Updated July 20, 2022 at 2:10 p.m. ET: Added statement from Drobo parent company StorCentric
As first reported by PopPhoto, Drobo has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Drobo, along with parent company StorCentric, filed in California’s Northern Bankruptcy Court.
Founded in 2005, Drobo was one of the earliest pioneers in direct and network-attached storage. The company has suffered from supply chain issues, which were accentuated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Popular products like the Drobo 5D3 and Drobo 5C have been very challenging to order, if not impossible, in recent years. Despite this, Drobo has continued to support their products, offering customer support and software updates when necessary.
Drobo’s flagship feature is its BeyondRAID technology, offering support for multiple drives, dual disk redundancy, mixed drive utilization, instant expansion and more. Drobo products made it so that photographers and other creatives could rest assured that their files were protected.
Drobo merged with storage company Nexsan in 2018 to create a new entity, StorCentric. Under StorCentric, Drobo has released just one new product, the Drobo 8D, in late 2018. Over the past several years, Drobo has been met with increasing competition from companies like Western Digital, Synology, QNAP and others.
In a statement, StorCentric confirmed that they will continue to support their current customers during this time:
“StorCentric remains committed to ensuring world-class customer service and satisfaction. The Chapter 11 restructuring will have zero impact on this pledge.”
StorCentric
The first court hearing is scheduled for July 19, 2022. Creditors are able to make claims through October 17, 2022, meaning we have several months to find out what’s next for Drobo.
Oh yeah… They will? From a post today on a Drobo fan Facebook page: Drobo Technical Support Bulletin: macOS Ventura Compatability Dear Valued Drobo Customer, Thank you for entrusting Drobo with your critical data. We have found that the upcoming macOS Ventura update is currently incompatible with Drobo. We cannot guarantee compatibility with future OS updates. Therefore, if you are planning on upgrading your macOS we highly recommend backing up data that resides on your Drobo to mitigate any unknown impacts of incompatibility. Furthermore, the Drobo should be shut down prior to performing the OS update. Before any major computer… Read more »
UPDATE: Also posted on their official support channel site. https://myproducts.drobo.com/retrieve/s3/knowledge/AA/macOS%20Ventura.html
We have reached out to Drobo for comment.
I got the email too. I’ve invested in upgrading my Drobos for years and rely on my 5D3 for a massive amount of storage. Ventura has been in the works for months and they just now tell their users that their DROBOs won’t work with this update. I guess I should start looking for a replacement ‘beyondRAID’ mass storage device
Looks like they are still working on the update despite the bankruptcy:
https://twitter.com/drobo/status/1561766597563322368?s=20&t=b_cOxHIWMqBzDmfgM4UPGw