That’s what I feel today after recovering from a dramatic computer upgrade. It all started with that damned Drobo mega-storage backup box.
I didn’t want to blog about this problem at the time, as I really want this product to be successful, and I wanted to see how responsive they’d be. But Drobo crashed my computer. On boot-up, reliably, every time. Blue screen of death. It would then power up again, with Drobo then staying on stand-by, and it would then start just fine. But it didn’t like something in my boot-up sequence.
This really got the attention of Data Robotics, the Drobo people. I had several hour-long sessions with the head of customer service to try and diagnose my problem. After working through a series of diagnostics, we came up with a possible answer. The working theory appeared to be a conflict with either my BIOS or the chipset driver for my ASUS motherboard.
I was going to get some work done for another pesky problem with my system. It hangs up on shutdown. Not everytime, but enough of the time to be disconcerting. I’d been having problems with my mirrored RAID array, and I had made the mistake of putting my operating system on that array. It was time to go nuclear and fix everything at once. A complete wipe, a reconfiguration of the hard drives, a revision of my BIOS, and a clean installation of Windows.
Today has been a full day of getting my desktop back into a condition that I can actually get something done. Like spending a half hour on hold to get a new Adobe activiation code, because I forgot to deactivate Photoshop before the wipe. Getting all my plug-ins and profiles and calibration settings reinstalled. Putting back in my ten year old programs (Word97) for which every upgrade since has been a downward slope toward diminishing usability. It's why I dare notupgrade to Vista--half my programs and half my devices will be instantly obsolete.
Once I got everything reinstalled (with a slower and slower reboot every time), Windows failed to load at all. At the first BIOS screen, it just hung there. Then I disconnected the Drobo. And Windows loaded up faster than it has in years.
Drobo may be not quite ready for prime time.
After 15+ years of PC support I would agree that "WINDOWS Computers Suck Out Our Life Force".
After switching to Mac's about four years ago that sensation went away. Now it just works! :-)
Posted by: earl | June 20, 2007 at 06:56 PM
I have been Mac based for 16 years or so. I still occasionally use an 8 or 9-year-old Mac to operate old programs and SCSI peripherals. In the 8 or 9 years of operation I have had one "sad Mac", the Mac equivalent of Windows "blue screen of death" or the "spinning circle of confusion." I am looking at a new Mac laptop - the life cycle cost is almost the same as a cheaper Windows machine and I keep my "life force" intact!
Posted by: Bruce Nall | June 20, 2007 at 07:27 PM
Oh please, I don't want this to devolve into a platform bashing thread. I will hold my tongue on the Mac bashing, despite the provocations. No OS has a monopoly on these problems.
I'm responsible for the upkeep of six computers. Short of winning the lottery, and reprogramming my brain to understand the weird quirks of another interface, I'm committed to the system I have.
Posted by: Doug Plummer | June 20, 2007 at 09:16 PM
I tested one out on my Windows machine and it worked perfectly. Really glad that my data is being replicated now.
Posted by: Thomas Hawk | June 20, 2007 at 10:22 PM
I have a drobo on my Macbook Pro and *love* it for the ease in which I set it up and that it just sits there dong its thing as I fill it up.
Computers in general are flaky. Hence the need for a drobo as an external source for files.
Noone is immune from conflicts and bugs and the like - just try to keep your machine healthy and be a bit OCD about keeping it up.
Posted by: Wade | September 23, 2007 at 07:30 AM
Doug -
I was wondering if you're continuing to have problems with it? I'm looking for a reliable solution. I had similar problems that you had with a brand new Seagate 750gb drive via USB. Turns out that the PC was USB 1.0 and had problems working with the Seagate drive which was USB 2.0 even though the drive was backward compatible with 1.0. I had this happen on 2 identical machines (both with USB 1.0) but had no errors on the other 4 machines that have USB 2.0. Anyway, I like the concept but am curious if you're still using it? And, if so, were you able to partition the drobo into separate drives so your PC could see it as muliple drives versus 1 large drive?
AP
ps: I love your work
Posted by: ap | October 19, 2007 at 05:44 AM
AP I stil use the Drobo, which is now full, but I'm looking for other options. Probably some RAID array via Firewire or Gigabit. The data transfer speed of the Drobo is too sow, and it even slows up my Macs (which I converted to after this debacle)
Posted by: Doug Plummer | October 19, 2007 at 08:39 AM
Thanks for the info.
I just bought your book from Lulu.com. Looking forward to viewing it.
Andrew
Posted by: ap | October 19, 2007 at 08:56 AM