Need help on replacing a battery for a Drobo Drive

Tim O. replied 4 years ago

I’m curious if you ever found a solution to this? I’ve been trying to find a replacement battery with no luck for months now. I’ll never buy another Drobo product, ever. I have a 5N2 that will not even power up without this battery attached and Drobo won’t sell you the battery direct. Your only option is to send the unit in for a $450 repair to replace a $20 battery plus all of the shipping back and forth. I even went so far as to send the old battery to a lab to have them analyze it because I, unfortunately, have several of these units at my work (purchased before I joined the company) so I wanted to buy several replacements to have ready as backups in case they die and take the entire storage unit down. The lab analyzed the battery+PCB and said it’s’ doing some proprietary stuff and couldn’t reliably replicate it. It’s a standard Panasonic 18650 battery plus Drobo’s PCB and the 5N2 will not even turn on without a functional battery. It’s insanely poor engineering. I refuse to spend any money with a company that operates like this. Future purchases will be with a manufacturer that doesn’t force you into deciding between submitting to a $450 repair to replace a $20 battery or just junk the entire unit. If you couldn’t tell I’m extremely frustrated with Drobo! I can’t stand companies that function this way especially for something as simple as a battery.