User guide

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Drobo User Guide
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II. Getting Started
II. Getting started: Planning your storage needs
Drobo is unlike typical storage devices. It automatically reserves
storage capacity across its drives to ensure that failure of any one
drive will not cause you to lose data. Drobo also makes it extreme-
ly easy to add or upgrade capacity in the future just by inserting
additional, or up-sizing existing drives. This allows you to take
advantage of the constant increase in hard drive capacity at lower
prices. Drobo enables you to “buy for today” because you can so
easily upgrade it later. This feature alone can possibly save you
hundreds of dollars over time.
Selecting hard drives
Drobo doesn’t care what manufacturer, capacity or speed of hard
drive you install. It accepts standard 3.5 inch “internal” hard drives
that have a SATA1 or SATA2 type connection (older IDE or ATA-
type drives will not work).
Choosing capacity
The number and capacity of
drives determine how much us-
able protected capacity Drobo
provides. A “rule of thumb” is to
omit one of the largest drives,
then add-up the capacity of the
remaining drives to determine
total usable protected capacity.
Here are three examples:
a) Start with three 250GB drives
and you’ll have about 500GB
of total usable protected space.
b) Add a 500GB drive to increase
total usable protected space to
approximately 750GB.
c) Replace one of the smaller
250GB drives with a 750GB
drive and you’ll increase over-
all usable protected space to
about one Terabyte (1,000GB).
Take comfort in knowing that Drobo makes adding additional
capacity as easy as adding ink to a printer whenever you need it
(and drives will almost always be less expensive in the future).
A note about capacity
Some years ago, computer manufacturers and hard drive manu-
facturers started using different systems for measuring hard drive
capacity. The net result is that not all of a drive’s rated capacity
is available to your computer. This discrepancy has nothing to do
with how Drobo works.
Filling Drobo’s data bays
Once you’ve chosen
how many drives
and which capacities
to install, all you have to do
is remove the face plate and then
slide them into Drobo’s Data Bays. You may
want to watch the “How-to Videos” provided
on the Drobo Resource CD, or just go for it.
Be sure not to touch any exposed hard drive
circuit boards after unpacking and ensure the drive connectors
are pointed “in” to Drobo and “down” (as shown). It doesn’t matter
which drive goes in which data bay, just slide the Drive Lock to the
left, and press the drive into the Data Bay until you feel the con-
nector “mate” at the rear of the Drobo and let the Drive Lock snap
behind the drive, securing it into place.
Data BayDrive Lock Data Bay Indicator
connectors