External drive drobo

Hi all,
I just wanted to give an up date on my external drive decision. I ask a few questions on the forum and did a lot of research about external drives for video. I'm using a canon HFS100 HD camera. The video uses a lot of memory. These are all home video of the kids. I also had 20,000 photos. I have a ton of movies and music. So I needed an external hard drive. I wanted to keep everything digital and was looking at getting a RAID drive. After a lot of research, I decided to get the drobo.
http://www.drobo.com/
It has RAID like technology and runs on firewire 800. I chose to get four 1 TB drives for the unit. Four TB total. Because of the RAID like technology there is only a 2.7 TB available for storage. The rest is used for redundancy. You can have a drive failure and just replace it with no memory loss because of the redundancy on the other drives. They even say you can have two drives fail and still not loose any data.
The drobo is very versatile. You can start out with a few drives and grow to four. You can start out with 250 GB drives and grow all the way to 4 TB drives. When you need more memory just take out your smallest drive and replace it with a larger one.
Anyway, just wanted to report on what I did. Love this unit. Very quiet. Sleeps when my Mac sleeps, sleeps when I turn off my Mac. Or you can put it in stand by. All of my iTunes library, iMovie events and projects, and my iPhoto library are on my drobo. Its very fast. I cant tell that the data is on an external drive. I also use apple TV that shares with my library. I make my selection on my apple TV and I'm watching my movie, thats stored on my drobo. Great unit. I've been using it for about 5 months. Very easy to set up. Plug and play really.
The only problem I had was operator error. In the directions it says do not load an operating system or a drobo dashboard update without puting the drobo in standby. You must put the drobo in stand by and unplug it. If you don't it can mess up the directory and the drobo icon will not mount. In a panic I called customer support and they advised my how to rebuild my directory. Easy fix, back up and running. All files were still there nothing was lost. drobo customer support was great. Had a follow up phone call and e-mail to make sure everything was good. You can load programs and update programs just fine. It's just with operating system (Mac OS X) updates and the drobo dashboard updates. The drobo dashboard is their program that tells you about the drobo and storage available. It's nice to have.
We have had a power outage, and my nephew who loves to turn off and on the pretty lights on my power strip. Drobo did great. no problems. I have a little over 1 TB of data on it and growing. If you are going to load a lot of HD video and have a lot of movies in itunes and external drive is a must. I highly recommend this unit if your looking for a RAID type technology and want room to grow. Hope this helps.
newapplejack

Beverly,
Yes it still works great. It mounts on your desk top like a drive, and when you open it I can see all my folders and files. However, I never move stuff around in the finder. I always make folders and move stuff in whatever application I'm using so it can find everything. I have my itunes music folder, imovie events, and projects folders, and iphoto folder.
I have four 1 T drives. I cant see what data is on each of the four drives, it acts like one mounted drive. It has RAID like technology. you can format different volumes if you need to. I just chose one volume 16 T.
There is a drobo dashboard that tells you a lot of information about the drobo. Space used, space available, format, and status of the drives.
I think it cost me around $700 or so for everything.

Similar Messages

Wondering if my external drive has been backed up on Drobo or not

I apologize in advance for my long question that may sound confusing and/or repetitive.
I have been backing up my Mac and external firewire 800 drive to my Drobo using Time Machine for a year now. Recently my Drobo started having problems, cannot mount on the desktop. I have been dealing for over a month now with Drobo tech. support trying to fix the issue, had 2 failed attemps of repair via Disc utility and for all this time I haven't been backing up. (for 1.5 months).
Finally today I tried Diskwarrior on Drobo to save the data on it. I could only see the previews of my backups though the external hard drive seems to have been backed up only 3 times (at the beginning) and never since (for 10 months). I haven't changed anything in my set up since I started Time Machine. So I am wondering why I cannot see the external hard drive's backups? Could it be because the data is corrupted or because Time Machine never backed it up after the first 3 days?
I also tried Data Rescue Beta today to run a quick scan on the Drobo and had the same result. I asked their support service the same question and waiting for their answer now.
I am asking this because since yesterday my external drive that contains really important data cannot mount on the desktop. So I may loose very important data I haven't backed up neither archived.
Thank you very much for taking the time to read this. I hope to hear some suggestions.

irem-888 wrote:
So I am wondering why I cannot see the external hard drive's backups? Could it be because the data is corrupted
Probably. Time Machine backups have a very complex structure, and are all interlinked. So when something gets corrupted, there's no telling what was there before things went awry.
or because Time Machine never backed it up after the first 3 days?
Anything's possible, but that's doubtful. If the drive was connected, and not specifically excluded, it would have been backed-up. If there was a problem backing-it up, the backup would have failed with a (more or less) descriptive message.
If Time Machine was still able to do backups in the last week or so, you might be able to find the messages it sent to your logs, including how much was backed-up from each volume. See #A1 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum). Most likely, you'll need the instructions in the pink box to use Console to see the previous logs.
I am asking this because since yesterday my external drive that contains really important data cannot mount on the desktop.
If Disk Utility can see it, try a +*repair disk+* (not permissions). See #A5 in Troubleshooting if you need instructions. If that (or Disk Warrior) can fix it, obviously, back it up immediately, via the Restore tab of Disk Utility, or a 3rd-party app such as CarbonCopyCloner or the similar SuperDuper (either easily found via Google).
If not, you'll need specialized +Data Recovery+ software, or a service that performs the function. It's not cheap, and there are no guarantees.
The app mentioned here most often is Data Rescue 3, and it seems to get good reviews, but I haven't used it myself, so can't recommend it over any of the others.
Another is File Salvage.
Some of these have a free "trial mode," that will tell you if there's anything to be recovered, and perhaps recover a single file. For more, you have to pay the $$.
You'll also need another drive to receive anything it can recover.
Look for apps or services under +Data Recovery+ via Google, VersionTracker.com, or MacUpdate.com.
But don't expect to get a nice list of folders and files, organized in any recognizable way. It will be a random list of files. You may get the original file names, in some cases, or there may be some assigned names (if the actual name couldn't be determined).
Because of that, if you need to do recovery, do it from the external, not the Time Machine backups; sorting out what was found won't be easy either way, but practically impossible on the backups, since there are probably several hundred thousand, or more, files on it.

How do I use time machine to backup to external drive on other machine on network

I have 2 x McPros, 2 x iMacs and 2 x MacBook Pro all integrated in the same home network. I have a DroboPro Network which can only be recognised as a Shared device by one MacPro only. There are 2 DroboPro 8 Bay RAID devices attached via Firewire to one MacPro.
With Mavericks how can I ensure that
a. The networked Drobo can be seen by all computers as a shared device (it is connected via Ethernet to central Gigabit switch)
b. That, failing the networked Drobo sharing, how can I ensure all computers on network will always have access for Time Machine backups using the DroboPro attached via Firewire to the one MacPro.
Many thanks, it's probably right under my nose.
Darrin

Time Machine will only back up internal and directly connected external drives. It will not back up a network attached storage device. You'll have to use some other software to back up the NAS.

Folder problems on external drive, not showing correct file size

I've run across a strange problem. I'm media managing for a tv show, meaning I'm offloading video from CF cards onto 2 external drives, one is a Drobo Raid (set up for backup) and another is a Lacie rugged drive. After copying the media to both drives, the folder I copy will match, but sometimes as I drill upward in my folder structure, suddenly the file sizes will not match. To be more clear: 2 folders will show differing file sizes, but inside that folder is only another folder,nothing else, which matches across the drives. I've shown all files in finder and there's no hidden files, though sometimes I see the ds_store files are different sizes (8k vs 16k), but that's not always the case. Sometimes if I simply create a new folder and move it's contents into it I can get the folders to match, but sometimes that doesn't work. It's part of my workflow to show that these copies match exactly via screenshots, and although the most important folder (the direct folder holding the footage) always matches, these folder problems are super frustrating as it's not constant, and any workarounds also work inconsistantly.
I had an accidental disconnect of the Drobo one time, and although none of the data seems to have any problem, I fear it's done something to the directory. The rugged drive is swapped out every few days and the problem seems to be on the Drobo. Because the nature of the data is pretty important, I'm afraid to just try messing around with repairing or other software solutions unless I know it's super safe and won't harm the data.
I'm at a loss as to what's causing it and at the very least how to avoid it cropping up. Any help or insight would be appreciated!

I had the same problem with my iMac, first I repaired the disk, then I ejected the disk, restarted, and then reinserted the USB in a different port. All of my files magically showed up. I don't know what caused the error but it has been working fine since.

Getting Time Machine back up to a Sparsebundle on external HDD (Drobo)

Hey,
I've been chasing this issue around for a while but can't seem to find the answer.
There are a lot of resources out there describing how to get your Mac to backup to a Sparsebundle on a NAS, and more resources telling you how to write protect the Info.plist file so that Mac OS doesn't resize the image to take up all of your NAS.
However I've got a Drobo connected directly to my Mac Mini. The Drobo pretends to have a 16TB drive so that you can add storage as and when you need it.
I am already using it to back up my MBP over the network to a Sparsebundle and until recently I was using the same scheme (a size limited sparsebundle) to back up the Mac Mini that the Drobo is connected to.
I achieved this by following the excellent directions on http://anitechtalk.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/time-machine-dns323/ (one of the only sites that mentions the new way that Apple handles Time Machine Sparsebundles)
However this has recently stopped working and no matter what I do I still cannot get my Mac to see the Sparsebundle as a TimeMachine aware 'drive'- instead it just backs up to the root of the '16TB' Drobo- and at some point it's going to get rather full.
Argh.
(And yes, I know that the other solution is to re-partition my Drobo to have a small partition at the start of the disk for Time Machine to use- but it's too late for that as I've already got 1.85TB of data on there and I doubt that I can re-partition that without losing all of the data.)
Can anyone help me get Time Machine to accept my Sparsebundle as a 'disk' that it can backup to?
Thanks in advance.

Thank you for the video link. I did it pretty much exactly the way the young man explained. The one thing I didn't do was click "customize" as he does and unclick the multiple language support and he also clicks "rosetta" to support older programs. I wonder if that's the issue? The guys at Macmall told me that I would need to update the o.s. before I restored. I did that originally but have since (as mentioned before) erased the main drive. I noticed that when he does his install, his external drive does not show up on the list in which you want to install the o.s. on... should I unplug my external? I'm just trying to look at ever detail. I know the recovery file is there. The one thing it (the external) did say before I started posting here was "in progress". I'm not sure what that means? I promise I'm not an idiot. I consider myself an above average user. I usually help other that have issues... but I've yet to restore from a Time Machine back-up and I'm looking forward to learning how to do it.... the right way. I appreciate all of the advice. I have some pretty important files on my external back-up. I am really hoping that this is possible. I'm beginning to think the external is where the issue lies. The "in progress" next to the file name concerns me. I know there's a lot of data on the drive because it's nearly half full. So there's stuff there....
Deep breath in...... reeee laaaaaaaxxxx

External Drives Won't Mount with Mavericks

My external drives will not mount with Mavericks. They did for a while but I noticed that they stopped doing so a week ago or so. I have a drobo raid, hitiachi drive in an external case and a WD Passport. The drobo goes to sleep, the Hitachi external spins and the WD flashes like its being read.
None of the drives were mounted when I loaded Mavericks and, as far as I know, they've not been erased. They did mount for a few weeks but doesn't look they have since the beginning of November.
I have a brand new 2013 MBP 15" Retina with 750 GB SSHD, 16 GB ram and a 2.7 GHz i7. The drives are all connected via one FW800 through a Thunderbolt dongle.

I eventually gave up. I will probably get another card at some point but it probably won't be a SIIG card. Even though they are recommended by digidesign I just doesn't seem to want to work with my G5. Maybe it's some kind of weird software conflict blocking the functionality of the card? Don't know. Two cards in a row were non functional. Something is gummin up the works and the PCI slots work with the other cards I have. The only thing I did not try is plugging in the optional power connection to the FW800 card, which is supposed to be optional. I called SIIG and they had no idea what the problem was and they also said that the power plug would not make a difference for the problem I was having. Anyway, I'm gonna keep monitoring posts to this cause I'd love to hear the answer.. but I'm throwing in the towel. Good luck to the rest of you still trying to solve the riddle.

Thunderbolt to Firewire 800 external drive problems

I recently upgraded from a MacBook Pro 17" early 2011 to a MacBook Pro Retina 15" (early 2013). I have a Drobo and two Seagate 4TB external drives, all connected via Firewire 800. So, I added a Thunderbolt to Firewire 800 adapter and, it seemed, life was good.
I keep my large iTunes Movie and TV show collection on the Drobo. Since transitioning to the new MacBook, I have had a number of issue with watching movies on my Apple TV 3. Randomly, and periodically, the movie appears to be corrupted - the audio track skips/loops and the image is horrible macroblocked, as if the file is damaged. When I check the movies on the Drobo, opening it with Quicktime on the MBP, it plays just fine at the same spot it appeared damaged on the Apple TV 3.
A second symptom is this: I can no longer re-encode video with Handbrake with the source and target files on the Drobo - it gets some portion of the way through and it just stops, leaving the video partially encoded; again, at random locations/offsets into the video and not the same spot twice.
My initial thought is that connection to the Drobo is dropping out and coming back, on its own, but long enough to cause the above problems.
Is anyone else seeing this issue or something related when using the Thunderbolt to Firewire 800 adapter with large drives?
Thanks, in advance.

Update: I exchanged the Thunderbolt to Firewire adapter and the issue persists. I have a Drobo that I used with my previous system, a PowerMac G5, and never had any issues like this.
It does not matter what software I use. But at some point video playback will suddenly become garbled. If I start the video from the beginning, sometimes the garbled video will start sooner but never later. A restart temporarily resolves the issue. If I copy the file to the local hard drive the video will play back garbled. This is indeed a very strange issue. The issue behaves like a bandwidth bottleneck.
I was having this issue prior to upgrading to Mavericks.
Fred K
iMac (Late 2012), 3.4 GHz i7, GTX 680MX, Fusion Drive, 24 GB RAM, Drobo (Firewire via Thunderbolt)

Raid 1 with two external drives

Hi Everyone,
I've been searching for some answers on this and havent quite found what ive been looking for so i figured id just ask. I have two identical 1tb g-drives daisy chained and hooked up to my imac via Firewire 800. I want to make one of the drives raid 1 to mirror all the information on the other. What is the best way to go about doing this?
I was also wondering would it be better just to have time machine do backups of one drive onto the other? any advantages/disadvantages to either method?
Thanks in advance everyone!
Cheers,
Scott

scotty morrison wrote:
These drives will be used to store Masters and dailies from photo and video shoots and well as the final edits from those shoots, so id qualify them as "mission critical".
Instead of "making" your own RAID1 array, you may want to investigate some "turn-key" RAID solutions. For example [this one at Macsales|http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Mercury-EliteAL-Pro-RAID]. (That's just one RAID1 turn-key unit that Macsales has.)
Since you mention video, perhaps even consider RAID5 for more capacity, or RAID10 pr RAID0+1 for higher speeds. RAID0 would be good for the edits "scratch space", but not for any "real" storage. Thus the use of RAID10 or 0+1. (If you really want to get the max performance, do some research on the differences between 10 & 0+1.)
...Im now thinking however that i should have my masters in raid1 and on separate drives have my live edits being backed up by time machine as they change. Would this be a good thing to do?
Again, RAID1 is not a backup, so regardless of where you have the "masters", they should be backed up. With the backup, you can then recover from a loss of a drive, it will just be a little more time to get running again compared to RAID1. Thus the "need" for RAID1 is debatable for the masters and final edits, etc.
Also realize that RAID1 & RAID5 generally have slower performance than an individual drive (or RAID0) due to the overhead of writing the mirror or parity info. In many "workstations", they have a individual drive to boot from, then a RAID0 array for the editing "scratch space", and the final version of the file on some other storage. (i.e.: RAID5 SAN.)
Be careful with reliance on Time Machine for backups. Time Machine is good, but sometimes Time Machine can't backup files that are in use. (e.g.: [iPhoto|http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4116].) This is true of most backup systems unless you get some really expensive software so for something you're considering "mission critical" like these video files, I'd be looking at an additional backup system. (Even something as lowly as manually copying files to an external hard drive or an Automator workflow.)
To give another perspective: RAID1 if you absolutely can't have this system down for even one second. Which means your boot drive needs RAID1. Your "scratch space" on RAID0 or a SSD, since you want speed and can deal with the loss of a drive. Your "masters" & "final edits", you need to consider _+long term+_ storage. (a.k.a.: archiving.) The largest hard drives currently are 3TB. Being video, I'm going to guess you'll out grow this quickly. With RAID1, you'd be "stuck" at 3TB until larger hard drives come out...and then you've have to buy two of them...then be "stuck" again. So IMHO you should be looking at a RAID5 system that can grow. They can be "slower" RAID5 since you're looking at long term storage rather than max performance like the scratch disks. (If you need a little more performance, then RAID10, but you'd be sacrificing capacity.) For example, the 8 or 16 drive Drobo. Start with 2 or 3 drives now, then add more drives as needed. Drobo's of this capacity aren't cheap, but if they are as "mission critical" as you think they are, then a Drobo or similar is probably a worthwhile investment. But really, it appears to me that a proper backup procedure of your masters/final edits would be sufficient. RAID1 then is just icing-on-the-cake, albeit, very good icing.

Which external drive for backups?

My brand new 21.5" iMac is on its way here today, and I've been told to buy an external drive for backups. Which I think is a great idea. However, my head's starting to hurt from all the info I'm reading here on the forum about WHICH one, Firewire cables, etc etc. The Rocstor 500GB has been recommended to me personally, but I've read about Lacie and a few other brands. I'm thinking it'd be best to get a 1T size. But WHICH HARD DRIVE SHOULD I GET? I don't wanna spend a lot of bucks!!!
Plus I have a Firewire cable but how do I know if it's a 2 or a 4? I bought it when I migrated data from my Silver edition iMac to my G4 iMac back in 2004 or 2005.
Thanks!

Congratulations Sheryl on the new iMac.
I recently replaced a G-4 tower with an iMac. The G-4 had a port for Firewire 400. The iMac came equipped with one Firewire 800 port a firewire cable and 4USB ports. I suspect that also applies to your new machine. In order to transfer files from one machine to the other using Firewire 400/800 I had to buy an adapter from the Apple store. Your help menu will explain how to set up the iMac as a target for the transfer.
As to backup: I use Super Duper and over 8 years had backed up religiously to a Lacie external HD. About the time I needed to use it as a file transfer source to the iMac it quit.
After much study and considering how Time Machine can eat up space I settled on the external hard drives described below - all were partitioned. The Drobo uses firewire 800 and 4 multiple internal hard drives. It is the place where time machine is backed up. The setup was about $600.
The two lacie hard drives are USB 2.0 driven.
I have learned the hard way that it pays to backup the backups.
If I could only have one external hard drive and with all things considered I would opt for the 1TB Lacie Stark (about $125) that is USB driven.
Sure hope this helps a bit. To help further we need to know more specifics about your need.
Mcthomas

Time Machine has locked my external drive. HELP

Time Machine hosed me again. After several unsuccessful attempts to backup on my PowerMac G5 dual 2.33 Ghz, I was able to complete my first full backup to an external 2 gig DROBO (USB 2.0 interface). It took 20 hours to do 180 gigs.
Now I have just discovered that Time Machine has made that external drive READ-ONLY! I cannot write to the drive and neither can Time Machine.
Does anybody know what is up and how to fix this short of using root UNIX shell which terrifies me. I just want to take it off and cut my losses, but the drive also has a ton of music on it that iTunes uses.

Okay Jeffery, I think I've found the solution, especially if you are seeing the "Unknown" user in your Get Info window's Sharing & Permissions setting for your drobo.
I had written earlier about my work-around for getting my drobo to work right after getting the "read-only" error from Time Machine. But unfortunately it was a temporary and temperamental fix. There were times then I had to eject the disk and launch Disk Utility to run a repair on the disk which would take more than half an hour on my drobo. But all the while my permissions had this "Unknown" user. Well I decided to "Go UNIX" and see if I could fix this problem once and for all.
I opened up Terminal and typed "*ls -la /Volumes*". This gives me a directory listing of my mounted drive volumes. I noticed that all of my drives, internal, external, USB and FireWire, all had "root" as the user and "admin" as the group, _EXCEPT for my drobo!_ So I forced it to conform by changing it manually by typing "*sudo chown root:admin /Volumes/Drobo\ Backup\ HD/*".
sudo = temporarily enables root mode by asking for your password before executing.
chown = changes ownership to...
root:admin = "root" is the user and "admin" is the group.
*/Volumes/Drobo\ Backup\ HD/* = My drobo drive is named "*Drobo Backup HD*", but UNIX sees spaces as command separators, so you have to use the "\ " to signify spaces within a name.
After doing this over a week ago, _I have not had any other problems_ with using my drobo as a backup drive. It has never come up with the "read-only" error in Time Machine, the Sharing & Permissions setting do not have any "Unknown" users or groups, I don't even need to wait for my drobo before logging in like I did in the past. I just boot my Mac and everything with my drobo and Time Machine just works... No problems!
It seems to be permanently fixed for me, so if you are willing to try this solution, I'm sure it would work for you. If UNIX terrifies you too much, and you do not trust yourself editing the commands above, let me know the name of your drobo drive on your desktop and I will post a message with the EXACT UNIX commands customized for just for you, so all you have to do is copy and paste them into your Terminal window to do it. But like I said, I've done this over a week ago and I not had one single problem.

Is RAID the solution to safeguard my external drive data?

I have a 1TB WD My Book attached to my iMac, which has about 10 years worth of 'stuff' on it. My son's baby pictures are probably the most precious in all of that.
I have another external 320GB hard drive connected that I use for Time Machine.
Recently, I thought I lost the WD My Book and my heart skipped a few beats - stopped - then kicked back into life. Needless to say, I'm very anxious at the moment.
I was thinking of getting another 1TB WD My Book (it's quite a bit cheaper now :-)), daisy chain the two drives, and create a RAID 1 set of the two 1TB drives.
Could the wise and kind souls of this forum advise if this would work, and indeed, if it is the best option for what I want to do?
I have toyed with getting a Drobo, but that company does not retail to Malaysia at this time.
Thank you.

azsharom wrote:
I have a 1TB WD My Book attached to my iMac, which has about 10 years worth of 'stuff' on it. My son's baby pictures are probably the most precious in all of that..
I guess my main consideration for RAID was that it would be 'real time mirroring/cloning' but since my data isn't mission critical - but more 'sentimentally critical', a Super Duper routine that does a copy of the 2 drives every time I shutdown, or something along those lines, may suffice.
If your most precious data is currently only on one drive, then a constant mirroring solution or daily connected clone solution is the wrong next step. You're skipping a more important step. You need to have a backup that is off site, or at the very least, usually disconnected or read-only.
Even with your current proposal, your data is too vulnerable. You could lose it in these ways.
a. A fire destroys the home. Both original drive and backup are destroyed.
b. A burglar steals your entire computer system, including all connected drives. Which means he also has your backup drive, and you have nothing.
c. A lightning strike hits your home electrical system. The computer and all connected peripherals are fried.
d. A glitch or bug corrupts a critical file, but you don't notice. That night, your backup routine copies that day's changes to your backup disk. Later, you try to open the critical file, but you discover that the original is corrupted, and the backup is also corrupted because the last good version got written over with the bad copy during the backup. You no longer have a good copy of that file.
If you don't already have your baby pictures and other similarly critical data already copied to a disk that is not always connected to your system, you are vulnerable to the above and more. If your most critical files fit on a few DVDs, put them on DVDs and store them at another location, like a relative's house or a safe deposit box. I do clone to external drives, but I only connect them during the backup; when not backing up they are locked away in a safe so that if something bad happens to the computer, maybe it won't also happen to the backup. And there is more than one backup drive so that I can have more than one version and one is kept off site and rotated in occasionally. And I started using Time Machine for more frequent backups, and more versions of changed files.
Automatic online mirror/clone or Time Machine = near term backups, can't be an archive
Multiple hard drives rotated off site = protection against disasters to on site storage
Read-only media like DVDs = long term archives of irreplaceable files

How to restore external drive using Time Machine?

My external drive quit working and it held my iTunes library and other important documents. Everything is backed up to Time Machine. Time Machine is another external drive. The external drives are Seagate Go Flex that sit on the removable bases.
Any tips going forward? I was thinking about Drobo? I need safe backups.
Should I stop everything, get another good drive and somehow restore? I can't just tell Time Machine to restore contents of lost drive - correct?
How much risk is there?
I have an iMac 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7
Running 10.8.2 - everything is up to date
Thanks for helping. This is scary.

I can't just tell Time Machine to restore contents of lost drive - correct?
Sure you can. Follow the instructions linked below:
I can't see backups for a disk/partition that's no longer connected

I wish to move movies/tv shows to external drive

I have less than 10% of my internal 2T drive available, and wish to move my movies and TV shows to an external drobo, I don't care if my music collection moves or not.
What is the best way to do this and keep iTunes happy? I tried copying the entire folder to the Drobo, but the software did not seem to like that approach.
Thanks

The following article(s) may help you.
Moving your iTunes library to an external drive (Mac)

Mountain Lion 10.8 no longer recognizes external drives

I just upgraded to 10.8 and my two external drives are no longer recognized (either in Finder or the desktop). One is a Drobo raid drive and the other is a Seagate 2 TB external drive. Both have been working fine for years under the previous OS version but are not recognized by 10.8. I have rebooted both the iMac and the drives but nothing shows up. Drobo provides a desktop dashboard that does see the Drobo drive and reports no errors. I use both drives for backups which no longer works since the drives are not recognized. Any suggestions?

Yes, both there.. but 'repair disk permissions" and "verify disk" are greyed out on Drobo and all are greyed out on the Seagate.

External drive slows down system

I purchased this 27 inch iMac last month. Its loaded. 3 TB HD, 32 GB Ram, 4 TB External Lacie Thunderbolt Drive.
The system slows to a crawl, with beach balls, slowness (I mean REALLY SLOW). I also have errors transferring files from the Lacie to the internal HD.
I got frustrated beecause I thought my files were corrupt (my Adobe lightroom catalog files were reporting as being corrupt). After a day or two of monkeying around, I zeroed in on the Lacie HD as the source of my problems. I reformatted, rebuilt the raid array, and restored from a Drobo....and voila! It worked.
For about an hour. Then, slowness returns. I ran the extended hardware check.....nothing wrong.
I called Lacie tech support. The guy asked me to unplug the drive and the power to it. Plugged everything back in, and voila again! It flew.
30 minutes later, more slowness. I called lacie, and the tech support person suggested I might have a bad thunderbolt cable and offered to send me another one (which will presumably be on the way tomorrow).
Has anyone had this kind of a problem? Do you think the cable might fix the problem? Or do you think the drive is defective?
Thanks
Kenny in NJ

Its not the drive. I have two external drives connected and mine are from Seagate. The problem most likely occurs between the iOS and the USB/Thunderbolt/Firewire connections.
Any response from Apple?

External drive drobo

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