Anyone know what happens when drives go up to 5tb, will they work with this Drobo or will I have to purchase a newer Drobo?
506083
Unless I'm mistaken, there isn't a "newer" drobo. The drobo 5d is currently the latest and greatest and as far as I know you can put any hard drive into the drobo 5d. In fact, can even mix different drives and sizes.
506084
According to Drobo support:"Thank you for contacting Drobo Technical Support. Unfortunately at this time it is not possible to determine if there will be any problems with a newer 5TB drive in the Drobo5D. Once the newer 5TB drives are released next year there will be more information to provide in regards to 5TB drive support. Please let me know if you have any further question."
506085
Something else to think about... Whether or not newer, larger capacity drives will be compatible with any current Drobo model, your will still probably be limited to the current 16 TB max volume size limitation.
506086
Every time in the past when new HDD sizes come out there was a firmware update to allow them to work. So of course there is no guarantee but it "should" be fine.
506087
i'm using three 3Tbs and one 4 Tbs(8.12Tbs). Uptil now My used space is 3.87 Tbs and working well.
506088
According to the website, the 5D drobo will be compatible with hard drives of any size as long as the total amount of space (on all the hard drives inside Drobo) does not exceed 32TB.http://support.drobo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/506/
1302605
That is the theory of a RAID 5. I had a 4TB drive fail after a month on duty. Western Digital immediately sent me a new one, I plugged it in and it took about four days to re-establish the full RAID. My 16TB with 12 TB usable space on RAID 5 was loaded with 4TB of records. So, if you want to upgrade your system one drive at a time, better be patient.
2085568
I have installed both 2.5 & 3.5 inch FF drives without any problems. That actual disk partition size is dependent of the OS. The largest drive I nave installed is 2TB and that has been working fine. I have no experience with larger disk drives.
100777
Make sure to buy 2.5" laptop and not the 3.5" desktop ones that don't fit. To make sure your photos are never lost due to drive failure, you want to get 4 identical drives to use with Drobo's double redundancy feature (you can lose 2 drives and keep going). Whatever your budget is for drives, divide by 4 and make do.Performance is not as important (SSDs are wasted because the Drobo's CPU cannot keep-up - I know because I got quad SSDs and didn't make a big difference). You want the most capacity for your money.If you run out of space, you can get 4 new drives, swap them out one at a time, allowing time to sync each new drive and voila! You can sell the old ones on eBay after erasing them. Make sure to buy 2.5" laptop and not the 3.5" desktop ones that don't fit. To make sure your photos are never lost due to drive failure, you want to get 4 identical drives to use with Drobo's double redundancy feature (you can lose 2 drives and keep going). Whatever your budget is for drives, divide by 4 and make do.Performance is not as important (SSDs are wasted because the Drobo's CPU cannot keep-up - I know because I got quad SSDs and didn't make a big difference). You want the most capacity for your money.If you run out of space, you can get 4 new... » Read More Make sure to buy 2.5" laptop and not the 3.5" desktop ones that don't fit. To make sure your photos are never lost due to drive failure, you want to get 4 identical drives to use with Drobo's double redundancy feature (you can lose 2 drives and keep going). Whatever your budget is for drives, divide by 4 and make do.Performance is not as important (SSDs are wasted because the Drobo's CPU cannot keep-up - I know because I got quad SSDs and didn't make a big difference). You want the most capacity for your money.If you run out of space, you can get 4 new drives, swap them out one at a time, allowing time to sync each new drive and voila! You can sell the old ones on eBay after erasing them. « Show Less
420317
I have an earlier generation version of this and it works with 500 and 750gb drives but not a 2TB drive, so there do seem to be potential capacity issues. The seller should address this in the product specs - it's a glaring omission.
252683
The WD Red Series are the only drives I put in mine (17 of the 3TB ones). I would strongly suggest the 3TB or 4TB versions of the WD Red NAS drives for this unit and nothing else.
240457
I am really sure but, you would probably lose 3-4 GB of data because of manufacture formatting, I would suggest go with 2TB.
2056895
did you try one drive at a time? I had the same problem with my drives because they had a signature collision. Had to manually change the signature of one of them. Also, the unit says it will handle 6TB. Not sure it that means 6TB total or will it recognize all 12TB for you.
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.)
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.
1803109
We have the seller here indicating that this enclosure will work with a 6Tb drive, whereas there is another question raising an inability to run a 4Tb drive - which is answered by a comment that a 2Tb drive was successfully housed. We need to have the seller or manufacturer settle these questions. IS THERE an upper limit to drive capacity; or are there any limits to drive type or SATA permutations?
1895641
1 and 2 tb work just fine, if 4 tb will run on the mb, then it should work with the tray. I find these trays are handy, in fact I mount all my drives in these.
1155078
I have a 3tb drive in mine and it works fine I don't see any reason why it won't work with a 4 Tb drive
17637
Check out on of the Drobo enclosures. Drobo Beyond Raid 4-Bay USB 2.0/FireWire 800 SATA 6GB/S Storage Array with Drobo PC Backup DR04DD10
1122621
The DROBO allows you to slide 4 separate drives into it, it then automatically formats them and creates a RAID type system. It does contain its own power supply and cooling fan for the drives. You get a redundant back-up of anything you copy to the DROBO, so if one drive fails, all your data is safely on the other drives. You simply replace the bad drive and march on. Yes - you can use 4 separate 4TB drives. Be aware though, that since it creates a redundant back-up of your data, you will not have 16TB of total storage, but just under 11TB. I suggest you visit the DROBO website, it has excellent documentation on everything. The DROBO allows you to slide 4 separate drives into it, it then automatically formats them and creates a RAID type system. It does contain its own power supply and cooling fan for the drives. You get a redundant back-up of anything you copy to the DROBO, so if one drive fails, all your data is safely on the other drives. You simply replace the bad drive and march on. Yes - you can use 4 separate 4TB drives. Be aware though, that since it creates a redundant back-up of your data, you will not have 16TB of total storage, but just under 11TB. I suggest you visit the DROBO website, it has... » Read More The DROBO allows you to slide 4 separate drives into it, it then automatically formats them and creates a RAID type system. It does contain its own power supply and cooling fan for the drives. You get a redundant back-up of anything you copy to the DROBO, so if one drive fails, all your data is safely on the other drives. You simply replace the bad drive and march on. Yes - you can use 4 separate 4TB drives. Be aware though, that since it creates a redundant back-up of your data, you will not have 16TB of total storage, but just under 11TB. I suggest you visit the DROBO website, it has excellent documentation on everything. « Show Less
1848758
The one I received didn't work at all. I returned it for a Drobo. I use 2TB drives in the Drobo so I don't know about 4 in that.
968535
I went through a couple of these that never worked out of the box, so if you are going to try it, stick to the specs. I returned 2 of them and switched to the Buffalo LinkStation LS-WVL/E and it has been working great with two 3TB drives.