo back on, the top red light goes on. After inserting one SpinPoint drive, the Drobo goes into recovery mode for a couple of minutes. Once the top light turns green, I connect the Drobo to my Mac. The Drobo reboots, and now the top light blinks red. When inserting further drives, the Drobo enters eternal reboot mode again.

Trying the same procedure with 2 drives installed just gets a solid red lamp in the top slot.

Now restarting again with all 4 drives installed, the top light is solid green, while the next 3 ones are flashing red. 

Not good. 

Not related, but fun:

Drobo on a Mac G5 Quad | Norway | http://modifoo.com

Added drives 3 and 4, which instantly got a green light. Checked in Dashboard, and showed the right capacities. Did a trial transfer of some data, achieved only a 9.5MB/sec transfer rate, on a USB2 bus. Now am re-formatting with the Dashboard in HFS+ with the 4TB option chosen. During format the top light turns green, with the other 3 lights flashing red. This continues after a message is displayed that the formatting is finished. I ejected those three drives, and after a wait re-inserted the second drive. There I keep getting a solid red light. Inserting a third drive, drive spins up, the light remains dark. Dashboard shows no recognized harddisk. Same with the fourth drive.

Removing all but the top (green) disk. Ejecting the Drobo from the Desktop. Putting the Drobo in Standby mode via the Dashboard. Waiting 5 minutes for the Drobo to enter the Standby mode. Drobo Dashboard shows "ready for connection", but the Drobo still shows solid green on bay 1 and solid red on bay 2. Removing the USB cable. Drobo stays on. Powering Drobo down and up again. Top Drive spins up, then blinks red. After about 30seconds the Drobo goes in standby mode.

I am sending my brandnew Seagate Drives now back to my friendly vendor. Luckily they will exchange them for 2 Seagate 1TB. Waste of time and money.

I wish that Drobo, knowing of this problem, would put a prominent warning on their site, saying that there are issues with this particual Drive model. Especially, Drobo should not advertise these drives.  If you cannot, for legal reasons, post a note like that, you might instead have a list of Drives that are confirmed to be working well with the Drobo.

I understand that Drobo cannot keep track of all Drives from all manufacturers, but with these Samsung drives having the best cost-per-GB ratio, and getting good reviews, I imagine that many (potential) Drobo users will opt for these drives. Additionally, users who already have a working Drobo, may run into trouble upon adding one of these Samsung drives. 

All that said, thanks Drobo for making this preview available. 

Drobo on a Mac G5 Quad | Norway | http://modifoo.com

nice

I just noticed - my Dashboard is now working. Strange. I've been away from my Mac for a couple of days (so no system changes) but contrary to my original post, it's connected and displaying info (yes, I did reboot a few times when I had the original issue!)

Noticed that Dashboard is reporting a Storage Capacity of 1.36TB, even though I have 4 x 500GB drives in the bay. The pie-chart also reflects this showing 189 GB used and 1.17TB free. However, the graphic bar in the "How is my storage being used" section reports 4 x 500GB drives for a total capacity of 2.40TB (1.81TB actual).

Mac OS correctly shows 1.5TB & 500GB capacities on my 2 partitions. I don't think this is a problem, so this is more rhetorical than anything... Thanks Tony.

I was hoping that the, ah, evenness of the disk access would be improved. It's rather irritating to be listening to an (128K AAC!) song and have it stutter for a second. So far, it does it on movies, music (ALAC and AAC), etc, so no change from 1.0.3 or whatever it was that came loaded. I just bought an Xbox that I'll throw XBMC on to play media and stuff from the Drobo. With the cache set sufficiently high, it should be able to work around the Dribble.

Follow-on to yesterday's post. I could not find a way to revert to 1.0.3, so I reset the drives. 1.1.0 now works. I'm very disappointed that a firmware update wiped my data, but at least now I have my Time Machine going again.