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I hope someone here can help as I have found nothing while searching google or Drobo's website for an answer. Also, I'm fairly new to using Drobo, so go easy on me.

Okay, so I have a friend who gave me his old Gen 3 4-bay Drobo when he upgraded. I had 3TB drives in all 4 bays. Recently, my bay 0 drive failed and the Drobo dashboard started screaming at me to replace it. My friend had a few left over drives from his new Drobo when he moved to larger capacity drives so he gave me a 6TB drive to replace the dead drive. This 6TB drive is fine, reads in Windows 10 with no issues. However, when I put it in the Drobo, I get the error message : Drobo has detected at least one drive from another Drobo disk pack.

I have reformatted this drive in various ways so many times I have lost count, but it still comes back with that same error every time and the Drobo won't proceed any further.

Does anyone out there have any suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

James

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    Does the device explicitly support mixing disk sizes? Does the device have a maximum size for individual disks?
    – MountainMan
    Jul 2, 2019 at 19:20
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    Ive not used drobo but it sounds to me like you did not zero the part of the disk with the drobo/raid signature - have you tried taking the disk and doing (an equivalent of the Linux) dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX ? (A quick DBAN pass may do it as well) be Note the disk rather then the partition needs to be zeroed. You might - or might not be able to just wipe the first bit of the disk including the mbr. Try googling zero mbr [os]
    – davidgo
    Jul 2, 2019 at 19:34

1 Answer 1

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My friend had a few left overdrives from his new Drobo when he moved to larger capacity drives so he gave me a 6TB drive to replace the dead drive. This 6TB drive is fine, reads in Windows 10 with no issues. However, when I put it in the Drobo, I get the error message:

Drobo has detected at least one drive from another Drobo disk pack.

Drobo keeps track of which HDDs it has seen. One of the things it remembers is the serial number of the drive.

If you didn't reinitialize the Drobo when you got it, and your friend had used this drive in their old Drobo, that would explain the error message. Due to Drobo being a black box, there isn't a workaround to your current problem, you will need to use a different disk.

Worth pointing out Drobo will also reject disks it has kicked out of the array in the past.

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  • My answer is based on being a Drobo owner for years, reading stories about Drobo failures, the bottom line is there isn't a single quotable source for my information.
    – Ramhound
    Jul 2, 2019 at 19:30
  • Thanks! That's what I was afraid of, but my friend said it should work just fine.
    – James
    Jul 2, 2019 at 21:01
  • @James - Your friend indicating "it should work" does not answer the question you didn't ask, "did you use the 6 TB in your old Drobo before?"
    – Ramhound
    Jul 2, 2019 at 21:21
  • I never used it in this drobo before. He used it in a drobo though. He gave me the drive as a replacement for a dead drive. I installed it in the bay, drobo started its initial scan and the error popped up. And as I stated, I'm new to using a drobo, so it was not a question I thought or even knew to ask.
    – James
    Jul 3, 2019 at 0:35
  • I also told him of your above answer and he still wants me to bring the whole drobo and all the drives, including the 6TB, to his home later in the week as he thinks he can get it to work. I think after your answer it will be a colossal waste of time and only a new drive will fix the situation. But he's adamant and a bit OCD, so I will humor him. When he has exhausted all possibilities to no avail, I will order the new drive.
    – James
    Jul 3, 2019 at 0:44

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