StorCentric and Drobo in Chapter 7: Start Looking for Drobo Replacements

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Originally published at: StorCentric and Drobo in Chapter 7: Start Looking for Drobo Replacements - TidBITS

StorCentric and subsidiary Drobo have recently converted their mid-2022 Chapter 11 bankruptcies to Chapter 7, implying that it’s unlikely they’ll recover. If you use a Drobo storage device, it’s time to look for replacements.

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6 posts were split to a new topic: Retrospect history

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After hearing from the Director of Retrospect Support about how the company has emerged from the original Chapter 11 under new company ownership and is thus alive and well, I’ve recast the article and moved the previous discussion of Retrospect history to a new topic.

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I have New York-based B&H to thank for sparing me the heartache of current involvement with Drobo. Years ago, I purchased a Drobo 4D for my dad, as it scared me that his architectural drawings were scattered on various external hard drives around his office. I inherited that Drobo and used it for a couple of years. When I upgraded my 2010 Mac Pro to a Mac Studio last year, I planned to purchase a Drobo 5D (I prefer direct-attached storage so Backblaze will back it up), despite the negative murmurings I was seeing online, and B&H took my order. Two months later, they emailed me to say, “We’ve canceled your order because we are no longer selling Drobo products,” and I took that as confirmation that I should stop trying to buy a Drobo!

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This makes me sad… my Drobo 5D has been keeping up with me for what feels like forever, save for a replacement power supply. Guess it’s time to get a copy of @jeffc’s book and dive into the NAS world.

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I switched over to a Synology NAS a few years ago (a DS418play model; the “18” in their numbering schemes is the release year), and it’s been great, even though I feel like I’m not taking full advantage of all it can do. You know, when I have some free time to really explore it… ha ha ha ha. What finally spurred me to switch was the noise: my old Drobo was just loud, and slow, and starting to get flaky. The Synology is much better.

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I really liked my Drobos over the years, but was confused by the amount of drives that failed. Easy to switch out, but these were well rated drives that would die every few months even after a change in Drobo enclosures.

I have been using OWC’s SoftRAID and their 4 drive enclosure and have yet to have a drive failure. I do wish prices of SSDs would go down as I would love to have the speed of SSD in a RAID drive. I didn’t even feel comfortable selling off my last Drobo after I made the move over. I just couldn’t promise that the person would not have problems.

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