UPDATE:
This post was too optimistic. The problem turned out to be bad WD 2Tb drives of the EADS model. The issue is the Drobo despite trying to handle the errors in no way indicates to the user what the problem is so they can replace the drives before catastrophe strikes.
As reported before, my 2nd Gen Drobo was reporting data not protected critical alerts periodically for no apparent reason. I switched from FW800 to USB on a guess and since doing this, it isn't happening anymore. I did open a ticket with Drobo support but found the whole exercise very frustrating.
I attached a Drobo dash board diagnostics file on the original ticket and then Drobo answered asking for stuff like Drobo versions, volume types and names, capacity used and so on. Are they saying that their diagnostics file includes none of that information? Seriously? There was also a respond in two days or we'll close your ticket ultimatum and of course, my problem happens spuriously so answering specific questions on it is kind of hard when it's spurious.
Needless to say 4 days after opening the ticket, it happened again and I responded at that point. But, the response seems to be ignored now. No matter. Switching to USB helped but what was slow before is now even slower. It's the worlds most expensive consumer tape drive. Knowing what I know now, I'd never have bought the thing. I'd have been better off buying three external 2Tb drives. One for actual use for my data and the other two configured as a striped 4Tb drive for time machine and so on. Total cost would be 600 bucks instead of 1500 for my current setup and 2k for a Drobo S setup.
The FW800 cable just doesn't look very 'good'. I think it was randomly disconnecting or something but why this triggers a critical error on a Drobo is bizarre to me as I can't figure how the FW cable makes the Drobo unit think a drive has failed.
Would the Drobo be easier to live with/expand than my 3 x 2Tb USB solution above? No way. Expanding the Drobo is a week long affair. Pulling a drive and then inserting a larger drive means 4 days of downtime while it does the relayout and you can only upgrade one drive at a time. It's quicker to copy from the external USBs I mentioned above to new USBs than to do this and considerably less risky. Hindsight as usual is great. The USB setup seems 'better' to me in hindsight. The external USB drives simply blow the Drobo away performance wise so thats what I would have done and thats what I'm moving to over time right now.
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