5N · 5N2 · B810n · FS · 5D · 5D3 · 8D · BeyondRAID
Drobo NAS data recovery. BeyondRAID outlived its maker.
Drobo's support ended on 27 January 2023 and its parent company StorCentric went into Chapter 7 liquidation on 28 April 2023, so there is nobody to ask, no firmware coming, and no other box that reads a Drobo's drives. BeyondRAID lays the data out in zones across drives of different sizes in a scheme of Drobo's own, and a dead Drobo, or one with two bays lit red, is a set of drives that only a reconstruction of that scheme can read. Every drive is imaged and the layout rebuilt from the images. Sets of two to four drives are £500 + VAT upwards and five-bay and eight-bay units start at £1,250 + VAT, in writing after the free look; keep the drives in bay order, and never put them in another Drobo.
Rather talk it through? An engineer answers the bench line
0800 6890668
Models we see, family by family.
Which kind of unit is it →| Family | Models | Bays, OS, file system and layout |
|---|---|---|
| NAS | 5N, 5N2, B810n, FS, B800fs | 5–8 bays · BeyondRAID · ext-family file system |
| DAS | 5D, 5D3, 5Dt, 8D, Gen 2, Gen 3, Mini | 4–8 bays · BeyondRAID · host file system |
What tends to go wrong on a Drobo.
Drobo symptoms, and how long each gives you.
Not listed? Describe it on the form →What the message means on a Drobo.
Describe yours to us →| What you see | The usual reason | Where that leaves you |
|---|---|---|
| One bay solid red | A failed drive | Do not replace it yet; power down |
| Flashing red | A second fault, or critically full | Power down now |
| All lights off; unit dead | The Drobo's board | BeyondRAID reconstructed from the drive images |
| Drives moved to another Drobo | A relayout may have started | Stop; send in bay order |
From the box arriving to your files going back.
Work we have closed →Logged the day it lands, and the first look costs nothing Free
A case number goes on the parcel and a number on every drive the day it is opened, and an engineer settles what has actually happened before anything spins. The unit is examined on its own; each drive is assessed on our own equipment, never in a NAS that will try to rebuild. Back to you come two things together: a straight note of what is liftable and what is not, plus one figure, fixed and written down. Accept it, or decline and owe us nothing.
The unit, and the drives, apart
The box and the disks are two different jobs. The unit is tested separately, because a dead power supply, a failed board or a bricked boot flash leaves the drives untouched more often than not. Each drive is then read on the bench: the ones that answer at full speed, and the weak or failed ones in clean air where they need head work. On units that hold an encryption key or a layout of their own, the unit is part of the data and is kept with it.
Every member imaged, once
Nothing is worked on live and nothing is rebuilt on the originals. Every drive in the set is imaged sector by sector, the weak ones head by head with the bad areas last, and the SSD cache with them where there is one. From then on the originals are not touched again.
The set put back together, from the images
Order, chunk size, parity rotation and the reshape point are read from the drives' own metadata and the array is reassembled in software: mdadm and LVM under SHR, X-RAID and QTS pools; a ZFS pool imported read-only; Drobo's BeyondRAID zones reconstructed. The file system, Btrfs, ext4, XFS or ZFS, is repaired on the virtual volume, and encrypted volumes are unlocked there with the key you supply. Never on the originals.
You see the file list before you pay
What was recovered is listed for you first, and only then does a bill exist. Approve the list and it is invoiced; turn it down and it is not — and where nothing has come back, most jobs carry no charge at all. Recovered data travels home on fresh media bought in for your job, with the postage at our end. Your case is not closed until you have opened the files on a machine of your own.
From the bench
- BeyondRAID is Drobo's own, and no other box reads it. The layout is reconstructed from images of every drive, which takes longer than mdadm and is why Drobo sets are priced as sets.
- Drobo has gone. Support ended on 27 January 2023 and its parent went into liquidation that April. There is no manufacturer route, no firmware and nobody to ask.
- Bay order matters more than on any other unit. Label every drive before it comes out, and never put them in another Drobo in a different order.
What helps, and what harms.
Do this much first
- Power down and label every bay
- Send every drive and the chassis
- Tell us the model and which lights showed
- Say whether a relayout ran
What sets us back
- Replacing the red-lit drive
- Moving the drives to another Drobo
- Letting a relayout run on a unit with two faults
- Powering on to see whether the lights have changed
Questions answered before you commit.
Can I put my Drobo's disks in another Drobo?
Sometimes it works and sometimes it starts a relayout that finishes what the first failure began. Do not; send the disks in labelled order with the chassis.
Do I need to send the chassis?
Send it. The layout is reconstructed from the disk images, and the chassis helps confirm it.
Two bays are red. Is it gone?
Not usually. The zones are reconstructed from images of every disk, including the two the unit marked failed, which usually still read on the bench.
What does it cost?
Two to four drives are £500 + VAT upwards; five-bay and eight-bay units from £1,250 + VAT.
Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.
Nothing gets worse while it is powered down.
Looking at it is free. Back comes a list of what opened and what did not, together with a single price to finish, set down in writing while you are still free to say no. On most jobs an invoice only follows the data. Until that list reaches you, leave the unit off and the drives in their bays.