Can I start with 3 hard drives in the Drobo and then add more as time goes on or do I have to re-format every time I want to add a hard drive?
843170
You can start with two drives and expand it as you get more drives. Furthermore if all bays are full then you can replace older smaller drives with bigger newer drives without losing any data.
843171
Drobo recommends that you start with at least 2 hard drives, so yes, 3 will do. You do not reformat each time. You can add a drive any time. The software will analyze the drive and add its volume to the total allocated volume of the Drobo unit. (It will erase the drive first, make sure nothing of value is still present on the new additional drive.)
843172
That's the beauty of the Drobo...you can start with 3 drives then add more later without a problem. The Drobo will resize itself for you. Even better, if you want to replace a drive with a bigger one, you can simply take out the small drive and put in a bigger drive without reformatting. Drobo takes care of everything!
843173
Yes you can, I started with two, then just stuck another in a couple of weeks ago. I didn't even have to turn it off.
399562
Yes you can. I am currently running RAID5 with 4 3TB WD Red hard drives, 1 bay is open.
2132783
Yes with three provisos. First what you are backing up must easily fit into two 3TB of space. Second, the Seagate could also crash and third, you need to use a back-up program which makes the Seagate a startup drive. I use Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper.
1006830
No. The days of internal expansion are over. Suggest you take a look at the 2013 model, you can 4 Drives.
512634
You can start with one drive and add drives as needed. Of course if you don't use at least 2 drives you can't RAID them. The NAS will pick an appropriate RAID configuration automatically, but you can override it if you like. You can even mix disk sizes but that is not the best solution. You should use SATA 6 drives. As you add new drives the system recognizes them and reconfigures your system.
378104
Their is no problem with mixing various size drives. I did that until I eventually updated to all 4th drives.
1459205
It comes with the brackets to install all 4 drives, as to any hard drive I am not sure. They have a list of tested and recommended hard drives, there are a lot of mfgs and models. You also want to install in matching pairs at least and possibly all4 the same if you want to use certain RAID structures.
196551
Actually no. In fact Drobo states as such on their Web site. It does make a substantial difference with traditional hard drives.
1690764
Yes, I do it all the time. Also I copy photo files between three hard drives. No problems.
1972508
sure hope you have not used more on the drive the terrabyte drive that is usuallly its customarry to replace with same size drive or larger for that very reason but load in the4 new drive and and the old make secondary you can send all to the new drive or drag and drop in new drive
506899
I started with one 2TB and have been running it for several months. Adding a second of another brand and size. It's flexible to do that. You can even put in 2.5's with a converter tray, or some people mix in SSD's as well. Pretty limitless. AND most use cases are hot swappable, meaning you can pull and add drives while running.
512633
Yes, you can operate this with just 1 HDD or you can operate it with all 4. Just to give you additional information about this NAS. A lot of the negative comments about it were true. This thing used to freeze up all the time for me when transferring small or large files. With the latest firmware all of those issues have been corrected and it's a really good product. Just make sure you update to the latest firmware before you do anything. Hope this has been helpful. :)
2235683
Using X-RAID is the only way to make that work. But you are limited to 1 volume, if you want more than 1 volume you would turn off X-RAID but you cant go back without reformatting your drives. X-RAID will manage your redundancy
523595
It looks like a total of three spaces are in the case for hard drives. You can always add external USB drives too, which are more transportable than the internal drives.
1905074
No it doesn't need it. So I just started with 2 old 1TB HDDs than after 1.5 week I added 3 4TB new HDDs. Later I expended 3 4TB HDD with 1 more of the same type. Finally I have 2 disk groups. Configuration of NAS is very flexible and it is really fully up to you.
699002
Yes,I use 3 sans digital 8 bays and added this one to the group and put 3tb drives in it.WORKS GREAT!
1110136
I am not an expert on the matter ... Don't know for sure but, I will doubt you can maintain the data as the Drobo needs to rewrite the disc to assure their structure... Not sure if will allow partitions either. Perhaps contacting Drobo directly you might find the right answer