If I uninstall Drobo dashboard, can I still access the Drobo-housed drives?

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Level 1

47 points

If I uninstall Drobo dashboard, can I still access the Drobo-housed drives?

Help!

A couple of years ago my Mac support folks encouraged me to buy a Drobo backup system for my MacPro. The purpose: to seamlessly backup films I was working on.

The Drobo unit was never properly confirgured, and the films were never backed up. Other stuff was backed up, but not the films. Also, there are files on the drives in the Drobo unit that do not have correlates on my MacPro drives.

As Drobo won't help me unless I purchase DroboCare or upgrade to a new unit, I want to stop using the Drobo backup system.

But as I have 3 or 4 drives in the black Drobo box with flashing green lights, I'd still like to access and use those drives. (I need to see what needs backing up, what doesn't, free up space for manual, drag-and-drop backup, etc.)

If I uninstall Drobo dashboard, will my MacPro still be able to read/write the drives in the Drobo black box?

Thanks.

Cat

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Jan 9, 2014 3:59 PM

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Answer 1

Jan 9, 2014 4:51 PM in response to Cat Songs

Yes. It's just a Firewire (or USB) drive. You can read/write to it without the Drobo software. However you can't manage it without the Drobo software.

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Answer 2

Cat Songs Author

Level 1

47 points

Jan 9, 2014 5:01 PM in response to William Lloyd

Thanks.

Just to clarify...

I can TRASH the Drobo Dashboard.

After trashing, I can manually drag and drop files from my MacPro HDs to/from the HDs housed in the Drobo black box.

By "manage" you mean "auto backup"? (I don't want Drobo automatically backing up anything.)

Just wanna be sure...

Thanks again!

Cat

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Answer 3

Jan 9, 2014 5:07 PM in response to Cat Songs

First, "trashing" drobo dashboard is likely not enough. It uses a kernel extension. You want to make sure you get tha tas well. Look for an uninstaller on Drobo's site.

And yes, after that you can still drag and drop to the volume that the Drobo is showing you (it should be on your desktop or otherwise visible in Finder, already). Nothing will change in this regard when you remove Drobo dashboard (AND ITS KERNEL EXTENSION!)

By manage I mean, there are some things you can do in Drobo Dashboard. It's been a while since I've used it, but I know you can set the volume size that the Drobo provisions to the folder. i.e. you can set in Drobo dashboard that the hard disk it displays to the Finder looks like a 2 GB drive, or a 4 GB drive, or an 8 GB drive (among other things). You can also use the Drobo Dashboard to see the state of the drive health, the capacity full, etc.

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Answer 4

Cat Songs Author

Level 1

47 points

Jan 9, 2014 5:10 PM in response to William Lloyd

MANY THANKS!

Cheers,

Cat

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