Adding Hard Drives to Your Drobo

When you add hard drives to your Drobo storage device, each individual hard drive becomes part of a large pool of storage where data is spread out across all of the hard drives in your Drobo. As you add or replace hard drives to increase capacity, each new hard drive becomes a part of the overall storage pool.

Each of your Drobo device's data bays holds a single, 3.5" SATA hard drive. SSD, IDE, SCSI, and PATA hard drives are not compatible and should not be used.

Before connecting your Drobo device to your computer, simply insert your hard drives into the empty data bays. You may "mix and match" capacities, manufacturer and rotation speeds (5400 RPM, 7200 RPM, etc.) as long as the drives are 3.5" SATA hard drives.

Tip: Start with a minimum of two hard drives to provide data redundancy and protect against a single hard drive failure. If you want the most protection for your data, start with a minimum of three hard drives and enable Dual Disk Redundancy (on Drobo S, Drobo FS, DroboPro and DroboElite only).

Tip:In the event that your Drobo device becomes nearly full and all the drives are the same capacity, you will need to replace two drives, one at a time, in order to increase the overall amount of protected capacity. Replacing just one drive will not increase your overall protected capacity in this situation. Remember to replace one drive at a time and allow the data protection process (blinking green and yellow) to complete before removing another drive. For information on how adding or replacing drives will affect your storage capacity, please use our Capacity Calculator on our website: http://www.drobo.com/calculator.

Warning: When adding hard drives to any Drobo device, ALL pre-existing data on those drives will be erased.

To Add a Hard Drive to 1st and 2nd Generation Drobo, Drobo S and Drobo FS:

  1. While holding the hard drive flat (horizontal), orient it so the connector at the back of the drive is at the bottom.
  2. Point the connector-end away from you, towards the Drobo.
  3. Slide the hard drive into the desired data bay, with the connector-end entering first, until you feel the drive "mate" or "seat" with Drobo. The drive latch will lock the hard drive in place.

To Add a Hard Drive to DroboPro or DroboElite:

  1. Orient the drive connectors so that they are pointed towards the DroboPro/DroboElite and they are facing the left side of the DroboPro/DroboElite. The top silver plate of the drive should be facing the blue capacity lights on the right.
  2. Open the Drive Lock by pressing it down and slide the drive into the Data Bay until you feel the connector “mate” or "seat" at the rear of DroboPro/DroboElite.
  3. Slide the hard drive into the desired data bay, with the connector-end entering first, until the Drive Latch locks the hard drive in place.

You are now ready to start using your Drobo storage device.