---
title: "Reverse engineering the Drobo 5N network protocol"
url: "https://reamcp.dev/en/cases/reverse-engineering-the-drobo-5n-network-protocol-4cbc65"
source: "https://www.reddit.com/r/drobo/comments/1xe8yhv/reverse_engineering_the_drobo_5n_network_protocol"
source_type: "reddit"
author: "Ok-Priority-Go"
author_handle: "Ok-Priority-Go"
stars: 0
category: "File formats & protocols"
categories: ["formats-protocols"]
tags: ["drobo", "interoperability", "network-protocol", "python", "reverse-engineering", "storage"]
added: "2026-10-25T02:51:05.381Z"
updated: "2026-10-25T02:56:06.226Z"
locale: "en"
content_locale: "en"
---

# Reverse engineering the Drobo 5N network protocol

A Drobo 5N owner used REA to reverse engineer the device's remote-control network protocol and published a Python script that performs the handshake and prints status, system, network and drive information.

## Description

The Reddit post describes using reverse engineer anything (REA) to analyse the protocol used to remotely control the author's own Drobo 5N. After packet captures and several hours of work, the author published a Gist containing a standard-library Python script that executes the network handshake and gathers the Drobo's status, system, network and drive information. The goal is interoperability with the owner's aging hardware, including eventual remote shutdown, and the author invites testing on other Drobo 5N and 5N2 units.

## Original README

Long-time Drobo owner, first time poster! My Drobo 5N, bought more than a decade ago, on a different continent, is still going strong to this day (I had to replace its fan a couple of years ago). It is occasionally controlled by an equally aging MacBook Pro, leaving me wondering what I would do if the Mac gave up. So for a while I had this itch to throw Claude into the mix to try reverse engineering the protocol that is used to remotely control a networked Drobo. The most recent Opus 5.5 flat out refuses to go deep on this; luckily Opus 4.8 doesn't have these safeguards. So I spent my lazy Saturday morning using reverse engineer anything (a reverse engineering toolbox for agents) attempting to crack open that black box. A few hours, many packet captures and a lot of tokens later, here's the result: https://gist.github.com/tsak/6ecdab10def5731824411bd9b84a7a52 This Gist contains a Python script to execute the network handshake between my laptop and the Drobo, gathering my 5N's status, system, network and drive information, all printed neatly to the terminal. I have tested this with Python 3.11 and 3.15 on Linux. My hunch is that it might work on Windows/macOS and with anything from Python 3.10 onwards. It only uses the standard library. My ultimate goal is to be able to remotely shut the unit down, but for now being able to see how it's doing is quite neat. Because I only have that single unit, it would be cool if anybody could test this. I would be curious whether this works with a 5N2, and of course with other 5Ns. Anyway, cool to see that there's an active community of Drobo users!   submitted by   /u/Ok-Priority-Go   to   r/drobo [link]   [comments]