I was blissfully unaware of the collapse of Drobo and I am very grateful for the posts and support here in relation to this predicament. I am still successfully running a 4 bay and a 5C on a 2014 Mac Mini Late 2014 with Monterey 12.7.6. They are working fine, but alas Adobe has come to the end with Lightroom 13.5.1 being as far as I can go. So I will be going to a M2 Mac Mini imminently and running LR and PS from there. Given this redundancy, what would you recommend as a replacement system? I have 8tb of drives in the 4 bay and 17tb in the 5C. There is still 1.4tb of space on the 4 bay. What would the recommended path be in relation to backup and migration from the Drobos. Many thanks in anticipation.
Years ago I discovered from experience, despite strong recommendations by others that at the time I trusted, the significant shortcomings of Drobo’s products, designs, and support services. It was no wonder to me why they failed as a company.
Years ago I migrated to a Synology DS420j and very content with my choice. I cannot give you advice how to migrate and/or re-use your disks. Just have to work through it I guess. I do recommend that you only use disks that are on Synology’s (or whatever vendor you choose) “approved” list.
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Can you elaborate on that?
I have bought NAS-grade drives not officially on their list for several years and have not had any issues.
Other than my n=1 experience and your n=1 experience, is there a bigger set of data saying to only use the ones officially blesed by Synology?
All I know is that I had disks not on the “approved” list, and there were errors/problems/whatever reported by the NAS unit and Synology Support pointed out the discrepancy against their list. If you have not issues, then great. I have not other data. I just know that Synology suport can notice those things and in respect to their outstanding support, I’ll pay attention.
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My understanding is that if it is not on the Synology list it has not been tested; it does not mean that it is not compatible.
Support might be an issue- agreed. However -
(1) Synology is top-notch hardware/software; odds of needing their help to recover from a data loss are small.
(2) If I do have a critical issue with a backup, Synology is well-known enough that any decent size down will have Synology consultants who are experts. If I have a 12-drive NAS and I save $150 per drive by using a model not on their list, That’s more than enough savings to find a local consultant to solve my critical issue.
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Personally I moved from Drobo to NVMe SSD drives in Satechi TB4 enclosures (4 of them), all connected to my MacStudio M1 (that is my 24x7 do everything server/workstation).
Key use case:
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Didn’t want to be limited with what compute hardware and software is available on NAS
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Wanted highest performance for various workflows (but didn’t really need), most of the transfer I/O is on the MacStudio so NAS doesn’t really make sense for me (VMs, Media and Photo stuff)
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Wanted most flexibility in terms of configuration and upgrades in future
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Most of all, wanted a silent solution as this is in my study where I work (turns out I’m very sensitive to fan noise)
My biggest learning with this exercise is that MacOS RAID volumes are simply to configure and bullet-proof, all driven from disk util and so simple to setup and configure I was honestly surprised (I was a server admin back in “the day”).
Hardware = 4 x 4TB Samsung M.2 MVMe SSD housed in Satechi’s Thunderbolt 4 enclosures.
Config
Disk1 = 4TB Non redundant
Disk2 = 4TB Non redundant
Disk3 + Disk4 = RAID1 (MacOS disk util configured)
All configured and running back in 2022, never missed a beat 
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I wasn’t planning to go into details. I had a couple 4tb drives which were tested fine outside of Synology. I think left over from Drobo. Not immediately, but in time, the Synology “Storage Manager” app reported those two drives as “not healthy” [I forget the actual words … long time ago]. Synology Support explained that while drives they have not tested CAN and do work, sometimes immediately or over time the Storage Manager algorithm determines that drive is “not healthy” and reports that. I don’t know how they test.
Using approved/tested drives avoids, or at least reduces, potential messing with that. I found drives that were approved at acceptable prices to replace the “not healthy” ones. Yes, some of the approved drives are expensive, but some are not. While Synology brands are on the list, other brands are too.
My hunch is if the Storage Analyser reports a drive as “not healthy” there is really nothing one can do about that as the algorithm is built in to the app. Or maybe there is something to be done. I don’t know. But time and and maybe money would be required to do something.
I chose to just take the easy way and buy inexpensive-but-approved drives.
An alternative would be to connect drives to a spare computer (mac, linux, or whatever) and if it works, it works. And may or may not have the equivalent of the “Storage Analyser” to monitor the disks. Or setting up RAID harder–or not. I didn’t go down that route.
Hence my [unexplained] recommendation. I took what I thought was the easy way, and since having that trouble years ago, no trouble since.
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Thank you for the advice Steve. Just set up my Mac Mini M2 today and migrating a full backup from my main Drobo to an external 4TB HDD. I’ll continue to use my current setup as long as I can until I have an alternative set up in place. I like the sound of your new set up, so will take a look. Still reeling a bit, but at least I am not trying to work around a Drobo failure. I’m still having a good innings with my late 2014 Mac Mini Fusion, but will check in with you later if that’s okay. Thanks once again.
Good luck and enjoy the opportunity to look at new approaches for your storage. I must admit that I very nearly went to a NAS, but for me the driving force was speed and noise.
To be fair my Drobo was never super quiet, however I ran it in another room so not such an issue.
If you don’t have a computer running 24x7 as some kind of server/workstation, then a NAS is the answer. If not, a bunch of disks is a valid option, as is a SSD enclosure of some description.
All the best.
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