Noisy Drobo FS Power Adaptor

Drobo make fantastic products, allowing the use of old and unwanted hard drives to create a large and reliable backup or shared drive without fear that a drive might fail. Essentially it enables RAID protection on drives of mixed sizes and speeds. Should one drive fail, simply pull it out and put in another. The Drobo will then rebuild your data and nothing will be lost.

So I ordered the Drobo FS – a networked version of the home office / personal Drobo. I want to share my media on all my computers at home and this is the perfect solution. Music, movies, etc. downloaded can be put on my Drobo and accessed from anything on my home network. Excellent.

However, the power adaptor that came with my Drobo FS is extremely noisy. It emits a high pitched shrill in a rhythmic manor … as if it has moving parts inside! A quick Google shows that this problem has been known since last summer yet Drobo have no changed supplier or insisted the problem be resolved. They simply incur the expense of sending a replacement power adaptor.

The noise from the adaptor drowns out everything else in my office. My PC, my laptop and even the Drobo itself. I wish I was older and couldn’t hear noises of this high frequency!

The adaptor type is EDACPOWER ELEC – EA11001E-120. In all my years of using computers and various peripherals it is the first time I’ve experienced this problem!

Everything else about the Drobo is really classy. Cool packaging, easy to install, slick design. All that effort just to be let down my a lousy power adaptor! I have requested a replacement (one that has been tested!), hopefully it will arrive soon.