Although I regularly dust the outside of my Drobo 8D direct-attached storage (DAS) server, I spent a few minutes cleaning the inside today. First, I shutdown my Drobo through the Drobo Dashboard application (select your Drobo → Tools → Shutdown). Then, I removed each drive ensuring I remember which bay they came from. Instead of compressed air, I used my XPOWER A-2 to clean the bay, drives, and fans.
Then I replaced the drives (again, ensuring they went back into their original bays), restarted the Drobo, and had no issues accessing the DAS. To be honest, I was a little worried that the RAID would rebuild itself, but fortunately, it didn’t. 🙂
