Removing and Replacing Hard Drives

When removing or replacing hard drives, make sure you remove or replace them one at a time.

Warning: Do not remove a hard drive when you see blinking green and yellow lights. This indicates that your Drobo storage device is currently moving data between hard drives for data protection. Removing a hard drive during this process could result in data loss.

If you remove or replace too many hard drives at once, the Drobo device will light all data bay indicators with red lights and request that you reinsert the last drive removed.

To Remove a Hard Drive from Drobo, Drobo S or Drobo FS:

Press the data bay latch to the left to physically eject the hard drive.
Carefully remove the hard drive from the data bay.

To Remove a Hard Drive from DroboPro or DroboElite:

Press the data bay latch down to physically eject the hard drive.
Carefully remove the hard drive from the data bay.

Warning: Hard drives in Drobo storage devices will retain heat after being removed. Please use caution when removing drives and allow the drives to cool for ten minutes before handling them.

Note: Data stored on hard drives removed from Drobo devices cannot be read by other systems.

Tip: To safely remove all hard drives at one time, first safely shutdown your Drobo storage device. On a 1st or 2nd generation Drobo, you can do this by clicking on the Standby button in Advanced Controls -> Tools in Drobo Dashboard. When in Standby, all lights will turn off except for the power indicator, which will turn orange. Only then, can you safely remove the hard drives from your Drobo. For DroboPro, DroboElite, Drobo S and Drobo FS, click the Shutdown button in Advanced Controls -> Tools in Drobo Dashboard. Allow the unit to shut down completely (power indicator is off).

If your Drobo (1st and 2nd generation only) is connected to a DroboShare, go to Advanced Controls -> Tools and click the Standby button in the DroboShare section. Once Drobo is in Standby, all lights will turn off except for the power indicator, which will turn orange. You may now safely remove all of the hard drives from your Drobo.

Warning: Failure to properly put your Drobo storage device into Standby (or shutting down DroboPro, DroboElite, Drobo S or Drobo FS) before removing the set of drives can cause loss of data.

Warning: Never remove more than one hard drive at a time when your unit is powered on so that your Drobo device has an opportunity to rearrange your data into the safest configuration across the remaining hard drives. If you want to remove all hard drives from your Drobo unit, we recommend to first safely shutdown your Drobo storage device and then remove power as described above.