After all my recent problems the Drobo is now back up and running. BUT, it only using three disks and not four.
In my previous post on the subject I mentioned that I had to return one of the replacement 3TB drives that had failed. To replace that drive, I ordered a new 4TB from Amazon. When this drive arrived, I tried to add it to the Drobo, but it didn’t seem to fit. It was actually loose in the drive bay.
After some head scratching as to the problem, I compared the drive to one of the old drives and realised it wasn’t as high. It wasn’t the standard size for a 3.5” disk drive. Checking Amazon there was nothing to indicate the unusual size but looking at the physical dimensions of the drive it listed the height as 2cm. Checking other 3.5” drives I realised they were all listed as 2.7cm.
So be warned, if you’re buying additional drives for your Drobo or NAS, check the height of the drive. There are now slimline disks on the market and they don’t fit standard drive bays.
I will pick up a fourth drive at some point, but I just wanted to get the Drobo up and running. I have now copied my backup onto the Drobo and recovered as many images as possible from my formatted memory cards. I’m missing a couple of hundred images but more annoyingly a lot of video I shot for a future YouTube posting. At least the bulk of my images are safe though and I hope you like this one.
The Lightweight Photographer 
Amazon are usually quite good with returns, especially with a fair reason
(Also mark the item in review to warn others?)
I asked them to make it clear on the product description that this was a slim casing and they said they would.
For some reason there seems to be an issue with 3TB hard drives. I purchased a 3TB hard drive from a very well reviewed manufacturer which was on sale from a noteworthy photography supplier. Sure enough, I had problems from the very start. The drive, although reformatted for my iMac, would not be consistently recognized.
Search the Internet for issues or problems with 3TB drives and you may find some interesting results.
I am glad that you were able to recover (mostly) although time, energy and frustration cannot be refunded!
Thanks. It was frustrating but I felt reasonably confident I would get my older work back. It’s just all the lost time and needing to suspend work whilst trying to do a data recovery on the drive and memory cards. I wasn’t aware that a lot of people were having problems with 3TB drives. It makes you wonder if a lot of “fakes” have flooded the market or something.
Great news. And great photo, dramatic contrast. I dabbled with the free Nik filters after reading this site and felt it worth going for the latest DXO package whilst on offer so I’m using it for appropriate images and learning as I go along. I now need to decide which of your tutorials to start with..
Thanks Steve and great to hear you opted for the Nik filters. Be sure to check out my Nik Collection playlist on YouTube. It’s got a lot of my Nik videos in there https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUyadHduIq2ebnbcAx_uSo0UBiA1rVMZ3