Refracted-Light Photography

Intro

For those that know me you were probably aware of the great RAID failure of 2009, For those that don’t the short story was that I was intelligent enough to unmount a 2x 1TB striped RAID from my Mac Pro thus loosing thousands of pounds worth of data in the process (and if anyone had any ideas of how to get that back please get in touch).

Because of this I decided I needed to invest in a safe, reliable, upgradable RAID array to hold my ever expanding iTunes library, but also backup my machines and also store photography content for the company.

Taking advice from friends I looked at several systems, however I always had one particular solution stuck in my head, the one that “Cali Lewis” raved about and the one that won all the awards at various Mac based shows & conventions… The “DROBO” (or Data Robot).

For the uninitiated, a DROBO is a fancy enclosure for HDD which you can upgrade when needs be as well as replace faulty drives, thus giving you a seemingly limitless capacity device which is safe and secure.

The Purchase

The final push for DROBO arrived on the 11th November in the form of an email announcing the new model the fancy DROBO S which seemed far superior to the existing DROBO, offering eSATA to connect it up as well as 5 bays for drives instead of 2. These small had me itching to purchase and not before long I had a shiny DROBO S sat in my shopping basket.

I whipped my credit card out, closed my eyes and pushed the purchase button, knowing that I couldn’t really afford to buy, but it had become necessity in my mind to save future data loss. This is where I discovered that the price I was willing to pay had just jumped up significantly as my £509 device jumped to £610.87 after shipping and tax (Seriously £22.19 for shipping and tax not already included in the quote?). As I had already got this far and was determined to have a DROBO in my life I winced, pressed purchase, and went to bed dreaming of happy storage.

The Delivery

The next day I headed to Micro Direct and decided to buy a few HDD to feed my hungry new baby, after discussing with friends I had decided to buy 3x SeaGate Barracuda 1.5TB drives.

I began to impatiently wait for my DROBO to arrive after 2 weeks my DROBO still hadn’t arrived and on the 9th of Dec I recieved an email to announce that delivery was underway, this prompted me to visit MacUpgrades and purchase a Sonnet eSATA card for my Pro.

Days past

Finally on the 11th December my (£22 swiftly delivered???) DROBO S arrived, I was ecstatic.

Arrival

I am not a man to watch or film unboxing of products, however the unboxing of a DROBO is magic, and after doing so I felt I had missed the opportunity for a video.

That aside the DROBO was almost too easy to set up, turn on add drives install software etc done, I feel comfortable I could of let a simian handle it, within 10 minutes I was moving TBs of data around pretty speedily and without any pain, this thing was great and I radiated a smile for days.

DDAY 12:01:10

After having my DROBO less than a month I came home to my device repeated rebooting itself, odd I thought but did the tried tested IT industry standard, I turned it Off and On…

No such luck… the DROBO was just going through the process of starting up (all lights on) and then turning off (Like the mains had just been pulled), I panicked, and jumped into the DROBO website, after 10-15mins of searching I found reference to something called a “reboot loop” which seemed to describe the issue my device had, I tried the steps, no luck, I googled “Drobo Reboot Loop” and found pages of people with the same issue, How had I not heard of this and, why is it happening to me?

I then bit the bullet and emailed DROBO support.

Impressively, even though it was out of hours I had an email back from a real person within 10 minutes, they went through my issue and explained various ways to reset or kick back into life my little guy, after a few failed attempts the friendly tech guy recommended that I returned it to point of purchase, “I bought it from you” I replied to which the response was to contact the UK sales team, I asked for a number and was told none was available.

This annoyed me, the only reason I bought direct, and payed more than I would of done from a store was for extra support and now I felt like I had none.

After troweling through the site I finally found a phone number for UK Sales and made the call, to which I found an “out of hours” answer phone message.

I went to bed…

UK Support

The next morning I called UK sales and got through to a lovely lady who assured me she would sort everything out and send a new one.

That was the 13th January and today is the 23rd, I have had no further response other than a survey about how my support was.

I will keep you posted, but to be honest I have lost faith in DATA ROBOTICS products and have been unable to access nearly 1.5TB of data for over 10days…

Update on Sunday, February 7, 2010 at 0:13 by Stu Hodgkiss

The Wait…

 

over two weeks past since my last post/rant on the Drobo and I still don’t have a working one, I have emailed UK support and even spoke on the phone, They took my credit card details saying “I’d have to pay for a replacement until my old one is returned” and yet no new Drobo, 

I will keep you posted!

 

 

Update on Monday, February 15, 2010 at 14:51 by Stu Hodgkiss

More waiting…

 

just incase anybody is following this it’d only be fair to post a follow up,

So far I have not received a replacement DROBO, and have totally lost faith in the company, I have called and email and pushed for a new machine which I was pormised would take 2-3 working days, that was over 2 weeks ago.

I would not recommend a DROBO to anyone, I am stuck with 2.5TB of data on a piece of hardware thats broken, and I have no way of getting that data off, I can’t even force a refund as I need a working DROBO to recover my data.

In short:

 DO NOT BUY A DROBO!!!

Update on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 at 21:41 by Stu Hodgkiss

The first Replacement

 

Today my new (replacement) DROBO came, it was easy to swap drives and set up and it appears my data is there and the unit is working.

I’ll keep you posted on its status but with all honesty I have lost faith in it.

The lack of customer service throughout the ordeal that was the last 2 months has put me off Data Robotics as where they had a chance to shine they failed miserably.

Stu

Update on Sunday, March 28, 2010 at 22:12 by Stu Hodgkiss

OH GREAT!!!

brilliant!!!

The stupid (replacement) piece of crap DROBO S has kicked into a Reboot Loop, looks like I shall be calling “customer support” (LOL like they offer any support) and wait another month or so for a replacement, its a good job that nothing important is on it… oh no wait thats where all my work and iTunes media is, 

I’ll post a follow up as soon as i know whats going on…

Update on Monday, March 29, 2010 at 22:10 by Stu Hodgkiss

customer service round 2…

so I got an email back from customer service, they never seem to answer all my questions regarding support and it appears I can only ask 1 question at a time for the support guy to understand…

 

I have attached everything so that you can see how dire this support is, I am loosing money daily and being offered NO support!

Update on Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 22:14 by Stu Hodgkiss

Follow up?

so its wednesday and I have received no call to arrange replacement, I have however received an email saying my case was closed and a questionnaire asking for feedback, really? wtf…!

I really want a refund for my DROBO now and am very tempted to seek legal action does anyone have any ideas?

Update on Saturday, April 24, 2010 at 15:57 by Stu Hodgkiss

End of the DROBO loop?

 

After emailing to and fro with one of DROBO’s customer service representitives, this week I recieved a replacement DROBO S along with a hand written note as an apology for the trouble I went through. The device is up and running fine and I am confident that should anything further go wrong my new found faith in there support team will help me.

 

Any changes I will keep you guys posted.