Just as a brief update on my situation I thought that I would add the following. I could in fact almost write a book about the way my Drobo FS and my interactions with Drobo Support have exercised my brain and added to my frustrations over the last 8 months. Instead I will write a few lines about where I am with this particular problem which has been only one of the many problems I ahve had with my Drobo FS. Perhaps I should say that this is my third Drobo FS as I have already had two replacements due to the issues I have been experiencing.
At the moment, and after much discussion with Drobo Support, and after much personal deliberation, I have done the following in relation to my most recent problem as described above.
I had a replacement Drobo sent by very courteous and helpful Drobo Support in Germany.
The latest Drobo firmware seemed to cause havoc with my network and my networked systems - and I am not even talking about Lion. My PowerPC G5 has MacOS 10.5.8 and my Intel iMac and MacBook Pro both use 10.6.8.
Under instruction from Drobo Support I downgraded the Drobo Firmware to 1.1.2 from 1.2.0. I did this to stop the 'network drag' on my three computers and to stop the frequent freezing of the computers on the network.
This turned out to be a very frustrating process as the firmware couldn't be downgraded until I had upgraded the dashboard versions on my Intel Mac and my MacBook Pro to 2.0.3. Until I did that I couldn't even log-on to the Drobo through the dashboard although Time Machine backups, Drrobo Copies and SuperDuper backups were all proceeding.
To upgrade the dashboard required finding out how to properly uninstall the previous version first. The PowerPC G5 didn't however like Dashboard 2.0.3 and so I had to install 1.8.4 on it.
Thoughout all of this I was aware of worrying caveats on the Drobo site in relation to firmware installations and software changes which could result in loss of data. It seemed to me that I had a backup system which was there to give me peace of mind yet all it was doing was giving me worry about my precious backups.
Enough said. I am happy to provide any other information I have. I have a narrative which I have been maintaining over 8 months about what I have done in relation to issues I have encountered and interactions I have had with others during my quest for THE solution to my particular backup needs and problems. A truly boring and very lengthy text based story which may be of little worth to anyone as it tends to list problems - and solutions suggested by others, which were tried. but in the main, failed.
Drobo is conceptually womderful but the implementation falls far short of that. Once something goes wrong look out! As far as I can see the software situation at the moment is distressed and the very courteous support service has an almost impossible job.
