Three trips to my place from Jasson at Creative Techs, and no solution to my Sans Digital RAID box problem. This last visit was post-installation of a high end eSata host card (a CalDigit Fasta-4E), which we thought would solve the problem. It still didn't work. “You have interesting issues,” he said. “It is way overrated to be interesting,” I said. No matter what he changed, what deep geek config alteration he made, after a couple of minutes the Sans Digital RAID box would disconnect from the computer anytime I tried to transfer data. Or, it would freeze up the computer so that nothing would work until I hot rebooted.
A call to MacGurus clued me into a possible explanation. “Check and see if you're using OEM drives,” Brian at MacGurus said. “I see this problem all the time. There's firmware on those that causes headaches. That firmware is specific to the manufacturer of the computer maker who ordered them, and it's not compatible. You have to use retail version hard drives.”
A man at Seagate's Indian call center assured me, after reading him the serial numbers, that my drives were retail, not OEM. Interesting. Then I looked at my on-line sales information on the NewEgg site, where the drives were clearly marked as OEM.
I got RMAs from NewEgg.com to return the box and the hard drives, with no restocking charge (good on them). Then I got on the phone to Macgurus and ordered a Burly Enclosure with 4 1tb drives.
I can't say enough about how accessible the folks are at MacGurus. The people who run the place actually answer the phone. They told me which unit would be the quietest (the Sans Digital box is definitely not quiet), and offered to walk me through the setup when I got it.
I'm giving up on RAID for now. It's too hard. I'm going to set this up as a JBOD, with 4 independent drives, make sure my back-up routine is impeccable, and think about another one of these boxes in 6 months when I'm handling more video files. I'll let you know how it goes.
Hi Doug,
Does this mean you have given up on Drobo for your storage or just your critical storage areas? Drobo seems like a low-tech solution to home raid-type systems.
Thanks,
Angus.
Posted by: Angus Grant | December 04, 2007 at 07:11 PM
I want to reassign the Drobo to store older work that I don't need to go to very often. As an external storage box to access active files, it's lousy. It's slow to transfer data, it's slow to wake up and pay attention to a command, it slows up the boot-up process and it seems to occasionally play havoc with other connections. I would not recommend this box to anyone.
Posted by: Doug Plummer | December 04, 2007 at 07:42 PM
Do you think these problems are just Mac related as I would be running it off a PC?
It's a real pity. The product has such promise.
Angus.
Posted by: Angus Grant | December 09, 2007 at 02:21 PM
Angus,
Actually, I had much worse problems with the Drobo when I used it on my PC. It crashed Windows every time. The Drobo people were super responsive in trying to find a solution (the problem seemed to be particular to me, or rather, my motherboard), but in the end they couldn't fix it. And I got a Mac. I don't know if you'd have any problems or not.
Posted by: Doug Plummer | December 09, 2007 at 02:53 PM
Thanks for the frank comments. The drobo has such promise and is plainly just cool. But if it doesn't work, then it doesn't work.
That's a shame. Perhaps I'll wait for Drobo 2.0??
Thanks Doug. Great blog by the way. Your daily photo blog is inspiring me to start mw own weekly blog.
Angus.
Posted by: Angus | December 10, 2007 at 03:17 PM