My Drobo just crapped out because of software/firmware problems. After 2 hours (Two Hours!) on the phone with their tech support unistalling software and firmware, reinstalling, using two different Macs to troubleshoot his final prescription was for me to buy third party software to fix the mess their software created. I've recommended Drobo to a lot of my colleagues in film/TV/photo, and I've been emailing them all to let them know to back up to a drive with no intermediary software.
Droblows

i also purchased a drobo with the hopes of simplifying my storage issue. instead i have had problems with this device since the day i pulled it out of the box. the first thing was that it not take any of my older (known good) drives and use them. the device kept restarting and loosing the connection. at that time i lost my entire iTunes library. contacted support and was given a bunch of directions that helped me milk a cow better than fix this thing called drobo. after buying 3 1TB green disks from WD, i started to pile on data to the array and low and behold, the thing crapped out again!!! sent an email to drobo for support and was told that the firmware was not up to date.... funny thing was that there was nothing available via the little button that states "check for updates". kept on telling me that the firmware was up to date. the tech said that the drobo was not able to read the sector clusters correctly from the WD drives and this firmware update would fix it. boy was he wrong, not only does the paperweight not work but its not recognized by my MACBOOK PRO but it lost my iTunes data again!!! its crap and i want my money back drobo!!!

Got drobo w/droboshare to use as networked storage for a mac and pc combo work-at-home household. It works fine for the pc's, but doesn't work AT ALL for the Macs. Computer engineer husband hooked it up and followed all instructions for creating the bullshit sparsebundle thingies that the Mac requires. It worked a little initially (though ridiculously sloooooow) but now I just get beachballs spinning and network error messages and drobo telling me the file I am trying to copy over for the first time already exists, and therefore cannot be copied (?!). I am really pissed off that we spent so much money on the thing. I am back to using my smaller external drives for time machine backup and work archiving.
My stepdad who connects his drobo directly to his mac does not have the problems so I think it is just the droboshare that's at fault. If you have a Mac forget droboshare!!

we went to Assateague Island 1 year ago to watch the pony penning day and see them swim across the channel. the day before the ponies are drugged so they are checked out by a vet so they know which ones are strong enough and in good shape to be adopted. they had signs everywhere that they are still wild and not to touch them but people were still going right up to them touching stroking some even got on them. { does stupidity in people still shock you it does me} plus they have a bridge you can drive over i think that is such a shame no one should be allowed over there except the people who care for them and when they bring them over.

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ccda exam

I've been to Assateague Island with The Doctor. The little horses are neat. We took pictures of them.

Ponies != "little horses"

I purchased a drobo for my office and later my home. I was so fed up with it, I set up a blog dedicated to it. Check it out here:

http://drobosucks.blogspot.com/

Thanks for the review... it's just the latest in a long series of terrifying horror stories I've been reading about the Drobo in my research to find a big storage solution. I'm now leaning toward the OWC Qx2, or possibly the LaCie 4 Big... but your astute writeup, added to the seemingly endless Parade of Woe that the Drobo apparently illicits has emboldened me to firmly and authoritatively cross the Drobo forever from my list of candidate storage devices. Know that your pain and brave sacrifice will save countless unsuspecting shoppers like myself from a similarly grim fate!
Thank you, kind sir!!

-c

I was reccomended to buy a Drobo-FS and I have spent many hours trying to get the thing to do the simplist task of just backing up my MacPro. I have spent hours and hours trying to get it to work and eventually determined that Dashboard can't see the Drobo while OSX Finder can see it plain as day but you can't get onto it as you must use Dashboard. Dashboard cannot talk to the Drobo-FS by any stretch of the imagination and any flashing lights are because of internal happenings and not the backing up TB's of data I thought it was doing very very slowly.
The person who recommended it to me tried to sort it out and eventually gave up with frustration also and said send it back.

I agree with lamonkey, Drobo's it seems does not work with a Mac-Pro's (Lion) or a MacBook's (Snow Leopard)
Support is next to useless and as slow as the Drobo it'self. The Drobo-FS is now the biggest heavyest paper weight complete with flashing lights that I have.

Defiantly NOT recommended for Mac's
Backing up to a Firewire HD at the moment to get over the Drobo problem. Lovely !

My dealings with Drobo and the frustrations it caused prompted me to start a blog specifically dedicated to how much it sucks. My problems are far too lengthy to list here. Check out the blog to see the problems I had: http://drobosucks.blogspot.com/