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Drobo data recovery: Conclusion
My dead Drobo saga’s conclusion…
tl;dr
- Grades: Drobo customer support: A+. DiskWarrior: F. Disk Rescue 3: A-.
- Don’t consider your Drobo to be hot-swappable. Ever.
- Buy Disk Rescue 3 and have it on hand.
- Run Disk Utility and do a Verify Disk once a month. If that’s too often for you, do it once a quarter.
Trying to rescue data off my dead Drobo
Drobo customer support is trying but is coming up empty. Now I’m trying Data Rescue 3 to read data off the Drobo. DiskWarrior can’t see the Drobo because it isn’t mounted, but Data Rescue 3 can.
In fact, DiskWarrior also doesn’t see the Drobo when it’s run stand-alone off their DVD! I tried this on my wife’s iMac. OS X sees the disk (but does not mount it), Disk Utility lists it and allows me to try a Verify Disk and Repair Disk, but DiskWarrior doesn’t see it. I’ll try their tech support next.
Drobo update: In the hands of Drobo customer support…
I’ve filed a ticket with their customer support system. They’ve been excellent when I’ve used them in the past, although those times were for nothing as serious as this.
A Drobo firmware update bricked my Drobo
I’m migrating my files and apps to my new MacBook Pro. A highly anticipated improvement was connecting my Drobo S to a USB 3.0 interface, instead of my previous laptop’s USB 2.0 bus.
During my migration, the Drobo Dashboard advised me that a Drobo firmware update was available. I did the update, which -boom- bricked my Drobo.
After trying rebooting, power-cycling the Drobo, and plugging it into the other USB socket, I’m at a point where Drobo Dashboard says the Drobo is healthy. But OS X won’t mount it. Disk Utility says:
Unable to bootstrap transaction group 6000: cksum mismatch
No valid commit checkpoint found
The volume xxxxxxx was found corrupt and needs to be repaired.
Problems were found with the partition map which may prevent booting
Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk.
I then run Repair Disk, and it tells me the same thing! So Repair Disk can’t repair the disk!
I bought DiskWarrior (for $109, I’ll have you know) but it can’t repair a disk that isn’t mounted. They’ll ship me a physical CD-ROM of my purchase, so I can try booting from it. Oh, but wait, my MacBook Pro/Retina doesn’t have a CD-ROM drive!
I am not a happy camper.
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