Drobo freezes 10.7 Lion Server

Just spoke to Data Robotics support on the iSCSI issue and learned two things:

A- I should wait until Dashboard 2.0.4 is released - they did no know when

B- That Data Robotics changed their Drobo warranty from 2 years (like in my case - Drobo Pro purchased in September 2010) to just ONE year !. When the change occured he could not tell.

Thus extended Drobo warranties are available for sale on their site.

I was sad to hear that because it does not show much confidence in their own products.

Luckily for us users, we do have options these days. I for one - even though I was provided access to the Dashboard 2.0.4 beta and haven't had a problem since installing it - will *never* buy any Drobo product again. You have the same choice too. There are fantastic products out there that do the same thing. Synology, QNAP, ReadyNAS, just to name a few.

I guess it's time to move on.

I've been using a QNAP device for over a year and I've been very happy with their product.

So, it seems that Drobo are slowly acknowledging and solving the iSCSI issue, but has there yet been any acknowledgement and/or solution for the Firewire 800 problems? I'm still stuck on USB, and it is sooooooo slooooow.

I just spoke to DataRobotics Tech Support with the same issue - Drobo volumes sporadically unmounting. After a week of many support ticket updates and a few calls, I finally got a Tech on the phone that admitted the problem is indees with the new Dashboard software. He instructs to uninstall it completely and go back to version 1.8.4 (Download for Mac) and wait until version 2.1 of Dasboard to update...

Just so you all know, downgrading to 1.8.4 is NOT a solution. The disconnects with that version happen not quite as often as with any of the 2.x versions, but they happen in 1.8.4 too. Speaking from my own experience.

Drobo have released RC5 of the beta today so they are making progress. Looks like we won't have to wait much longer.

Are the BETAs available for all to try? Or still private as indivcated in your previous post? Just curious to give it a try...

I have every reason to think that there will be a solution in the very near future - I'm in regular contact with DR and things are _definitely_ moving forward there.

I don't believe that the lack of information to customers is acceptable given the fact that there may be professionals relying on the device to perform their daily work. I think the company could have handled it much better - and even now have a more up front note regarding compatibility.

But releasing beta software is also not likely to help either at this point - as it could actually lose data.

I did revert my system to Snow Leopard using the older Dashboard and everything does work as expected. So there is a solution right now although it cost me many weekends and evenings of time wrestling with this. If stability is your biggest concern I agree with kalantan and the Tech he spoke to.

I don't feel my DroboCare purchase was a great investment given the level of commitment and lack of fast response to the issue. But it is also a hardware warranty FWIW.

Next time I will definitely wait before upgrading my OS though. This whole episode rather sadly reminded me (as a Mac user) of the Windows 7 release - where no devices actually worked on release (obvious exaggeration) but you get the point. To have such a comparison enter my mind saddens me and I hope that next release is better.

I've now listed out ALL of my hardware in a spreadsheet with compatibility notes versus Mac OSes and in future will work from that to figure out when to pull the trigger.

The beta is still private, although they are adding new people daily. They share the code through Dropbox and right now there are 10 or so people subscribed to the shared folder.

As for data corruption in a beta - I would normally agree - but in this case I am very confident that it's save. In the end, all they did was throw out their old iSCSI initiator (which was from FreeBSD) and replaced it with the one from ATTO - a proven and stable product. Then they added Dashboard on top of it but it's only to manage your Drobo unit and it does not do anything to the disks or the actual data. It would have been a different story if they had also released a firmware beta.

All I can say is that I have been running the beta for a couple of days now and it has been rock solid so far.

Anguz just posted the best description of what I - and probably many others - went through, expected from Data Robotics and didn't get ) and how to proceed from now on.

I suppose the biggest issue - apart from the loss of time and loss of data for some - is the dissapointment in the way Data Robotics treats their most important asset: their customers trust.

I realized once again that a good product is not only a well engineered one but one that is cared for by its manufacturer with good customer support and attention to detail. My admiration goes again to Apple to manage this in such a gigantic scale. Data Robotics could do the same in their own universe but evidently can't.

The reduction of one year from two years of the warranty is such an example.

I was still using 1.8.4 when I first had the problem (with Firewire 800). They said I should upgrade and everything would work - sadly not!

I just purchased and received my Drobo S last week and over the weekend encountered the same freezing issues others have with my iMac running Lion and connecting via FW800. With no insight as to when there will be a fix, and the lack of acknowledgement on the company's part that there is much of an issue to begin with, I'm trying to decide if I should just return it and move to another solution.

I reverted to version 1.8.4 of Drobo Dashboard and my DroboPro is operating normally now. I'm going to do as the last Drobo Tech I spoke to advised and wait for the 2.1 update to Dashboard. They just released the DD application before it was fully Lion functional...

What connection type are you on? As I mentioned above, I'm on firewire 800 and initially had the problems on 1.8.4 and was told to upgrade to solve them.