I should clarify that I don't think the Drobo is at fault, but here's my story (sorry it's so long):

I have a client who gave me a simple directive: they were running out of space on the computer where they store all their files (on an internal HDD), and they wanted to move their data to something that:

- had more storage
- had stability
- could be backed up on their Carbonite plan

It's that last part that always throws things for a loop. I'm a long-time user of Crashplan, but if there's one big flaw that is shared by it and every cloud backup service I know of, it's that none of them back up NAS drives. Otherwise I'd set up an Synology, share the folder with the other computers on their network, and be done with it.

Instead, I opted to go with the Drobo 5D, attach it to the computer they were already using to serve all the files, and share the drive with the other computers that way. It seemed like the best option at the time, since Carbonite is capable of backing up external USB hard disks and that was probably their biggest request.

Right from the get-go, I was not pleased with the results. First, I couldn't get the computer to even acknowledge that there was a device attached until I came across an article on Drobo's own site stating that their USB3 cable they shipped with the drive should be RMA'd if problems occur. As soon as I swapped it for another USB3 cable the drive was recognized.

But there were two serious problems, the first being that Carbonite could kill the drive in minutes. It would start up fine and back up a couple files very slowly, but then everything would freeze. Eventually it started being more than just Carbonite that could freeze explorer and require a restart.

But the second problem was much more severe: the drive stopped being loaded properly by Windows. I'm not sure how to describe this other than the symptoms:

- where there was once a drive in Computer called Drobo (X:), there was now a Local Disk (X:)
- if I tried to open this drive or even right-click it to see its properties, explorer would freeze up and the system would need to be restarted
- if I tried to go into disk manager, it would never load anything
- in device manager under "Disk Drives" there was an entry for "Drobo 5D" and I had the option to eject the drive through the system tray
- the Drobo Dashboard would claim that no Drobos were detected or attached

I called Drobo and they had me do several things and send them log files. The only way the Drobo Dashboard would see the Drobo was if it were started up with all the drives ejected. If I brought the Drobo back up with the drives inserted, I'd get the same behavior as before. Aside from that, all the lights on the Drobo look fine, and Drobo support says there's nothing in the logs that says there's a problem.

My next step was to try setting the Drobo up on another computer in my client's office. I wanted to find out if it was the Drobo or the first computer. Sure enough, I could not get the Drobo to show up in the Dashboard and it didn't even show up in explorer as a drive at all, let alone as "Local Disk." At one point, though, I was poking around in the "Drobo 5D" entry in device manager, went to the "volumes" tab and just for the hell of it I clicked the "populate" button. Voila! I saw the Drobo volume in Explorer! I then stupidly reconnected the Drobo to the first computer and tried the same thing, but that didn't do anything. I reconnected it to the second computer and now I was seeing the exact same behavior as the first computer, "Local Disk" and all. The weirdest thing was that when I turned the Drobo off OR unplugged the USB cable from the computer, the Drobo 5D would show up in the Drobo Dashboard. The first couple times it would stay there, but then it would go away after a few seconds.

Not wanting to give up (even after 4 hours of banging my head against the wall), I took the Drobo home to see how it fared with my own systems. Sure enough, I hooked the Drobo up to my computer...and it worked flawlessly. My PC saw it as any old external drive. I installed the Drobo Dashboard and it was able to see the device with no issues. I could transfer massive amounts of data to and from it.

I brought the Drobo back to the client and used one of my spare PCs as a type of server to share the files, but I'd like to reclaim that computer.

So my question to you good people is: what the heck is going on?

It seems like all the computers in my clients office were affected by something that has rendered them unable to load this Drobo's volume properly. Why? Any ideas? I'd love to wipe these computers and start fresh, but that might not be an option.