Drobo Robotics User manual

EN
Please check the following website for the most up to date
Drobo User Guide.
www.drobo.com/support
DE
Bitte sehen Sie auf der unten aufgeführte webseite nach für die
Drobo Gebrauchsanweisung in Ihrer Sprache.
www.drobo.com/support/intl
ES
Por favor consulte el siguiente sitio de web para localizar el
Drobo guia de usuario en su idioma.
www.drobo.com/support/intl
FR
Veuillez voir le site Web ci-dessous pour le manuel d’utilisateur
de Drobo dans votre langue.
www.drobo.com/support/intl
IT
Si prega di consultare il sito web sotto per la Drobo Guida utente
nella vostre lingua.
www.drobo.com/support/intl

I. Introduction........................................................................................1
II. Getting started ...................................................................................3
Three easy steps..............................................................................3
Selecting hard drives.......................................................................3
Keeping your product up-to-date ...................................................4
Best Practices ..................................................................................4
III. Drobo Dashboard Overview ...............................................................5
Drobo Dashboard basics .................................................................5
IV. Drobo (1st and 2nd Generation)...........................................................8
Inserting drives into Drobo .............................................................8
Connect Drobo to your computer...................................................8
Connect power................................................................................9
Connect your Drobo to a network using DroboShare...................10
Initialize your Drobo......................................................................10
Drobo Lights ..................................................................................14
Using Drobo Dashboard with your Drobo.....................................15
What to do when not using your Drobo .......................................17
V. DroboShare.......................................................................................18
Connect 1st and 2nd Generation Drobos to DroboShare................18
Formatting with DroboShare using Drobo Dashboard .................18
DroboShare Lights.........................................................................20
DroboShare settings......................................................................21
VI. DroboPro ..........................................................................................22
Inserting drives into DroboPro......................................................22
Connect DroboPro to your computer ...........................................22
Connect power..............................................................................24
Initialize your DroboPro ................................................................24
DroboPro Lights.............................................................................29
Using Drobo Dashboard with your DroboPro ...............................30

What to do when not using your DroboPro..................................33
VII. Sharing Drobo/DroboPro between computers................................34
VIII.Tips and Troubleshooting.................................................................35
IX. Safety and Warranty.........................................................................44
X. Index .................................................................................................49

1
Thank you for giving another Drobo® storage device a good home! We
at Data Robotics, Inc.™have been working since 2004 to make
protecting, storing and managing your digital content truly effortless.
The Drobo family of products (Drobo and DroboPro™) provides
effortless, safe and expandable storage. There are many different ways
to store and protect digital content, but Drobo is the only fully
automatic storage device that performs many data management tasks
without user effort. Here’s what you can expect:
Drobo automatically configures itself for data protection so you
don’t have to.
When a drive fails, your data is still safe (and all drives do
eventually fail).
Drobo senses any corrupted data and ensures that you only
access non-corrupt data.
No downtime to add capacity. Just add a drive to an empty Data
Bay, or replace a smaller drive with a larger one regardless of
capacity, speed, or manufacturer.
After a drive is installed into an empty bay, the new drive
capacity is immediately available and protected.
Drobo can act as one large drive, making it easier to find what
you’ve stored on it.
Drobo’s Data Bay indicator lights tell you everything you need to
know!
Upgrading capacity is as simple as adding ink to a printer.
Mix ’n match any 3.5” (SATA) hard drives; no worrying about
matching make, model or capacity of Drobo’s existing drives.
Upgrade forever—just replace Drobo’s smallest drive with a
larger capacity drive. No data migration or reconfiguration is
required.
What does it mean to go BeyondRAID? Going beyond traditional RAID
means leaving choices between striping and mirroring, limitations on

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expandability, drive sizing, and drive ordering behind. BeyondRAID™
technology is the next generation of storage that brings together safety,
reliability, expandability, efficiency and of course ease-of-use.
BeyondRAID can be adopted without any change in infrastructure,
allowing you to maintain your current file system and operating system–
eliminating the friction costs typically associated with moving to a new
technology platform.
Standard RAID levels are full of compromises. Do you want striping or
mirroring? A two-disk or four-disk RAID set? BeyondRAID is able to solve
these issues because it is built on an advanced virtualization platform. If
you already understand how RAID 0, 1, 5 or 6 operate(s), you
understand the fundamentals of BeyondRAID since BeyondRAID relies
on the same underlying algorithms.
Welcome to the world’s best storage experience.
Data Robotics, Inc. was formed in 2004 in California’s Silicon Valley with
a vision to take the pain out of storage management. Data Robotics, Inc.
developed the technology inside Drobo for people who “have to”
protect their valuable digital assets, but “hate to” – because it’s
complex and time consuming. For those people, we created Drobo, the
world’s first storage robot. It is a fully automated data storage system
that provides the only truly effortless, safe and expandable storage
solution. Unlike outdated technologies that emerged twenty plus years
ago and the frustrating products on the market today, Drobo is an
industry-changing product line that combines the advanced concepts of
storage virtualization and cybernetics, to take the pain out of storage
management.

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Before you set up your Drobo, you should determine if you will need to
share your Drobo with additional computers. If so, see “Sharing Drobo
between computers” on page 34 for further information.
To set your Drobo up, you will need to do the following:
1. Insert drives –Use any 3.5” SATA drives. Start with at least two
drives to protect your valuable data. (All data on the drives will
be erased.)
2. Connect cables –Connect the Drobo to your computer or
DroboShare (1st/2nd Generation Drobo only) and connect power.
3. Initialize Drobo –Install Drobo Dashboard and follow
Dashboard’s instructions for setting up your Drobo.
For more details on any of these steps, please continue to read through
this section of the User Guide and then refer to the appropriate section
for your specific product.
Drobo is unlike typical storage devices. Drobo makes it extremely easy
to increase storage capacity in the future just by inserting additional
drives or replacing existing drives with larger ones. This means you can
buy the storage you need today and then easily expand later. You can
save hundreds of dollars over time.
Drobo doesn’t care what manufacturer, capacity or speed of hard drive
you install. It accepts standard 3.5 inch internal SATA1 or SATA2 (also
referred to as SATA/150 or SATA/300) hard drives. Older IDE or ATA-
type drives will not work.
Warning! Please note that when adding hard drives to Drobo, any pre-existing
data on those drives will be erased.
The number and capacity of drives determine how much usable
protected storage Drobo provides. Take the guesswork out by using
Drobolator (www.drobo.com/drobolator), a web-based tool which
determines the usable protected capacity, based on any combination of

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drives. To calculate the approximate capacity yourself, omit the largest
drive and then add-up the capacity of the remaining drives.
For example (largest drives are crossed out):
# of Drives
Drive Capacities
Usable Protected Capacity
3
250GB + 250BG + 250GB
=
500GB
4
250GB + 250BG + 250GB + 500GB
=
750GB
4
750GB + 250BG + 250GB + 500GB
=
1000GB
Some years ago, computer manufacturers and hard drive manufacturers
started using different systems for measuring capacity. The net result is
that not all of a drive’s rated capacity is available to your computer. For
example, a 750GB drive will have approximately 700GB worth of
capacity. This discrepancy has nothing to do with Drobo.
During your initial setup, Drobo Dashboard asks you if you want to
check for updates automatically. We highly recommend you select the
“Yes” option to assure optimal performance of your Drobo. This feature
enables you to keep both Drobo Dashboard and your product’s
firmware current. Subsequently, you will receive a notice when a newer
version is available. You can check for the most current versions at
http://www.drobo.com/support/.
There are a number of things you can do to protect your valuable data.
Using a Drobo storage product is obviously a major step. However,
there are additional actions you can take to provide even greater safety
for your data. To learn more about this important topic, please visit our
Best Practices site at http://www.drobo.com/support/.

5
Drobo Dashboard is used to set up, configure, and interact with your
Drobo, DroboShare or DroboPro. You will find further detail on each one
in the section specific to that product.
Drobo Dashboard is the recommended companion application that
keeps you informed of Drobo’s status and allows you to customize
Drobo to best fit your storage needs.
Note: To install Drobo Dashboard, you will need to have administrative rights
on your computer.
Open Drobo Dashboard and you will see the main page. This page gives
you a quick overview of your Drobo’s status and storage usage. If you
have more than one Drobo, you can switch between Drobos by clicking
on the appropriate tab at the top of the window.
The pie chart shows you how much storage space is being used and how
much free space remains. By placing your mouse over the pie chart, you
will see a summary of the health of your Drobo.
Are you curious about how your disks are being used? Click the triangle
next to “How is my storage being used?” The capacity breakdown bar
will appear showing you how Drobo is using storage.

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Available for data: Total protected space on Drobo that is
available for you to store data
Reserved for expansion: Unusable capacity reserved for future
use when one hard drive is larger than the others. This space
will become available when you add a larger capacity hard drive
or replace a smaller drive with a larger one.
Used for protection: Storage capacity that is used to protect
your data against drive failure
Overhead: Capacity used by Drobo for management
You can explore different hard drive combinations using the Drobolator
web tool at www.drobo.com/drobolator.
The Data tab in Advanced Controls gives you in-depth details on the
status of your Drobo or DroboPro. You should go to this screen if Drobo
is in the process of protecting your data and you would like to know
when it will finish. The progress is shown in the “Data Protection”
section. See page 16 (Drobo) or page 30 (DroboPro) for further details.
The Tools tab gives you access to controls that allow you to customize
your Drobo or DroboPro. In this window you can reset your Drobo,
reformat the volumes, or change settings specific to DroboShare and
DroboPro. Additionally, this page displays useful information about your
Drobo or DroboPro and provides an easy way to check for updates of
Drobo Dashboard and your unit’s firmware. See page 16 (Drobo), page
21 (DroboShare), or page 30 (DroboPro) for further details.
Drobo Dashboard provides the following additional functionality to your
Drobo or DroboPro, enabling you to make custom backups and receive
email notifications.
DroboCopy provides an easy way to back up files to your Drobo. Select
the folder you want to back up, the location you want to back it up to,
the time you want it to run, and you are all set. Your selected backup
folder and all the items within it will be copied the first time DroboCopy

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runs. Subsequently, only new and updated files will be copied to the
destination folder. (Updated files will replace older files.)
To start using DroboCopy on a PC, launch Drobo Dashboard and right-
click the Drobo Dashboard icon (pie chart) in the System Tray and select
“DroboCopy Settings…”. On a Mac, launch Drobo Dashboard and go to
the Drobo Dashboard menu and select “DroboCopy Settings…” In the
DroboCopy window click “New DroboCopy” and pick the folders you
would like to use for your DroboCopy.
Note: Drobo Dashboard must be running for the scheduled backups to work.
Drobo Dashboard will display specific Drobo alerts locally on your
computer. For individual Drobo alert settings, the desired alert level can
be set in Drobo Dashboard within the Advanced Controls > Tools tab.
Drobo Dashboard can also send e-mail alerts based on a selected alert
level for all Drobos attached to your computer (including any
DroboShares on your network). To access this option on a PC, launch
Drobo Dashboard and right-click the System Tray Drobo Dashboard icon
and select “E-mail Alert Settings”. On a Mac, launch Drobo Dashboard
and go to the Drobo Dashboard menu and select “E-mail Settings…”
Note: Drobo Dashboard must be running for alerts to work.
Drobo Dashboard is included on the Drobo Resource CD that comes
with your product. After it is installed, you will be notified when a new
version is available (unless you uncheck “Check for updates
automatically”). Go to http://www.drobo.com/support/ for more
information.

8
Once you’ve chosen the number of drives and which capacities to
install, all you have to do is remove your Drobo’s face plate by simply
pulling it off and then slide the drives into the Data Bays. It doesn’t
matter which drive goes into which Data Bay. You should note that any
pre-existing data on the drives will be erased. Be sure not to touch any
exposed hard drive circuit boards after unpacking.
First orient the drive connectors so that they are pointed towards the
Drobo and are at the bottom of the drive (as shown). Open the Drive
Lock by pressing it towards the left and slide the drive into the Data Bay
until you feel the connector “mate” at the rear of Drobo. If the
connectors seat properly, the Drive Lock will snap behind the drive,
securing it into place.
Tip: Insert the drive with top silver plate facing up (circuit board down).
There are several ways to connect Drobo to your computer. You should
select the fastest connection you have available. Please note that only
one connection type can be used at any given time. The connections
are:
Connection Type
2nd Generation Drobo
1st Generation Drobo
USB 2.0
X
X
FireWire 800
X
Note: FireWire 800 is faster than USB 2.0.

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Note: Firewire 800 is on the 2nd Generation Drobo only.
Drobo gives you the option to use USB 2.0 to connect to your computer.
While not as fast as FireWire 800, it is found on every computer made in
the past few years.
FireWire 800 will give you excellent performance with your 2nd
Generation Drobo. If your computer does not have a FireWire 800 port,
then please contact your computer manufacturer for a compatible add-
on card. (Make sure that you select a card that fully supports your
computer and operating system since not all FireWire cards provide
optimal performance.) If your computer only has a FireWire 400
connector then you will need to purchase a FireWire 800 to FireWire
400 cable.
Note: Windows based computers will not get optimal performance with the
standard Microsoft FireWire drivers. Visit our support knowledgebase at
www.drobo.com/support for details on how to optimize performance with
FireWire on Windows (search keywords “FireWire performance”).
Once you have connected Drobo to your computer, the next step is to
connect it to an AC power source. Simply connect the power cord to the
back of the Drobo and to your power source.
Note: As with all electronic equipment, we recommend connecting your Drobo
to a surge protector or uninterruptible power supply (UPS), designed for
electronics.

10
If you are going use your Drobo on a network, you will need to use the
companion product, DroboShare. Your Drobo connects to DroboShare,
which connects to the network. Please see page 18 for further detail on
setting up this connection. Return to this point to complete your Drobo
setup.
Just as with any hard drive, you must format Drobo for use with your
computer’s operating system. Use the formatting tools provided in
Drobo Dashboard, which is included on the Drobo Resource CD. You can
also download Drobo Dashboard by visiting www.drobo.com/support.
Insert the Drobo Resource CD that came with your Drobo into your
computer. From the on-screen menu, select Install. After Drobo
Dashboard is installed, it will start automatically.
Depending on your computer’s operating system, you have several
choices for the file system format and size of the file system on your
Drobo. You should pick the combination that works best for your
expected usage of Drobo. For most customers, we recommend choosing
the largest volume size available for the selected file system. The size of
the volume you select is independent of the amount of actual storage in
your Drobo because of Drobo’s advanced storage virtualization.
If the amount of available protected storage in Drobo ever exceeds the
size of the volume that you picked (this may occur when you add one or
more additional hard disks to Drobo), then Drobo will automatically
create a new volume (or volumes) of the same size as the original
volume. Drobo Dashboard will notify you when this occurs and ask you
to format and name the new volume(s).

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File System Format
Compatible With
Max Volume Size
HFS+
Mac OS X
DroboShare
16TB
NTFS
Windows Vista, Server
2003/2008, and DroboShare
16TB
NTFS (XP
Compatible)
All Windows and
DroboShare
2TB
FAT32*
All Windows, Mac OS X, and
DroboShare
2TB
EXT3
DroboShare
2TB
* FAT32 is an older file system format that is generally less
protective of your data than modern (journaled) file systems. It also
has slower performance and file size limitations.
1. Once Drobo has finished
starting up, Drobo Dashboard
will automatically discover it
and show the message to the
right. Click “Yes”.
Note: Newer versions of Windows (including Vista) will also offer to format
your Drobo. We recommend that you click “Cancel” and use Drobo
Dashboard to format.
2. You will be shown the
message to the right asking
you to select Drobo’s file
system format. You have
the choice between NTFS
(XP Compatible), NTFS, and
FAT32. For most, either
version of NTFS is the best
choice. After you choose,
click “Next”.

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3. You will be shown the
message to the right asking
you to select a volume size.
The available sizes are
based on which file system
type you picked and the
capabilities of your
operating system. We
recommend that you pick
the volume size that will be
able to store all of your files
for the foreseeable future.
Click “Next”.
4. Depending on your volume
selection and the total
capacity of the drives in
your Drobo, you will be
presented with the
opportunity to select a
custom name and drive
letter for your volume(s).
Click “Next”.
5. You will be shown a
summary of your
selections. Now click
“Format”. This process
should take a few minutes
and could cause your Drobo
to restart.
When formatting is complete, your Drobo is ready to be used. You will
be able to access it like any other drive connected to your computer.
Tip: You can determine actual disk space usage by opening Drobo Dashboard or
checking Drobo’s blue capacity lights.

13
1. Once Drobo has finished starting
up, Drobo Dashboard will
automatically discover it and show
the message to the right. Click
“Yes”.
Note: Mac OS X will also offer to format the Drobo storage. We
recommend that you click “Ignore”and use Drobo Dashboard to format.
2. You will be shown the
message to the right
asking you to select
Drobo’s file system
format. You have the
choice between HFS+
and FAT32. Only use
FAT32 if you must
connect the Drobo to a
Windows-based
computer. Click “Continue”.
3. You will be shown the
message to the right
asking you to select a
volume size. The
available sizes are based
on which file system
type you picked and the
capabilities of your
operating system. We
recommend that you
pick the volume size that
will be able to store all of your files for the foreseeable future. Click
“Continue”.

14
4. Depending on your
volume selection and the
total capacity of the
drives in your Drobo, you
will be presented with
the opportunity to select
a custom name for your
volume(s). Click
“Continue”.
5. You will be shown a
summary of your
selections. Now click
“Format”. This process
should take a few minutes
and could cause your
Drobo to restart.
When formatting is complete, Drobo is ready to be used. You will be
able to access it like any other drive connected to your computer.
Tip: You can determine actual disk space usage by opening Drobo Dashboard or
checking Drobo’s blue capacity lights.
If you are connecting your Drobo to a network via DroboShare, you can
format your Drobo using Drobo Dashboard. For detailed information,
see page 18.
One of Drobo’s many benefits is a series of lights that tell you
everything you need to know, without your having to launch any
application software on your computer. Remember, Drobo is designed
to actively monitor and protect your data at all times. Drobo will
automatically take any necessary actions and display them using the
following lights:

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Drive Lights
Green: No action is required. All drives are healthy.
Solid Yellow: Add a drive or replace the current drive
with a larger drive soon. Drobo is running out of disk
space.
Blinking Yellow and Green: Do not remove these
drives or power down. Drobo is working to protect
your data.
Solid Red: Add a drive or replace the current drive
with a larger drive immediately. Drobo is critically
low on space.
Blinking Red: Replace this drive immediately. This
drive has failed and needs to be replaced.
Power Light
Green: The power is on and Drobo is ready.
Yellow: Drobo is in standby mode.
Red: Drobo has overheated. Disconnect the data
cable and then the power cable. Let it cool down and
then restart. Let it cool down and then restart.
Activity Light
Blinking Green: Data is actively being transferred
between your computer and Drobo.
Capacity Gauge
Blue: Displays the percentage of your Drobo that is
full, in 10% increments.
The Drobo Dashboard application allows you to easily check the status,
change settings, etc., on your Drobo. See page 5 for an overview of
Drobo Dashboard.