the last word

I called Drobo customer support. Actually, I called Drobo sales, since there doesn’t seem to be a separate customer support operation. The salesperson was very helpful. He said that normally they tell customers with disk failures to go to the manufacturer for replacements, but, since I’d had four out of five fail, he’d call the… [Read More]

The new Drobo FS is indicating yet another hard drive failure, bringing the total to four out of five. I have loaded two more WD 2TB Caviar Green disks from my stock of spares, so I have three working disks at this point. I’ll let you know how I make out with Drobo customer support… [Read More]

I’m just a glutton for punishment. Last week, I struggled with getting a USB-attached Drobo to allow a server to boot properly. Yesterday, I unpacked a new Drobo FS. I’d like to tell you about it. The Drobo packing is not in the Apple league for style and elegance, but it’s darn good. They printed… [Read More]

This is a fascinating product. It’s probably the harbinger of a new highly useful class of devices between palmtops and notepads. Still, it is clearly a first generation gadget, with some annoying deficiencies. It is already the best way to read books and periodicals. The Kindle iPad app is a nice piece of work, and… [Read More]

Problem: server service hangs in Windows 2008 Server with Drobo attached. See previous post for background. I called Drobo tech support. I explained the problem and immediately asked for escalation. The tech politely ignored that. As usual in conversations with Drobo, as with most tech support organizations, the first order of business was to bring… [Read More]