The Drobo dashboard is your main control center for the Drobo 5N2 and you will probably spend a fair amount of time using it. That is certainly not the case for the Drobo 5N2. When we reviewed the 5D we commented that once the hardware was up and running you probably wouldn’t spend much time with the Drobo Dashboard. The Drobo Dashboard (currently at version 3.1.3), is the same application as the one we downloaded when we set up our Drobo 5D (are you seeing a pattern here). We suggest you let the set-up process complete and wait for all of the disk indicators to be solid green before proceeding further. The time it takes for the set-up to complete is dependent on the number and size of the disks you use.
DROBO DASHBOARD INSTALL UPDATE
They will investigate and we suspect address it in a future firmware update if needed. We did reach out to Drobo regarding the “not compatible” message and they agreed that should not have happened.
DROBO DASHBOARD INSTALL PRO
We formatted the disks using Disk Utility on our MacBook Pro and reinstalled the disks and this time the 5N2 started up without issue and completed the format and set-up which included installing the latest firmware directly from the Drobo site. We certainly didn’t expect that given that these disks worked fine in the 5D.Īs it turned out, there was nothing wrong with the disks except that they had previously been used and the Drobo 5N2 just didn’t like that. That said, we were surprised to discover that when we inserted the disks into the Drobo 5N2, powered it on and started the set-up process, we received an error message that the disks were not compatible with the 5N2. It was our expectation that any data on those disks would be lost, as one of the first things a Drobo does in the set-up process is to format the drives and build the RAID array, so we didn’t see any reason we couldn’t use the disks. We wanted to use the 1TB Seagate NAS Drives previously used in our Drobo 5D. The instructions make it very clear that you cannot migrate a Drobo Disk Pack from anything other than a Drobo FS or a 5N (the predecessor to the 5N2). The Drobo 5N2 uses the same no tools and no carriers required disk installation that they have become known for, and while you can use any brand, any size and any speed 2.5” or 3.5” hard drive, we found that the Drobo 5N2 can be a little finicky if the disks are not new.
DROBO DASHBOARD INSTALL FOR MAC
Eventually you download the Drobo Dashboard for Mac application. Setting up the Drobo 5N2 begins by going to the dedicated Drobo web site The site takes you through some rather obvious steps to set up your device. For those who need more information a detailed User Guide is available on the Drobo web site and you can see a copy of it here. In the accessory box was the Drobo power supply with 6 ft (1.8M) power cord, 2 6ft Ethernet cables and the Drobo Quick Start card. In the box is the Drobo 5N2, wrapped in the same style black fabric bag as the Drobo 5D. While the Drobo 5D has two Thunderbolt and one USB 3.0 connection, the back of the Drobo 5N2 has two Gigabit Ethernet ports and no USB.
The back of the units are, however, quite different. Finally, both units have the compartment on the bottom to hold an mSATA module used to cache commonly used data and improve overall efficiency. They both use the identical magnetic cover that covers their 5 hard drive bays and have the same red, yellow and green lights along the right side to indicate the drive status and the blue LEDs across the bottom to indicate capacity usage.
Both units measure 5.9” wide x 7.3” high x 10.3” deep and weighs 8.5 lbs.
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