Drobo Series 3 WILL Downsize itself!

Well color me SHOCKED.

Tons of people on Reddit told me this wasn't possible.

I made a little video because I'm sure someone would say that I just got a screen grab showing the drives green or something.

I can assure you this is legit. 

And no, I cannot PROVE what I say so I'm hoping someone will validate this.

Keep in mind, it feels like maybe 5-6 days that this happened over. I didn't keep track because of course I didn't expect it.

The Drobo DID go into data protection MANY times. At one point I think I had 48 notifications. :)

So, you could pull a drive, wait for it to all turn green again, THEN insert  a smaller drive. I tried this before the rebuild was all done with a 1TB in the bottom bay and it just turned that drive red and wanted me to replace it with a bigger drive (like the 4TB). So I'm guessing that Drobo prefers that easier and quicker method vs. all the days of rebuild it too.

WARNING: This DOES place your data at more risk, but if you had it set up for 2 drive failure, less so obviously. 

In my case, all I had was Time Machine backups left to copy off, and I had other backups so not hugely critical.

HTH! Someone else give it shot if you've got non-critical data or a Drobo laying around. 

Now I wonder if the Series 2 will do it.