Hey Esther, There are multiple alert mechanisms, but there aren't any accessible and comprehensive alert mechanisms. At most, the Drobo Dashboard software with voiceover will be able to tell you there is a problem, both in the program itself and as an email alert that you can set up. But the part that tells you which hard drive needs to be replaced is inaccessible, and the email alert can only tell you if there is a problem in the broadest sense, not what is causing the problem and what to do about it. A sample email would just read like this: "Your Drobo has reported the following critical alert. Alert I cannot currently protect your data against a single hard drive failure." and that is it.
SMART status is unavailable on most external drives, and although I assume the Drobo hardware can monitor SMART status as part of monitoring the health of the drives, it is not possible to use Disk Utility to view that. I can see some solutions to deal with this particular issue, mainly in having Drobo Dashboard being a background process that cannot be quit and changing the email to outline exactly which disk is having a problem. Indeed something worth contacting data robotics about. cheers, jane On Tue, Sep 9, 2008 at 9:00 PM, Esther <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Thanks, Jane, for this report on the Drobo as a disk storage device. I > think it was Shaun who wanted to get one of these based on the reviews in > various PC magazines. Is the only alert mechanism that a drive is failing > through the colored display lights? I'm wondering whether checking through > something like Disk Utility's SMART drive check, or other accompanying > DROBO-specific software might not also flag a warning of potential disk > problems. Then, the information could be sent via a Growl alert or other > notification method. > > Cheers, > > Esther
