Drobo Close Call
Jun 04 2020
My Drobo is now a bit too far away from my computers (the included USB C to USB A cable is rather short) so I used a USB A to A extender cable to connect it to my MBP 2015 and with an additional USB A to USB C adapter to connect it to my MBP 2020. Transfers seemed a bit slow so I wanted to remove the extender cable from the chain.
That USB A female plug was a bit too narrow so the cables were stuck to each other. I eventually used two pliers to to pull them apart. Unfortunately I think I crimped the USB A male connector because after plugging in the Drobo would keep dropping out. And that caused the directory to get corrupted so the Drobo volume wouldn't mount.
To fix the latter I used DiskWarrior 5 which is great at rebuilding directory info. It had to do a complete rebuild but after that the Drobo volume mounted correctly. DW 5 saves the day again.
I also noticed that my Drobo volume is Mac OS Extended to Extended (Journaled) and a journaled file system might have prevented the directory corruption. I'll need to move 34 TB of data off the drive and reformat to Extended (Journaled).
Anyways, I plugged in the USB extender cable and will leave it that way since the grip is so tight there is no disconnection problem as far as I can tell.
So a question is do I need a dedicated USB C to C cable for best speed to my Drobo 5c? I did some large file transfers to the Drobo and speed was about 35 to 45 MB per second which would be USB 2.0 speeds. This Quora article says USB A has 1 lane and USB C has two so USB C to C can be faster. This article at KC's Blog says the included cable can be fast but maybe Drobo connects as USB 2.0 unless you turn the cable over and reconnect it to the Drobo. I tried it but didn't seem to help. I don't have a tool to see what connection protocol is being used. Oh well, guess I'll buy a C to C cable since $40 for maybe doubling the speed would be worth it.
That USB A female plug was a bit too narrow so the cables were stuck to each other. I eventually used two pliers to to pull them apart. Unfortunately I think I crimped the USB A male connector because after plugging in the Drobo would keep dropping out. And that caused the directory to get corrupted so the Drobo volume wouldn't mount.
To fix the latter I used DiskWarrior 5 which is great at rebuilding directory info. It had to do a complete rebuild but after that the Drobo volume mounted correctly. DW 5 saves the day again.
I also noticed that my Drobo volume is Mac OS Extended to Extended (Journaled) and a journaled file system might have prevented the directory corruption. I'll need to move 34 TB of data off the drive and reformat to Extended (Journaled).
Anyways, I plugged in the USB extender cable and will leave it that way since the grip is so tight there is no disconnection problem as far as I can tell.
So a question is do I need a dedicated USB C to C cable for best speed to my Drobo 5c? I did some large file transfers to the Drobo and speed was about 35 to 45 MB per second which would be USB 2.0 speeds. This Quora article says USB A has 1 lane and USB C has two so USB C to C can be faster. This article at KC's Blog says the included cable can be fast but maybe Drobo connects as USB 2.0 unless you turn the cable over and reconnect it to the Drobo. I tried it but didn't seem to help. I don't have a tool to see what connection protocol is being used. Oh well, guess I'll buy a C to C cable since $40 for maybe doubling the speed would be worth it.