Drobo is having a "Spirit of Macworld 2010" video contest

I never expected to be able to use it for high bandwidth tasks, but I wanted it for archives and backups. My main issue is that if I try to copy a file over 10 GBs or so to it it takes forever (sometimes over half an hour). Or it will stop copying half way through and give me the spinning beach ball until I shut the computer down. I has also shut itself down and restarted intermittently.

I'm running all the latest firmware and software for it, I have tested it on several macs all in perfect working order and on the latest builds of OSX 10.5 and 10.6. I've gotten a refurbished replacement unit from them and had the same issues. Now I just want a refund, the thing is worthless for backups if I can't copy a big file to it reliably. This flaw for me makes it less valuable than a standard drive since the whole point is to have safe redundancy with no effort. Since you have to babysit the device and make sure everything happened as planned whenever you write to it you may as well have saved your money and copied it to 2 standard drives that will actually work.

Hi, Rando -

Sorry to hear that you're having such issues with the Drobo Pro. I have a Drobo Pro and have also installed a number of Drobo devices for clients that are all working well and as advertised. Several Drobos are attached via FW to small servers and have been cranking along for more than a year with no issues. None of my clients are using these for video; it's all just mass storage for backups, photographs, etc...

What exactly is the problem you're seeing? I'd like to see if I can somehow help you out here...

Steve

Maybe you could make a video about how the Drobo Pro doesn't work as advertised they don't stand behind their products. Or maybe you could reenact writing emails and making phone calls to their customer service and technical support and never hearing back. I'd make my own video but I can't afford a camera because I blew all my hard earned $1500 on that Drobo shaped brick sitting in my office. Besides, even if I could make a video I would never be able to edit it in time using that molasses slow Drobo Pro.

All kidding aside, seriously, a word to the wise. The thing just doesn't work right and the engineers admit it on the phone and have no solution accept an upcoming firmware upgrade that will fix it all, but then it comes after a long wait and still doesn't fix the issue. Seriously Drobo, I want my money back, stop ignoring my emails.