Data Recovery and Disk Utilities Forum @R-TT

[quote=Data-Medics post_id=16141 time=1567982595 user_id=4202]
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I don't think so. But, your best bet might be to seek professional recovery. BeyondRAID is a bit complex (though not "thousands of different RAIDs" as one post tried to suggest).
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I'm not sure what Drobo models you are talking about, but on 40+ cases I've recovered there were thousands or even tens of thousand different raids on each box (different by raid type and participating disks).
The number may vary, but it's very large.
After reverse-engineering several different SANs, I can only say that Drobo is more complex than many of enterprise-level systems (for example Dell EqualLogic or EMC VNX).

[quote=kentkacs post_id=16138 time=1567520500 user_id=4910]
I may be SOL.

Thank you.
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I don't think so. But, your best bet might be to seek professional recovery. BeyondRAID is a bit complex (though not "thousands of different RAIDs" as one post tried to suggest). RForce suggested a couple programs that may work for Drobo, but nothing has 100% recovery support just yet. I'd give those a try and see how it goes, as he suggested.

Though, you may find that by the time you buy drives to clone the originals onto, buy the software, and figure out how to use it, you may have been better off just paying for professional recovery.

Unless something has changed, R-Studio doesn't support Drobo. The only two recovery apps that do are UFS Explorer and ReclaiMe.

Best practice is to get a full sector-by-sector image/clone of each drive, then connect the copies to a system in read/only mode to virtually reconstruct and recover the RAID with the various recovery software.

Sorry for the delay. I keep getting 'gateway' errors trying to return here.

The Drobo is an FS model with only an ethernet port, no USB (frustrating but that's how they've been making them lately).

I didn't see how it would be possible to connect to the volume if it's not mounted, and Drobos use a proprietary RAID system called "BeyondRaid." I contacted Data Robotics first but they immediately slammed the door on me because it's an older model.

I ran a diagnostic on it and while I don't understand much of it, it suggests that the corruption is more in the Linux OS. That's the irony -- my data may be intact but I can't get to it because the unit's operating system will not load. I may be SOL.

Thank you.

What is the exact model of your Drobo device?

Unfortunately, R-Studio, or any other file recovery software would not be able to help with this case.
The only case it could work is if you had a DAS model (not NAS), and something happened with the file system on it.

In your case it's a NAS, and you have no access to the actual volume (ExtFS) on it.

Connecting drives to a computer will not help either, as Drobo is a SAN-like system, with data spliced by small chunks and spread across all available drives, and then those chunks are assembled in thousands of different raids.

so, if you really need your data - ask for professional help from a Data Recovery firm.
There are several companies which have some support, and a couple who have the real knowledge.

Please be more specific about your Drobo configuration. What is the Drobo model? How many drives are in and what are their capacity?

Without this info I can tell only some basic things. You'll have to take the drives out from the device and connect all of them to your computer. Either directly to internal SATA ports (preferable), or through some SATA<->USB adapters.

I have a networked Drobo device with the same symptoms mentioned in this article: https://photofocus.com/photography/when-its-time-to-start-over-resetting-a-drobo/

After a brief power dip, the Drobo is unable to mount the volume. It is visible in Drobo Dashboard, but Dashboard is unable to mount the volume because it says a resource is in use. Reboots don't change anything. I was advised to purchase R-Studio because it would be able to "see" the files on the volume and pull them off. I did so but now I don't know what to do.

The Drobo as mentioned is networked and has no USB port, so it doesn't show up under the Local Computer window. I tried clicking 'Connect to Remote' but that doesn't show any of my networked devices. I manually typed in the path to the Drobo volume, but R-Studio says, "Can't connect... would you like to install the agent and start it?"

I don't know R-Studio and don't want to make things worse.

I see that others have used this software to save files from troubled Drobos. Can someone walk a novice user through the process of connecting to this device? Than you in advance for any help you may be able to provide!