# Drobo



## Felixtrio (Mar 25, 2007)

What are your feelings about a Drobo, a multi-drive storage device?

Does it act like one big drive or can you use each drive independently?


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## DavidH (Jan 4, 2009)

It can act like one Big Drive or you can Partition it into multiple drives.
Its nice and convient and does help when you have a "hard drive failure" and also does well when it comes time to "expand" your drive capacity.
Unless you use Time Machine on it then you will not have protection for "user errors" when managing files.

It is important to remember that Drobo should be used as one part of your Total Backup Strategy.
What would happen if you had a disaster at your house (fire/flood) or what would happen if your Drobo was stolen.
Lastly what would happen if you had a failure of your Drobo Enclosure - you would not have access to your data until you purchased another enclosure as the data on the drives are in a "proprietary Drobo format".

You need to have another part to your Strategy, perhaps use Drobo for large Media File Storage and have another Single use Hard Drive for Time Machine backup for the "human error".
You should also consider an "off-site" backup or "cloud storage" to protect you against disaster at home.

Hopefully I have given you some additional ideas to think about.

DavidH


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## SoyMac (Apr 16, 2005)

DavidH said:


> ...
> Lastly what would happen if you had a failure of your Drobo Enclosure - you would not have access to your data until you purchased another enclosure as the data on the drives are in a "*proprietary Drobo format*"....


Exactly what happened to me.
Never again DROBO here.
Now I keep multiple external drives, and back up everything that way.


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## hayesk (Mar 5, 2000)

Drobo is underpowered and overpriced, in my opinion. Also, studies are now showing Drobo and similar multi-drive RAID setups are not as reliable for large capacity drives. The time and effort to rebuild from the other drives when one goes south, takes a long time and is quite hard on the drives, and the likelihood of one of the other drives failing is then increased due to the load they are put under.

Instead of a Drobo, consider getting two large external drives. Keep one at a friend's house, your office, etc., and one at your house. Then swap them every week, month, etc. whatever is convenient for you. The solution is cheaper and more reliable than a Drobo. Then whenever you want to increase capacity, just buy two internal drives and swap them for the ones in the external cases.


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## pcronin (Feb 20, 2005)

FreeNAS [FreeNAS] if you have a spare PC just gathering dust


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## ehMax (Feb 17, 2000)

hayesk said:


> Drobo is underpowered and overpriced, in my opinion. Also, studies are now showing Drobo and similar multi-drive RAID setups are not as reliable for large capacity drives. The time and effort to rebuild from the other drives when one goes south, takes a long time and is quite hard on the drives, and the likelihood of one of the other drives failing is then increased due to the load they are put under.
> 
> Instead of a Drobo, consider getting two large external drives. Keep one at a friend's house, your office, etc., and one at your house. Then swap them every week, month, etc. whatever is convenient for you. The solution is cheaper and more reliable than a Drobo. Then whenever you want to increase capacity, just buy two internal drives and swap them for the ones in the external cases.


Your opinion would go against most reviews. It's won tons of editor's choice awards as best product and is constantly rated extremely high. Everyone I have talked to, really loves their Drobo. 

Also, what are these studies you're referring to? 

Also, "the time and effort to rebuild a drive if one goes south"... leads me to believe you're not familiar with the Drobo at all. If a drive goes south, the Drobo gives a very clear indication that a drive has failed. You can setup the Drobo Dashboard to alert you via email the drive has failed. 

To fix the problem, remove the dead drive, and replace it with whatever drive you want. Doesn't matter if its the same size or brand. Drobo does the rest in less than an hour. It couldn't be easier. This procedure doesn't cause any undo stress on other drives. 

In fact, when the folks at Drobo demo it, the demo they always do is to play an HD movie from the Drobo. They then take a random drive and pop it out to simulate a failure. The HD movie doesn't skip a beat. Put in a new drive, and it rebuilds itself in minutes. 

The other negative I hear over and over, is that the Drobo is a proprietary format. Uh... ever looked at what computer you're using? :lmao: This argument is on the same level for not buying a Mac because its too proprietary, or for not buying an iMac because the screen is built in. 

If a mechanism goes, it goes and you need it fixed. Drobo is an amazing company with amazing support. They have a huge dealer network. They also experience huge sales volumes and are a tremendously strong company. SATA drives will be discontinued and replaced with another technology before Drobo stops making SATA Drobos. 

The philosophy behind a Drobo, is that you can also buy the storage you need now and grow your storage when you need to. (And also when drives are more cheaper as well) No system is as flexible for adding the storage when you need to. Getting low on storage, just pop out the smallest sized drive and replace it with whatever drive you find a good deal on.


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## ehMax (Feb 17, 2000)

Here's a good video demo of the Drobo. It's a little old, they don't sell the Drobo Share anymore separately, they now sell the Drobo FS with built in networking. The Drobo 4-Bay is going for around $379. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IrirOfbOig


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## hayesk (Mar 5, 2000)

ehMax said:


> Your opinion would go against most reviews. It's won tons of editor's choice awards as best product and is constantly rated extremely high. Everyone I have talked to, really loves their Drobo.


Most reviewers like it because they think it's neat. Most reviews do NOT say it's cheaper than simply using multiple external drives. And most reviews do NOT say it performs better than using multiple external drives or is more reliable. How many drives can fail in a Drobo setup? How many drives can fail in a dual-external drive setup? Is it not 1 in both cases?


> Also, what are these studies you're referring to?


Here's a couple of articles that explain the problem nicely:

On Large Drives And RAID - Network Computing

Why RAID 5 stops working in 2009 | ZDNet

This applies to Drobo as well for the same reasons.


> Also, "the time and effort to rebuild a drive if one goes south"... leads me to believe you're not familiar with the Drobo at all. If a drive goes south, the Drobo gives a very clear indication that a drive has failed. You can setup the Drobo Dashboard to alert you via email the drive has failed.
> To fix the problem, remove the dead drive, and replace it with whatever drive you want. Doesn't matter if its the same size or brand. Drobo does the rest in less than an hour. It couldn't be easier. This procedure doesn't cause any undo stress on other drives.


You missed the word "rebuild." When a drive goes south, you put a new one in. "Less than an hour" if you have few files or little space used. Just look at the figures mentioned in the article. And the other drives run constantly - where do you think Drobo gets the data from to put on the new drive? That time causes, the MBTF rating drops dramatically, as MBTF is based on average usage, not constant reading.


> In fact, when the folks at Drobo demo it, the demo they always do is to play an HD movie from the Drobo. They then take a random drive and pop it out to simulate a failure. The HD movie doesn't skip a beat. Put in a new drive, and it rebuilds itself in minutes.


That's nice, but it's not really relevant to my reasons for not liking it. Any striped RAID array can do that too. I'd like to see their demo with full terabyte drives with a few million files. The bandwidth in the drives combined with the cache and controller are simply not fast enough to rebuild "in less than an hour."


> The other negative I hear over and over, is that the Drobo is a proprietary format. Uh... ever looked at what computer you're using? :lmao: This argument is on the same level for not buying a Mac because its too proprietary, or for not buying an iMac because the screen is built in.


I didn't criticize it for that reason.


> The philosophy behind a Drobo, is that you can also buy the storage you need now and grow your storage when you need to. (And also when drives are more cheaper as well)


Can't I do that with any drive?


> No system is as flexible for adding the storage when you need to. Getting low on storage, just pop out the smallest sized drive and replace it with whatever drive you find a good deal on.


I don't deny that's a cool feature, but I'd rather have better performance, and the Drobo has shown to be slower and more expensive up front for the same capacity over just buying a couple of external drives, and is no more reliable.


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## jfpoole (Sep 26, 2002)

I've had a Drobo for about eight months now and I love it! I love the fact that I don't need to have the same size drives, and I can swap out small drives for larger drives as my storage needs grow.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

> The other negative I hear over and over, is that the Drobo is a proprietary format. Uh... ever looked at what computer you're using


A proprietary computer has nothing to do with a proprietary case that is holding your data that exists no where else......that is a completely false analogy.

What Hayesk says covers the reason we do not sell or recommend Drobo and you gloss over the most critical point.

If you take a standard RAID 1 or 5 the case it's in is mostly irrelevant....not so with Drobo or LacIe for that matter. If you need a recovery for the most part you are toast and if Drobo goes out of business....for sure toast.
All those ads cost big time....and don't think for a minute ad money and good reviews don't go hand in hand..



> The philosophy behind a Drobo, is that you can also buy the storage you need now and grow your storage when you need to. (And also when drives are more cheaper as well)


and you can do that easily with a $100 dock or almost any JBOD case with removable drives and non-proprietary set up.


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## ehMax (Feb 17, 2000)

MacDoc said:


> A proprietary computer has nothing to do with a proprietary case that is holding your data that exists no where else......that is a completely false analogy.
> 
> What Hayesk says covers the reason we do not sell or recommend Drobo and you gloss over the most critical point.
> 
> ...


I think that's doing customer's a disservice. 

What's a customer going to do with all that Mac software when Apple goes out of business? Stupid argument. You shouldn't buy a Mac, because the hardware is all proprietary... I can go to any PC shop and pick up a cheap power supply... blah blah. *EXACT* same argument. Don't buy an iMac, because if the screen goes, you're out of luck. *EXACT* same stupid argument. It's the same argument made over and over why not to buy a Mac. We Mac users know better, that it's not a detriment. *Sometimes, proprietary means better.* 

Drobo is an amazing device that customer's love and enjoy. They are extremely financially sound company. You can not do what Drobo does for $100, not even close, and implying so is extremely misleading.

Think the argument that Drobo advertises a lot and that's why they get all the good reviews, editor's choice awards and tremendous sales is a pretty weak sauce argument. I guess since Apple advertises so much, that's why Walt Mossberg gives good reviews. 

Even if the ridiculous dooms-day warning of an extremely succesful, highly regarded company going out of business comes true, are you telling me, you never sold Syquest Drives, or Iomega Drives to your customers ever? When those companies went out of business, or stopped making those products, where all those customers stranded for life and never got their data transferred over to another format? When IDE drives where discontinued, did the computing world stop? What happens when SATA is replaced by SSD?

It's a silly argument no matter how you look at it. There have been millions of Drobo's sold. They are an extremely financially sound company. Doesn't matter what solution anyone goes with, if a mechanism goes, it needs to be replaced and replacing a Drobo is a piece of cake. Drobo will courier out a replacement overnight. Drobo dealers stock them, have demo units. 

Haven't even got into other benefits of Drobo like *Drobo Apps*, that Drobo FS has native Time Machine support to setup just a portion of drive for Time Machine purposes.


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## ehMax (Feb 17, 2000)

hayesk said:


> Most reviewers like it because they think it's neat. Most reviews do NOT say it's cheaper than simply using multiple external drives.


Yeah... all the reviews like it just cause its neat. 

Using multiple external drives... Not a very convenient, or an affordable way to have data redundancy. 

The other argument I often hear about why people shouldn't buy Macs, is because if you do this and that, and buy this and do that and install this and setup that, you can have a computer that's sort of the same for cheaper. 

What many people fail to recognize about the Drobo as well, is how *EXTREMELY* easy it is to use. You don't have to be a RAID nerd to figure it out. RAID nerds like to puff out their chest, start quoting all different RAID levels and acronyms and specs. 

With a Drobo, you just plug it in, and it works beautifully. Just like my Mac.

You can keep it working and you don't have to worry about what happens when your RAID nerd goes out of business or gets hit by a bus.


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## ehMax (Feb 17, 2000)

Just another tidbit on the "going out of business front":

*Data Robotics lands HP as distributor*



> The storage company, which has solid momentum in the small- to mid-sized business market, said that *HP’s Small Business Direct*, its SMB online store will begin carrying Drobo. *Coupled with Dell and Apple* and other resellers, Data Robotics has solidified its sales channel for the Drobo line.


Sold by HP, Dell and Apple. Sounds like a lightweight company that might go out of business tomorrow!


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## corey111 (Jul 9, 2007)

I've been using drobos for years. Never had any issues.
Started with original drobo, and have since moved up to faster ones. I use my old one for long term storage and the new one for video editing.
A drive did fail once, the dashboard thing warned me, so i just popped in a new drive and the next morning it was good to go. 
I love it, it's raid for dummies.


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## Lee_Roy (Sep 1, 2007)

I use a Drobo (firewire 800) at work.

It's connected to a PowerMac G5 with Leopard Server. All our design files are on it and shared through a Sharepoint. Twice a day it backs up via time machine to and internal 2TB SATA drive in the PowerMac. Then every night it backs up to the network backup our IT department handles.

Had one drive failure and just popped in a new one and it fixed itself. We only use about 20% on the capacity (4 x 1TB drives) so far.

Overall I'm pretty pleased with the Drobo. Our IT department is now testing out Drobo FS and iSCSI models for cheap easy to use network backups.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

> What's a customer going to do with all that Mac software when Apple goes out of business? Stupid argument. You shouldn't buy a Mac, because the hardware is all proprietary... I can go to any PC shop and pick up a cheap power supply... blah blah. EXACT same argument. Don't buy an iMac, because if the screen goes, you're out of luck. EXACT same stupid argument. It's the same argument made over and over why not to buy a Mac. We Mac users know better, that it's not a detriment. Sometimes, proprietary means better.


Not when it comes to your data.
You still do not understand the issue by your statements.

That Drobo has US Robotics as a partner gives it some heft

Note this particular set up

*Twice a day it backs up via time machine to and internal 2TB SATA drive in the PowerMac. Then every night it backs up to the network backup our IT department handles.*

Which is the correct approach ....is that being pitched to the "set and forget" consumer....nope.

It might be PART of a backup strategy.....to rely on it alone is foolish and I'm hardly alone in that assessment...this is a good summary of our concern...



> *Will your Drobo keep your data safe? Here’s how Drobo keeps you from knowing…*
> 
> I’m now on my second data loss situation in three months: my Drobo time machine drive has given up the ghost with a corrupted directory and no longer mounts in the Finder. Very frustrating, especially since I have too much media to be able to use any traditional online backup utility like Mozy or Carbonite. Fortunately, I have backups.. But why should I need them? None of my physical drives have been damaged, so shouldn’t my data be there? Drobo has shifted risk away from hardware failures. *But the compromise is you now have to trust its complex drive operating system to manage your data. Its an unquantifiable risk that works to Drobo’s advantage.*


Anatomy of modern user-base containment: Drobo Inc. | SpringAmp

and from the same clip and there are examples...



> Drobo has shifted your risk away from single hard drive failures, but increase the risk of failure due to defects in its own software-based firmware. But how risky is it? No one knows, and thats good for Drobo.
> 
> *Strategies that Drobo uses to contain its user-base from this kind of information:*
> 
> ...


It may well be PART of a solution for some.....not for my clients.

I suggest that the hype is a disservice covering the risk of loss with a false sense of security and we are talking a type of data here that people are entrusting - photos in particular.
Drobos are not inexpensive either...which of course makes it attractive to margin hungry third parties.

all that glitters....


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## ehMax (Feb 17, 2000)

MacDoc said:


> Not when it comes to your data.
> You still do not understand the issue by your statements.
> 
> That Drobo has US Robotics as a partner gives it some heft
> ...


That was one of the most incoherent grouping of random sentences, links and points I have ever read on ehMac. 

Let me try to make sense of it and reply:

*- Drobo has US Roboticis as a partner to give it some heft. *
 I'll just leave that totally irrelevant point where it is. 

*- The correct approach to backing up... Set and forget approach. *
Drobo doesn't do this, and you're probably not familiar with their product line or the utilities they produce. Drobo FS comes with *Drobo Sync*, for offsite data replication. They have a link on the main page dedicated to a section on informing customers on *best practices of data backup*. 

*As for the blog link and quotes you used from this URL. *
At the list of "Strategies that Drobo uses to contain its user-base from this kind of information"
:lmao:

- They maintain an Apple like image. :lmao:
- Their online forum only has happy customers and not may angry customers. You have to own the product to post on it. :lmao:
- They've secretly setup their webpages with keywords to drown out other pages. :lmao: :lmao:
- Their tech support have secret sripts to confuse customers and point the problems away :lmao: :lmao:

Your counter argument is complete and utter weak sauce. I could look at any product you sold, and find a link of someone on the internet having a problem with it. 

In real world, the Drobo has been very reliable for the majority of clients and has worked really, really well and clients are delighted with the product. I'm not naive enough to suggest its for everyone, but also not so foolish as to totally rule it out.


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## Guest (Dec 24, 2010)

Beware, long post ahead.

I need to chime in on this one. I have had personal and very ummm ... "up close" experience with not one, but two Drobo Pro units. I will say this, when they work they seem to work ok for a lot of people, but ... when they go south, forget about it.

I start my saga by purchasing a Drobo Pro unit (8 drives), FW800, USB2 + iSCSI (ethernet). I plug the unit into my dual G5 Xserve, after installing their software as per instructions, all the latest updates to everything required, etc. and as soon as I plug it in ... Instant kernel panic. This is over any of the 3 available interfaces, whether the unit is plugged in at bootup or hot plugged later, nothing helps, always an instant kernel panic as soon as the drobo software launches. This leads me to another point that makes me crazy and that, at least at this time, the Drobo unit was not available until the Drobo software launches. This is a particular problem especially with OSX server as there is no such thing as auto login with the server software. If your machine has to reboot for any reason the attached drobo won't work at all until you login as an administrator account and let the software launch, and then you have to leave that user logged in. In a "pro" environment that's not acceptable, but I digress.

After a couple of days of troubleshooting, a full restore followed by a totally clean install of my whole server and ... instant kernel panics. Drobo support on the phone couldn't help me and deferred me to "the" Drobo Pro "guy" who is, not surprisingly insanely busy as will contact me as soon as possible. Several more phone calls and a week later I get some third hand information on "things to try" to solve my problem (restore, clean install, updates, yadda yadda that I've already been through). I do it all again, same results always. Doesn't matter what interface I use, what local ethernet port, USB port or FW port, kernel panic. The last suggestion is "try it on a different computer" so ok, fair enough. Install all the software on a Mac Mini with the same results. Third time is the charm, it works on my mac pro ok, at least as far as mounting.

To make a long story short here where the end results:
- 6 weeks duration total
- 2 Drobo Pro units (they shipped me a replacement which had the exact same issues).
- 2 completely different set of 8 brand new SATA drives (I elected to try this as I needed another set of drives anyway)
- worked on 1/3 machines
- fastest I ever got speed wise from any port, running all 8 drives with 2 protected drives was 40MB/second over iSCSI. 20MB over FW and 8-10MB/sec over USB.
- as for the kernel panics it "happens on some hardware" -- never a resolution
- it has log files that you can download, that are encrypted so you can't see anything in it
- during this time it "crapped the bed" (each unit) at least one time and I lost 100% of data (luckily I still had other convenient copies as I never trusted the devices, and rightly so), the second unit did it twice. 12TB of data went bye-bye in the blink of an eye.

They finally, to their credit, refunded me the money, through the retailer (which was painful for them as well I'm sure). Because it took so long it was already past the standard 30 day return timeframe which meant a bunch more paperwork, longer turn-around times, etc. Drobo had to get pretty much the whole supply chain involved in the credit for it.

There's a lot more I could say about the two units I went through over those 12 weeks but I don't think more needs to be said aside from the fact that it was not an isolated case nor was it restricted to that exact hardware. One very important thing, is that unless they have changed their policies, you cannot even get in to their support forum until you provide a valid serial number. it's all "under wraps" so to speak and they were heavily policing the "community" forums and doing massive amounts of deleting of content.

Now I need to address a few things mentioned previously:

Their multi sized disk support, while very handy, is a massive hack. The encrypted logs ... well I understand why they keep them encrypted. It's not hard to figure out exactly what they are doing (slicing and dicing up and/or concatenating partitions into similarly sized virtual containers). It's also not hard to realize what kind of state their "firmware" is in by looking at said logs. As someone who has spent some time developing *nix based OSes ... uggg. Glad it's them not me. To be completely honest, aside from a nice case design this is the only thing Drobo has going for it (the multiple drive sizes).

As for references to the price and that you couldn't do it for other drives at that price did you look at the FreeNAS link? it's just that, free. it does require some dedicated hardware and some geek level. If you're not a geek or at least interested in doing that stuff then sure. If you know what you're doing in the least bit there are lots of options available.

Long long long story super short: If it works for you without headaches, great. If it goes south kiss you data goodbye, if it keeps going south you're outta luck. It sucked pretty hard for me.

P.S. For fun try replacing a drive in an 8-bay drobo with any amount of data on it and time the rebuild -- I can guarantee you it won't be minutes or even hours, think days. If you really want to have fun swap all the drives one at a time (this is something they asked me to try!). For me, with 3.5 TB of data on it it took over 11 days. The _entire_ time there was zero redundancy on the data. At the end? After it finished rebuilding the final replacement it lost all of my data within the hour LOL. Irrecoverably. Not a drive, the drobo lost all the data. Third time it did that across 2 hardware units.

I use dedicated RAID5 now, go figure.


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## ehMax (Feb 17, 2000)

I could fill in long horror stories about multiple problems a customer had with a Mac or a problem a customer had with an iPad 3G with Apple and Rogers and multiple bad SIM cards. 

My current iMac has had a broken optical drive, the screen was just replaced, and now my optical drive has failed again. 

With any tech gadget, there can be problems. 

I've seen hundreds of Drobo's sold, and the percentage of problems is extremely low. 

I could fill in hundreds of pages of problems reported by other people with various RAID systems. 

A few stories of a bad Drobo experience does not mean its a bad product any more that a few stories of bad Macs make them a bad product.


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## Guest (Dec 24, 2010)

I agree that it's not the end of the world that sometimes they suck and the numbers support it's a small number, I just want people to be aware of what they are getting into. For me I'd say if you just want to be able to dump your old drives into something and get the space out of them sure, it's a good choice. If you rely on your data and want a large and reliable setup ... think carefully and have good backups 

Also it's worth noting that they are still super super heavy handed on their forums. The reason you don't hear all the horror stories is that a) you need a serial number to even get in there, and b) they et nuked from their forums constantly. At least when I dealt with them as well they never had any sort of errata posted or "known issues" of any kind. Their motto was deny, deny, deny, it's a perfect world. Between that and 2 weeks of a wait before getting contact from tech support, on a pro level piece of hardware, and then only because I knew someone who phoned someone (I kid you not).

Pro and consumer are distinct markets and have distinct needs. Unless they've seriously pulled up their socks in that dept they are really not a wise choice for the pro market IMHO.


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## ehMax (Feb 17, 2000)

Somewhere out there, there's an IT Manager who bought a Mac, had problems with it, and is telling people often that Mac's shouldn't be used for business. 

And here's Ben King, an accomplished editor and producer and a Moderator posting on the LA Final Cut Pro users group site, an official review of Drobo Pro:



> What the DroboPro lacks in data-rate it more than makes up for in simplicity, redundancy and scalability and could be used as a shared storage for one to three Macs on lower data-rate projects but most definitely as an effective backup solution for a faster RAID array and/or generic file storage of past projects as I will be doing.
> 
> I can only assume future versions will get faster and offer more connectivity but until then its still a great purchase if you buy it for the right reasons.
> 
> As far as I know there is nothing else on the market that does what the Drobos do and they do it so easily and with style that I am wondering; is the Apple ethos of user friendliness finally filtering to other manufacturers?


Data Robotics is a young company, and they are only getting better. And besides, what other RAID can you buy cool Gelaskins for. 










I digress


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## Guest (Dec 24, 2010)

Ok Mr Mayor, please take this with a grain of salt, but please put down the Drobo cheerleader pom poms and do a little bit of research to back up YOUR claims that they are wonderful and never break down and are the answer to all your data needs and that just because one person has a nightmare we should all ignore the fact that they can and will lose your data just because you can get GelaSkins for them. My issues were nor isolated and I've personally gone on service calls multiple times for users with dead Drobo's. I fully understand that you sell them and have a vested interest in them looking good .. I imagine the margins on them are pretty decent given their price.

If you want to really do the research do a little digging to find out what happened to the original "community" drobo users forum and what happened to all of the content from it. I'll give you a hint, the DRI legal department was involved and the information (and all the horror stories that weren't mine) that lived in there got erased when they "moved the community" forums in house because they were getting too much bad press from it.

Did you know that I personally ran a drobo community user forum for over a year that was outside of the jurisdiction of their heavy handed admins? I've since pulled the plug on it for two reasons; I no longer have any kind of interest in Drobos and a hard fact was that it was tough to get any kind of content that was NOT a horror story about their products, support department, buggy software, etc.

Lastly, I find it rather belittling that you, the Mayor of the establishment, are quite happy to just come in and blow off real world information that other experienced users post because "someone out there may have had a problem with it once". If you've been lucky enough not to have to deal with a client and explain to them that even through they thought their data was safe because they could lose a drive that it doesn't help because the units don't perform as they should and everything went bye bye even though none of their drives failed ...


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## Guest (Dec 24, 2010)

Also just to point out that review that Ben King wrote was when he used a Drobo pro on loaner for a couple of days .. that's sure to give you a great comprehensive review of it! Also look even closer at the red text addendum at the bottom of that article and then the name listed underneath it  He was pretty shocked about the whole ordeal I went through with my 2 units (he actually did email me a few months later to follow up to see what happened too).


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

> Somewhere out there, there's an IT Manager who bought a Mac, had problems with it, and is telling people often that Mac's shouldn't be used for business


You still appear not to get it.....
Your attempted parallel is a completely false analogy.

Did you even read the analysis of why there is risk due to the manner Drobo deals with your *DATA!!!*

This has nothing to do with OS and everything to do with people handing over sometimes irreplaceable data to a company's product that deals with it in a a proprietary manner that makes it very difficult to retrieve if there is a failure.

If I use a raid 1 set up that risk is simply not there. The DATA can be recovered intact on any platform. A JPEG is a JPEG regardless. If that JPEG is scrambled in anyway it's gone. ( see below )

In addition to the proprietary - asking multiple makes, sizes, speeds and firmware of drives to all get along safely is hilariously in appropriate.
Put one spare drive laying around into the mix with some weak or bad blocks and you risk the entire structure.

WHEN it works.....it might be a very cool set up...ask yourself how often the power blinks off, accidental shut downs etc...



> justin says: 14 December 2009 at 11:38 +0000
> What was undeniably un-awesome for me and drobo (current model), was a single power failure a few days ago, and subsequent mac osx / hfs / firewire / reboot presented the mac with a totally corrupted volume.
> All the data was gone. What is more, all the data the drobo utilities said was “used” (not free) and “safe” prior to the power failure, is now marked “unused” and “free”.
> The chunks of the files are there on the raw device but the file system is completely mangled. No issue with the physical drives, they are all green green green*. Short files can be recovered using photorec to a random file name and extension. Longer ones are fragmented.*
> *So a simple power cut caused a spectacular loss of 1TB of data. *Just like that. And since the way the data is laid out on the drives is secret, there is no way to determine what happened or to recover the file system with all its meta data (file names, directories, time stamps, etc).


and the same user continues...



> See the “Estimated time for achievement” ?
> 383 hours. So almost 2 weeks.
> just to create a huge collection of 90% rubbish files and part-file fragments.
> *I feel like I entrusted a digital archive to a drobo threshing machine.*
> *And note: disks all green. No alerts from drobo after it came up after the power outage. Everything, according to the drobo control panel, is just perfect.*


The real issue is the false sense of security and people load these things up and when it goes south it is a very serious loss of DATA....their DATA that they entrusted to a proprietary system.
Drobo - Guessing how BeyondRAID creates space and volumes ? My Etherealmind

Now ANY drive can have boot problems after a shutdown....
Standard RAID easily repaired recovered by any number of non-proprietary methods.

This is a decent assessment of the issue...



> Anonymous says: 9 July 2010 at 05:05 +0000
> 
> 
> The data scrambling that happens after some crashes with Drobo isn’t surprising when you consider what the Drobo has to be do in order to work the way it does. Drobo has to know which blocks are used and which are free as far as the filesystem (NTFS, HFS+, etc.) is concerned. There’s no other way it could make a 2TB filesystem available if you only have 2 250GB drives in it. The operating system and Drobo must agree about what blocks are free AT ALL TIMES or chaos will ensue.
> ...


It's not cheap
It's not as safe for your data as Drobo wants you to believe
The underlying proprietary handling of data adds unneeded risk all to be able to stick a couple of spare discs hanging around.....

Even and Odd/Even cloned dock set up is cheaper and safer...and you can use any drives and sizes you want......separately.

and then of course there are the "unqualified drives".....like the Seagate 1.5 TB,

as I said....not for my clients....


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## hayesk (Mar 5, 2000)

ehMax said:


> Yeah... all the reviews like it just cause its neat.


I don't understand why you are being so defensive. You are ignoring real world stories, and are starting to act as if people are personally attacking you instead of the Drobo.


> Using multiple external drives... Not a very convenient, or an affordable way to have data redundancy.


It's cheaper than a Drobo. And I fail to see how it's so inconvenient to plug in an external drive or two.


> What many people fail to recognize about the Drobo as well, is how *EXTREMELY* easy it is to use. You don't have to be a RAID nerd to figure it out. RAID nerds like to puff out their chest, start quoting all different RAID levels and acronyms and specs.
> 
> With a Drobo, you just plug it in, and it works beautifully. Just like my Mac.


Kind of like any external drive. Need redundancy, plug in a second one. Faster and cheaper than a Drobo.


> You can keep it working and you don't have to worry about what happens when your RAID nerd goes out of business or gets hit by a bus.


Don't need a RAID either. I'm not a fan of RAID either.


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## John Clay (Jun 25, 2006)

Just to add to what MacDoc and mguertin are saying, I've seen many, many defective Drobo units (nearly as many as LaCie, but fewer than Elephant Storage - though their RAID drives are horribly unreliable as well), that either worked sporadically, didn't work at all, or consistently failed drives in particular slots.

I wouldn't recommend them to anyone, let alone a customer/client. When I was in sales, I moved people away from Drobo to save them hours of grief, phone calls, and return trips to the store.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

> Using multiple external drives... Not a very convenient, or an affordable way to have data redundancy.
> 
> 
> > It's cheaper than a Drobo. And I fail to see how it's so inconvenient to plug in an external drive or two
> ...


Even cheaper using a Dock - a pair of 2TB and a Quad interface dock go for $399 the lot and the dock can use 2.5s or 3.5s...fast and easy....oh yeah ....cheap too.

Once chief advantage of a dock is one or more of the drives can be off premises.

Even rip of artists like some of the eMedical vertical are recommending ( aka demanding ) a dock set up with rotating 5 drives ( my son's doctor picked up one today - about $475 for the whole set - drives and dock. )

With 3 TB single drives out...standard, easy to deal with/recover RAID 1 is very cost effective....and no proprietary data slicing and dicing. 

With MTBF levels getting very long on modern drives ( let alone enterprise level drives ) the risk starts to be in the case - not the drive.
Drobo practical invites people to use old drives past their service life....it's one thing to use a single older drive in a dock for some storage, quite another to throw it willy nilly into a propriety *Beyond RAID* melange.....whatever that means....and then ask a consumer to "trust us".

Apple too treads dangerously with over reliance on TimeMachine solutions, one reason we recommend a bootable clone PLUS TM.
Free well constructed app like CCC really do an excellent service to the Mac community and drives are so cheap now compared to data loss that complexity should be avoided - not encouraged.

There is perhaps NOTHING more straight forward than a clone of your drive.


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## ehMax (Feb 17, 2000)

:lmao: At people spending their time dissing Drobo on Christmas Eve. :lmao:

Merry Christmas RAID nerds!


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## pcronin (Feb 20, 2005)

I guess the debate here is for locally attached storage solutions as no one has mentioned having a server with hard/software raid and either appleshare/smb/iscsi mounts. 

Here's hoping the new year brings me the time and money to acquire a few different things to test out


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## Guest (Dec 25, 2010)

ehMax said:


> :lmao: At people spending their time dissing Drobo on Christmas Eve. :lmao:
> 
> Merry Christmas RAID nerds!


 

Merry Christmas to you to Mr Mayor


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## Guest (Dec 25, 2010)

pcronin said:


> I guess the debate here is for locally attached storage solutions as no one has mentioned having a server with hard/software raid and either appleshare/smb/iscsi mounts.
> 
> Here's hoping the new year brings me the time and money to acquire a few different things to test out


That's exactly my setup now (hardware raid).


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

ach Saturnalia is done a few days back with a nice moon occultation thrown in
......back to work ..and the 25th is almost over in Australia.

•••



> I guess the debate here is for locally attached storage solutions as no one has mentioned having a server with hard/software raid and either appleshare/smb/iscsi mounts.
> 
> Here's hoping the new year brings me the time and money to acquire a few different things to test out
> __________________
> .


The Pros understand the limits of Drobo - it's being pitched as a safe no brainer do everything to the less informed/aware...that's where the issue arises in my view. The consumer is too trusting in that pitch by Drobo
A Drobo AND something else as part of a backup strategy might be for some.

Not my clients.


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## ehMax (Feb 17, 2000)

MacDoc said:


> it's being pitched as a safe no brainer do everything to the less informed/aware...that's where the issue arises in my view. The consumer is too trusting in that pitch by Drobo


*Nope.* 

*Drobo Best Practices: Crafting a Digital Asset Management Strategy*

*We strongly urge you to follow these guidelines to safeguard your data.*

Drobo storage products provide fully automated data protection for safely storing digital content. In a normal state your data is inherently protected against drive failure, making Drobo ideal for use as “primary” storage. *Although Drobo provides redundancy, it is only part of a reliable digital asset management strategy.* There are additional risk factors beyond a single drive failure that all customers should aware of. Additional risk factors include but are not limited to accidental file deletion, multiple simultaneous drive failures, file system corruption, viruses, theft, power surges, fire, floods, software and hardware malfunction, earthquakes and of course curious toddlers. Following best practices and carefully analyzing your digital asset management strategy for risk will help to maximize the safety of your data.

Keeping data truly safe involves the dedication of time, effort and money. Drobo storage products significantly reduce all three of these by offering unprecedented simplicity and self-management. Yet, every customer’s needs are different. *There is no one size fits all strategy.* However, the pay off for maintaining data integrity and uptime is easily quantifiable. How much would you pay to recover your data if it was suddenly lost or inaccessible?

Digital asset management strategies will vary with your needs. For instance, a medium-sized business with 5,000 employees will have vastly different requirement from a home office with two employees. The strategies outlined in this document should be considered a starting point for Data Robotics customers. (There a number of very detailed publications on the topic of digital asset management that are widely available for further reference.)

Of course you need the right hardware and software too. Think of Drobo, DroboShare and DroboPro as the cornerstone(s) of your bridge to digital asset management peace of mind, *although perhaps not the entire bridge*. Building a bridge takes time and the right tool set. Very few bridges are identical, as unique situations call for unique solutions.

*Read the rest....*

I like to use a variety of tools in my Mac arsenal and the bottom line is, Drobo is an excellent tool for many. It's also the way storage is going. Its still a relatively new product, and it keeps getting better and better. 

All the arguments against is are so exactly similar to arguments I've heard about the Mac over the years. You can take any of the previous arguments and insert Mac instead of Drobo and its the same thing I heard made about Mac, especially in the early years with DOS guys getting all mad and making fun of the Mac for its price, for being proprietary, not for real computer users. 

Anyways, in about 5 years, we'll be laughing about the heated discussion over a SATA drive technology solution. I'm also sure by then, there will be awesome Drobo SSD solutions and it will be even more common place and competitors to Drobo with similar style ease of use solutions. 

Exactly like flat panel displays are the norm when others just a few years ago were clinging to CRT's for dear life. :lmao:


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## Guest (Dec 25, 2010)

Yes of course, because everyone reads the fine print on websites before they buy their Drobo's. They do however course read the reviews that people write after using it for a day or two and they of course watch all the videos that show them playing a movie clip and physically removing a hard drive (which always somehow avoid showing putting the drive back in and waiting for a day or two for it to rebuild while your data is at risk). They also read the posts from people like Mr Mayor here with their Drobo cheerleader pom pom's on who say that they are wonderful and never fail.

You did a pretty good job of ignoring everyone else Mr Mayor, who all presented valid points about their failure rates.

For anyone considering buying a Drobo: Do the research. If you want a good sampling of what other's (besides ehMax) think about them go read the customer reviews at amazon:

Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: Data Robotics Drobo 4-Bay USB 2.0/FireWire 800 SATA Storage Array DR04DD10

(81) 5 star reviews
(41) 1 star reviews

It seems that the numbers support everyone else's arguments that they are not perfect. Read some of the 1 star reviews and you'll see that failures have happened to a lot more than one or two people. Not a lot of reviews between 1 and 5 stars either. Love or hate it seems. Even a lot of the 5 star reviews complain about the slow speed of them.

Or better yet, the units that I had the experience with, the DroboPro:
Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: Data Robotics DroboPro - Hard drive array - 8 bays ( SATA-300 ) - FireWire 800, Hi-Speed USB, iSCSI (external) - rack-mountable - 3U

(3) 5 star reviews
(5) 1 star reviews


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

> It's also the way storage is going


. 
No it's not - no one in their right mind goes with a proprietary drive set up.
If anything there is a move off raid to multiple individual drives as best practice and it's very inexpensive.
If a dock fails you replace the dock or shove your drive in a machine....your data is never sliced or diced even in a standard RAID manner let alone a proprietary algorithm.
RAID 1 redundancy is the other route - very straight forward - write the same data to two drives each have MTBF of over a million hours.
Either drive can be read with the data intact.



> Its still a relatively new product, and it keeps getting better and better.


even more reason to avoid it when proven technologies that are far safer and less money are available.



> All the arguments against is are so exactly similar to arguments I've heard about the Mac over the years. You can take any of the previous arguments and insert Mac instead of Drobo and its the same thing I heard made about Mac, especially in the early years with DOS guys getting all mad and making fun of the Mac for its price, for being proprietary, not for real computer users.


You keep trotting out this entirely false analogy.
ALL OSes are proprietary with the possible exception of Linux and has nothing to do with the DATA which are a different set of issues.

Would you buy a camera where you could only ever view your photos by putting the camera into the chain ???
Nothing else could read them?

You'd be laughed out of the industry. Drobo is playing on the long established methodology of RAID which has been proven time and time again and then introducing proprietary Beyond RAID crap.

It's ludicrous and I feel sorry for those that have entrusted their data to this very flawed approach.

This is not an OS choice issue, it's about taking a persons valuable date files and putting them at risk and yet promising safe storage.

In fact - they are safer in the original drive.....and even more so in a clone of that original drive....and even more so in two clones of that original drive one of which is off premises. That chain is easily understood, easily undertaken and not expensive.

That chain of safety is never broken by altering the data files and then requiring restoration through a "secret" process.
Yet that is what Drobo does....

all for the sake of sticking a few old drives in an expensive case and watching pretty lights....


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## psycosis (Mar 29, 2005)

Given all that, if the Drobo is no good, what is a better alternative?

Here are my requirements:

- Single pool of space. I don't want to have to search though a bunch of folders/drives/shares for data. I just want everything in one spot

- Redundancy. If a drive fails, don't want to lose data. 

- Support multiple drive sizes. I want to be able to use the drives I have and don't want to buy all new drives when it is time to get more space.

These are features that I wanted and lead me to the Drobo. What else can do the above with out the same risks?


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## Max (Sep 26, 2002)

But drives get old and break down, become unreliable. There's good reasons for replacing them from time to time.

Glad I've not gone the Drobo route.


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## John Clay (Jun 25, 2006)

psycosis said:


> Given all that, if the Drobo is no good, what is a better alternative?
> 
> Here are my requirements:
> 
> ...


Look at something like this, with hardware RAID:
TowerRAID TR5UTP - 5 Bay USB 3.0 / eSATA Hardware RAID 5 Tower w/ 6G PCIe 2.0 HBA (Silver)

I have an 8 bay from them that I use for JBOD, and it's great.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

> these are features that I wanted and lead me to the Drobo. What else can do the above with out the same risks?


Nothing and for good reason. Others would not subject buyers to the risks of mixing old drives. Old drives are fine on their own in a dock for casual redundancy.
Want protection and a bigger pool, buy the proper kind with matched drives and RAID 1 0+1 RAID 4 or 5. Even then single drive, offline, out of premises for critical data is an additional safeguard.

Had a client doing it very well until a lightning strike ( yes he had surge protectors ) fried back up AND main drives.
Only sheer luck we revived his internal array with a spare logic board - that kind of event is rare but fire, flood, and theft can all be risks and we are ALL accumulating sometimes irreplaceable data.- especially photos.

What's truly horrifying is people ARE pooling ALL their data on a single device, and being encouraged to do so
......you have no idea of the length of time a few TB of data requires to recover.
Multiple smaller drives segment risk.
Hell brand new 1 TB are $75 or less - why would you ever want to put data at risk on a old drive?

Simple redundancy up to 3 TB in a single pool....Guardian Maximus. $600 or so.
6-9 TB in a single pool RAID 5 hardware $1k to $1.5k. and there are others.

You want to put your data on old drives for setting on a shelf as a just in case....get a dock.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Max


> But drives get old and break down, become unreliable. There's good reasons for replacing them from time to time.


 :clap:

Exactly - 2 years out all drives should be surface scanned and it's not a half bad idea to replace them - especially laptops.
Older drives can be used as single use redundant back up - a dock can take both 2.5 and 3.5.

The new drives will give a welcome speed bump in many cases. 3 years out for sure drives should be careful scanned and replacement high on the list.


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## Guest (Dec 26, 2010)

In the last 12 months I have a pile of 6 drives that have all failed on me. 4x500G and 2x1.5TB drives. All still under warranty in fact (which reminds me I have to RMA them soon LOL!)


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

2x1.5TB << Seagates by any chance.......shudderXX)


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## Guest (Dec 26, 2010)

Nope. 4x500's were seagates. 1.5's were WD's.


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## pcronin (Feb 20, 2005)

psycosis said:


> Given all that, if the Drobo is no good, what is a better alternative?
> 
> Here are my requirements:
> 
> ...


greyhole - Project Hosting on Google Code

*BUT* you will have to have a Linux server machine running and it might take some tinkering.. It will give you your requirements. 
Single pool. check (you see server/share(s) on the network)
Redundancy. check (multiple copies on multiple drives)
Multiple drive sizes. check 

Caveats include that drives get eaten up quicker depending on how many copies you want, no dedicated hardware to improve performance, and it isn't a RAID in any sense. 

one major advantage over RAID or Drobo however, is the ability to mount the drive on any machine and see the files directly in case something is going wrong. 

On the subject of the Linux server for the house, I would suggest Amahi Home Server - Making Home Networking Simple which seems to have a good following. One of my xmas break projects is to set up an Amahi machine to test out.


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## screature (May 14, 2007)

mguertin said:


> In the last 12 months I have a pile of 6 drives that have all failed on me. 4x500G and 2x1.5TB drives. All still under warranty in fact (which reminds me I have to RMA them soon LOL!)


Holy crap you are having a lot of bad luck. I have about 23 drives of varying age and size mostly Seagates and WDs (a couple of of old Maxtor's and a couple of new Hitachi's in my NAS, many of them 3+ year's old. Granted some of them see only occasional use as they are for back up but 14 of them are in constant use and I haven't had a drive failure (knock on wood) in over 3 years... all in the luck of the draw I guess.


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## Guest (Dec 26, 2010)

screature said:


> Holy crap you are having a lot of bad luck. I have about 23 drives of varying age and size mostly Seagates and WDs (a couple of of old Maxtor's and a couple of new Hitachi's in my NAS, many of them 3+ year's old. Granted some of them see only occasional use as they are for back up but 14 of them are in constant use and I haven't had a drive failure (knock on wood in over 3 years)... all in the luck of the draw I guess.


Yep I have had this year when it comes to hard drives, but it goes to show that they are not always a reliable means of storing your data and to have good backups


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## jamesB (Jan 28, 2007)

I also, Have been fortunate I suppose.
Since my very first HD purchase, back sometime in the 70's (20MB micro-science), yes that is mega-byte, right till today, I've never had a drive failure yet.
Had a Iomega raid enclosure fail, but the drives were fine once pulled from the enclosure, still in use today in a docking system.

PS: that 20 mega-byte drive cost me $1100, my how somethings have changed.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Often what happens is someone who uses a lot of drives runs into a bad batch - like the Seagate 1.5s where we had one client with a RAID 5 AND a RAID 1 lose it all even tho no one drive was bad.

Fortunately he had the material elsewhere tho it took some gathering.....that was a shocker.

Seagate simply produced a bad bit of gear....
Now to their credit we've had a few clients send in and they've recovered at no charge so at least they will stand behind their product.

Because we see so many drives and RAIDs through here, do recoveries and see long faces on the couch we get a different view than the individual consumer.

If you have a collection of drives then buying Drive Genius 3 - our go to toolkit - is very appropriate.
Scan the oldest first and after 2 years all drives in use should be scanned for bad blocks.
Also all users should have Smart Reporter in their menu bar and pro users have visible temperature monitors per bay ( I think that's a freebie ) as a drive running hot in a RAID with others may be an early warning.

SMART will sometimes pick up a bad drive before anything appears to be wrong.

Scanning can pick up bad blocks long before they get destructive to your data.

••••••

In case you were wondering about cost.

Any number of proper Hardware RAID 5 enclosures with 8 TB of Pro level drives is under $1000 and with 3 year warranty and FW 800, 400, USB 2.0 and eSATA. and that includes the drives

Drobo only offers a 1 year warranty and starts at $799 with no drives for FW 800/esata/USB version.


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## hayesk (Mar 5, 2000)

psycosis said:


> Given all that, if the Drobo is no good, what is a better alternative?
> 
> Here are my requirements:
> 
> ...


Your last feature is really only the one thing that Drobo provides in a manner more convenient than other methods - if you have existing drives. Personally, I would use two external drives with mirroring. Cheaper and faster than a Drobo. Then use the savings to upgrade both drives when you want to increase capacity next time, rather than do it piecemeal by swapping out the smallest drive every once in a while.


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## ehMax (Feb 17, 2000)

I said Drobo is the way of the future. You said...



MacDoc said:


> .
> No it's not


Sure Macdoc... I'm still waiting for "SEDs to arrive and blow the LCDs out of the water."  :lmao:

I'll revisit this thread in a few years too. :heybaby:

Drobo doesn't have their best practices for data storage as fine print, it's a prominent main page on their site. I suppose anyone using Drobo as their only main source of data and who has a failure or a batch of bad drives would be upset and write a bad review. 

Data robotics also don't position the Drobo as something to grab old drives you have lying around and use, they say buy new drives and the storage you need now, and as drives get older, they can easily be replaced and upgraded to newer, larger storage as you need it. Drobo is not positioned to be a device to grab old drives. Please show me where Data Robotics is suggesting that. (Hear's a hint, you won't find it)

By the way, if you have a Canon, the lenses won't work on a Nikon. My, what if Canon goes out of business? The data on a Drobo isn't proprietary, just the way it handles the data and its proprietary hardware. Just like a Mac uses not only a proprietary OS as you suggest, but also extremely proprietary hardware. A Mac handles data with both software and hardware, in a proprietary way, and that get's poo-pood on often. People also tout less expensive, more standardized solutions and minimize the ease of use of a Mac. 

Anyways, you won't see me talking negatively about various forms of data backup. Any discussion about backing up your data is a good one, and the page on *Drobo's site about best practices* is a good one regardless with what solution you go with. Drobo is just one new form of backing up, and others have recommended very good solutions. 

I *WILL* revisit this page in a few years.


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## screature (May 14, 2007)

ehMax said:


> I said Drobo is the way of the future. You said...


Specifically in what way do you see the Drobo as "the way of future"? What do you mean by this?


----------



## MazterCBlazter (Sep 13, 2008)

.


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## MannyP Design (Jun 8, 2000)

If you only looked at the negative threads on the Apple support page you'd stay away from Macs as well.


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## MazterCBlazter (Sep 13, 2008)

.


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## screature (May 14, 2007)

MannyP Design said:


> If you only looked at the negative threads on the Apple support page you'd stay away from Macs as well.


Do you really think this is the way mg operates? (Why is  necessary). I suspect that your post was directed at MCB but it doesn't matter as mg (and MacDoc) have been ehMax's most vociferous debaters in this matter. MCB merely posted that after his own research he was in agreement with the anti-Drobo side... why would you assume that he only did what you suggested or that in any way your post was relevant to what he posted? 

mg is probably one of the most knowledgeable experts in this field of anyone here. I highly doubt that he fits into the the example you provide. Yet his reasons for why he doesn't see the Drobo as a viable alternative for Pro backup use are quite specifically articulated.

Granted in part they are anecdotal, but they are also technical. In like manner so are MacDoc's arguments. Thus far I have not seen the same level of defence of the Drobo as a backup platform from ehMax. That is why I asked him the question I did. If he feels so strongly about the Drobo (and he may be right for all I know as I don't own one and I don't know the specific technology involved in the Drobo and why it is superior to RAID... at least in is opinion) I just want to know "specifically" why he feels this way beyond "lots of them have been sold without complaint", as the same could be said about any number of products for any number of things that are currently on the market... but what makes it superior, i.e. (in his words) "the way of the future"?


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## MannyP Design (Jun 8, 2000)

MazterCBlazter said:


> What a stupid comment.
> 
> I've seen them and that has not influenced me to move away from Apple products. I did look at both the positive and negative reports on the Drobo.


I would reconsider throwing the word stupid, if I were you. :heybaby:


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## ehMax (Feb 17, 2000)

screature said:


> Specifically in what way do you see the Drobo as "the way of future"? What do you mean by this?


The same way Apple made it so you didn't have to be a DOS nerd to use a computer, Drobo makes it so you don't have to be a RAID nerd to have redundant storage. 

There will be other companies offering similar managed data redundancy and Drobo will continue to grow and popularity and their offering will become more attractive and solid. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple offered something similar in the future. 

Speaking of stupid comments though, there has never been a single instance of Drobo paying someone to do a positive review and that's quite the libel statement. 

MannyP's statement is 100% spot on. If I had a dollar for every-time someone was worried about buying a Mac because their research led them to a discussion post on Apple's discussion forums.


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## screature (May 14, 2007)

ehMax said:


> The same way Apple made it so you didn't have to be a DOS nerd to use a computer, Drobo makes it so you don't have to be a RAID nerd to have redundant storage.
> 
> There will be other companies offering similar managed data redundancy and Drobo will continue to grow and popularity and their offering will become more attractive and solid. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple offered something similar in the future.
> 
> ...


What?  How is this in anyway relevant to my post to you? 

I understand this is your opinion... I was asking for more from a technical perspective as to why you see the Drobo as being superior to RAID. Your "prediction" of other companies "going this route" is well... so much conjecture... you may be right, but unless you present some "hard" reasons, it is just I*Y*HO. RAID and data redundancy as it is known is primarily for Pro/Enterprise applications. Cripes it is hard enough to get people to backup using TM or some other single drive external alternative. 

Personally IMHO I don't see the Drobo alternative/concept, (i.e. other companies) replacing RAID at a Pro level any time soon... if ever.


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## Guest (Dec 27, 2010)

ehMax said:


> By the way, if you have a Canon, the lenses won't work on a Nikon. My, what if Canon goes out of business? The data on a Drobo isn't proprietary, just the way it handles the data and its proprietary hardware. Just like a Mac uses not only a proprietary OS as you suggest, but also extremely proprietary hardware. A Mac handles data with both software and hardware, in a proprietary way, and that get's poo-pood on often. People also tout less expensive, more standardized solutions and minimize the ease of use of a Mac.
> <snip>
> 
> I *WILL* revisit this page in a few years.


Re: Canon v.s Nikon: You can get a $25 adapter that will allow you to use the one lenses on the other hardware. Simple as that.

Drobo most certainly IS a proprietary setup. If you take a drive out of a drobo and try and attach it to a machine to do data recovery (or anything else for that matter) you do not even see a partition at all. Nothing. There's no kind of adapter or software or anything else for that matter that will change that. Even with other standard hardware RAID devices they use standard partition types (i.e. RAID slice) and you can sometimes use other tools to recover data -- depending on what raid level you were using and what this particular drive held on it at the time. With the drobo there is zero chance -- nothing, not even at the block level, will see any kind of data on the drive without putting it in a drobo unit. But when you do put it in a drobo unit unless it's a full and perfectly working drive set your options to even potentially recover any data is zero without sending it out to professionals who recover at the platter level.

My final word on this. Typical users do NOT need RAID. It's risky, mostly proprietary and does not replace backups -- which Drobo positions itself for but never come right out and say. They just say "your data is safe" over and over and over again. Every single promo video, howto, whatever. You data is NOT safe. It's a bit safer in the event of a single drive failure.

Mr Mayor: Do you own a Drobo? Have you ever owned a Drobo? If so how long did you use it for and how many drive swaps did you do? Have you had to support Drobo users (specifically when they fail)? I do believe sir, and I say this in the nicest way possible, that you are talking out of your a$$. Many others of us in this thread are not. We have real world experience with this hardware and do not recommend it. Does it look good on paper? Sure it looks awesome. So good that I spent thousands of dollars on a setup with it, much to my regret.

Looking forward to you revisiting this page in a few years. We'll go looking at the amazon reviews on them again (provided they still exist at that point in the game). 

P.S. Did you look at the amazon reviews I posted links to? I posted links to both the good AND the bad reviews just to show that I'm not trying to be biased here... or did you just ignore them like you have most of the other qualifying info we've all posted?


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## MannyP Design (Jun 8, 2000)

screature said:


> Do you really think this is the way mg operates? (Why is  necessary). I suspect that your post was directed at MCB but it doesn't matter as mg (and MacDoc) have been ehMax's most vociferous debaters in this matter. MCB merely posted that after his own research he was in agreement with the anti-Drobo side... why would you assume that he only did what you suggested or that in any way your post was relevant to what he posted?
> 
> mg is probably one of the most knowledgeable experts in this field of anyone here. I highly doubt that he fits into the the example you provide. Yet his reasons for why he doesn't see the Drobo as a viable alternative for Pro backup use are quite specifically articulated.
> 
> Granted in part they are anecdotal, but they are also technical. In like manner so are MacDoc's arguments. Thus far I have not seen the same level of defence of the Drobo as a backup platform from ehMax. That is why I asked him the question I did. If he feels so strongly about the Drobo (and he may be right for all I know as I don't own one and I don't know the specific technology involved in the Drobo and why it is superior to RAID... at least in is opinion) I just want to know "specifically" why he feels this way beyond "lots of them have been sold without complaint", as the same could be said about any number of products for any number of things that are currently on the market... but what makes it superior, i.e. (in his words) "the way of the future"?


Dude, why do you need to take a stance that *I'm* attacking MG, MacDoc or anybody for that matter. Holy buckets, man. Chill out. You take ONE SENTENCE and parse a three paragraph rebuttal.

Seriously.


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## screature (May 14, 2007)

MannyP Design said:


> Dude, why do you need to take a stance that *I'm* attacking MG, MacDoc or anybody for that matter. Holy buckets, man. Chill out. You take ONE SENTENCE and parse a three paragraph rebuttal.
> 
> Seriously.


Dude...

I was never a fan of incision. ... the way of current communications (part of the reason why I think Twitter blows...).... I don't believe that a "one liner" leads to understanding one another...

Seriously.

Sorry if I took you the wrong way, but your  seemed dismissive... the reason why I say this is 'cause when I use  I mean it in a dismissive manner.... kinda like saying "you got to be kidding me"... if you mean it in another way, let me know how you mean it because that is how I took it within the context of the brevity of your post.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

> The same way Apple made it so you didn't have to be a DOS nerd to use a computer, Drobo makes it so you don't have to be a RAID nerd to have redundant storage.


You insist on conflating an OS with data scrambling

Just how difficult do you think it is to plug a FW cable into a Guardian array

You are defending an indefensible exposure to risk of a clients data disguised as protecting it.
and not cheap either
counselling use of old drives to store data is a proprietary raid is wrong period.


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## screature (May 14, 2007)

mguertin said:


> ..My final word on this. Typical users do NOT need RAID...


Agreed... but for those with the money to go RAID 0 for a boot drive (which is not much these days) RAID 0 can provide a nice bang for the buck in terms of performance... even for the non-Pro user (if he/she understands the inherent risk and takes the necessary precautions).

And that is the reason why even though I have 23+ drives I don't run anything other than RAID 0 and do manual backups religiously. I don't even trust TM....


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## screature (May 14, 2007)

.


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## pcronin (Feb 20, 2005)

screature said:


> .


I think that was the most eloquent point made in this whole debate


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## screature (May 14, 2007)

pcronin said:


> I think that was the most eloquent point made in this whole debate


It is a pretty point isn't it... like so many other points and yet so different in it's own way... a unique point one might say... 

Or maybe it is just like the rest but with better makeup....


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

> And that is the reason why even though I have 23+ drives I don't run anything other than RAID 0 and do manual backups religiously. I don't even trust TM....


nor do I.

I counsel clients on a combo of a clone and TM. - 

Clone allows them to maintain their drives and will a fast set up the clone time is very short with CCC.

The clone drive should be booted off of once in a while and the main drive checked and defragged for optimal performance.

Cloning lets you try out new OSes etc before you jump in with both feet.


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## ehMax (Feb 17, 2000)

Well, I will say this thread has influenced my opinion.   

I'd be interested in exploring a little more, and fleshing out in exact detail, an affordable backup workflow for optimum data backup security and redundancy for the average consumer. Something that's doesn't involve too much work for the consumer to remember and involves data backup offsite.


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## screature (May 14, 2007)

MacDoc said:


> nor do I.
> 
> I counsel clients on a combo of a clone and TM. -
> 
> ...


Same here clone and test the clone on occasion to make sure you are still good to go in the case of disaster.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Off site you need two drives either by way of dock or two physical drives.
The issues are somewhat separate.
A redundant storage can be used for primary file use carries less risk than a single drive in the machine.

If these devices are being used purely as back up - that is different than using them say as a media vault which is NOT being backed up separately.

We have this issue with clients continually that they put primary data on an external and do not back up that external.

Even Pros sometimes have the mistaken opinion that external devices are "safer" than internal.

My major issue with Drobo is that there is this suggestion of it being a rock solid vault that you can entrust your primary data to without risk. It's not, period.
The closest to that would be a proper hardware RAID 5 or a RAID 1 with standard interface and two drives writing simultaneous data streams.
Even then a off premises or offline clone is still a good idea. RAID 5 will be costly, RAID 1 not so much.

2TB ( 4 tb total drive space ) can come in around $400-500

For the consumer a combo of a TimeMachine dedicated drive orTime Capsule dedicated drive and a separate cloned drive is pretty sold and cost effective.

As low as $200-250 for the *pair* of drives.

Least costly is a single external split into a Clone partition and a TimeMachine partition - even the clone portion can be automated.


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## kps (May 4, 2003)

Since I have all you RAID experts gathered in one place...

I've recently setup a hardware RAID box using OWC's Mercury Elite FW/USB enclosure in a RAID 0 config with 2x500Gb Hitachi drives.

Currently it's being used as redundant backup of my MBP via CarbonCopy Cloner. Regular MBP backup is via TimeMachine and a 500Gb 2.5" USB external.

This enclosure is RAID only, in other words, I can't use it as independent volumes.

I'm thinking of using it to transfer data from several old externals which I have. Some are over 10 years old and I fear that they may fail. A lot of the old data is also stored on CDs and DVDs, but that too is even more susceptible to failure.

So the question is, should I use the 1TB raid for this or a stand alone large capacity external to dump the data from these smaller old drives?


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## DavidH (Jan 4, 2009)

*I Agree*



MacDoc said:


> Off site you need two drives either by way of dock or two physical drives.
> The issues are somewhat separate.
> A redundant storage can be used for primary file use carries less risk than a single drive in the machine.
> 
> ...


MacDoc,
I agree with your approach to the "consumer combo" (dedicated Time Machine Drive and dedicated Clone Drive). I would only add that another additional "cloned drive" for off site would seal the deal.

Nice Summary
Thats is the closest to a "comprehensive" backup strategy that I can think of and that is also exactly what I do.

DavidH


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## screature (May 14, 2007)

kps said:


> Since I have all you RAID experts gathered in one place...
> 
> I've recently setup a hardware RAID box using OWC's Mercury Elite FW/USB enclosure in a RAID 0 config with 2x500Gb Hitachi drives.
> 
> ...


Well, I would say don't use the Mercury Elite as the only back up. If you put the data there, back it up to newer drives as well maybe using an HD dock and then keep those drives off site. That way you are protected from such catastrophes as fire, theft, etc.


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## Guest (Dec 28, 2010)

kps said:


> Since I have all you RAID experts gathered in one place...
> 
> I've recently setup a hardware RAID box using OWC's Mercury Elite FW/USB enclosure in a RAID 0 config with 2x500Gb Hitachi drives.
> 
> ...


Well if you want to get wild and crazy I believe if you open up the case there's a jumper you can change to have it show up as a pair of independent drives instead of a raid 

Personally I'd stick with using it as a redundant backup as opposed to longer term storage. With multiple drives your failure rate is doubled. If it's only your redundant backup and it fails it's not so bad ... also from my experience a lot of the OWC mercury series aren't super reliable. I've personally had 2 of them die and seen many others die (power supply issues).


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## kps (May 4, 2003)

mguertin said:


> Well if you want to get wild and crazy I believe if you open up the case there's a jumper you can change to have it show up as a pair of independent drives instead of a raid
> 
> Personally I'd stick with using it as a redundant backup as opposed to longer term storage. With multiple drives your failure rate is doubled. If it's only your redundant backup and it fails it's not so bad ... also from my experience a lot of the OWC mercury series aren't super reliable. I've personally had 2 of them die and seen many others die (power supply issues).


No jumper in this one...been there...tried that. New jumperless model, called OWC and got emailed some firmware script to set the RAID configs. This model just doesn't support independent volumes. Mia culpa when ordering it.

Let me clarify...

I still intend to keep the old drives, but for redundancy sake also clone them to the RAID. My question was if I should clone them to this particular RAID or just get a "normal" enclosure with a large drive.


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## screature (May 14, 2007)

kps said:


> No jumper in this one...been there...tried that. New jumperless model, called OWC and got emailed some firmware script to set the RAID configs. This model just doesn't support independent volumes. Mia culpa when ordering it.
> 
> Let me clarify...
> 
> I still intend to keep the old drives, but for redundancy sake also clone them to the RAID. My question was if I should clone them to this particular RAID or just get a "normal" enclosure with a large drive.


You can clone them to the RAID but bear in mind you are doubling the chances of a drive failure and thus rendering your data unusable. If the original drives are old I wouldn't consider them a backup because you never now when they could fail. So they are more like the originals and with the inherent risk of RAID 0, I wouldn't think of this as a long term backup... only a "working" backup and thus the reason why I suggested an "archival" backup as well via another drive or two using an HD dock and moving it off location. 

This way you have the original data on the old drives (which cost you nothing at this point) and the data stored to the Mercury Elite which at this point is no extra expense. For absolute peace of mind I am suggesting getting an HD dock (which at current pricing could cost you as little as $40 or so and a drive or two depending on how much data is on the old drives... which I suspect if you are thinking of backing them up on the Mercury Elite must be significantly less than 1TB of data and you can get 1TB drives for around $100 bucks these days. So for around $140 dollars you can have the original disks plus 2 new backups... one working and one for archive in addition to the originals.

In my view this is a small price to pay for data that you really care about. Just IMHO.


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## kps (May 4, 2003)

Yeah, I think you and mguertin are right about not using the RAID box for this.

Any recommendation for a docking solution? Make, model, that type of thing?


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Many external manufacturers got nailed with failing power supplies about 18 months back.

Current units are far more reliable.

Still with big singles available - it's either that or Raid 1 plus some 4x2tb multicases


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## kps (May 4, 2003)

Considered some of the big multicases, but they're pricy and some are bare to the point where you need to get your own interface controllers...which is something I would prefer anyway since most don't come with firewire.

Lookslike I'll just go with a single 2TB drive and an enclosure to clone everything off of the old IDE drives...better than nothing.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Why not get a dock - separate the drive for enclosure


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## kps (May 4, 2003)

well, I do have one of these if I want to keep things to a "bare" minimum.

Newer Technology Universal Drive Adapter -... (U2NV2SPATA) at OWC


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## screature (May 14, 2007)

kps said:


> well, I do have one of these if I want to keep things to a "bare" minimum.
> 
> Newer Technology Universal Drive Adapter -... (U2NV2SPATA) at OWC


Yes it will do the trick, as you say at a bare minimum... 

a more stable dock from the point of view of not having to worry about accidentally snagging a cable and sending your drive flying is one of these:










the quad interface one is a little expensive at $69. Their USB only model is only $29.

However there are other alternatives as well such as the Vantec:










This one is $35 but is only eSATA and USB, they have a quad connection model as well for $59

Personally I have two Thermaltakes like this:










It is eSATA and USB and costs $50.


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## kps (May 4, 2003)

Thanks for the rundown on the docks, Screatch.

I'm thinking that if I'm going to just store a bare drive around the house, I might as well just use the Uni adapter since I already have it.


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## screature (May 14, 2007)

kps said:


> Thanks for the rundown on the docks, Screatch.
> 
> I'm thinking that if I'm going to just store a bare drive around the house, I might as well just use the Uni adapter since I already have it.


Sounds like an economical plan.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Yep - I keep a couple bare drives as well tucked away. I've been asking Larry at OWC to send us more drives in the clamshell plastic carriers as more and more clients are using them as convenient and low cost archiving.
The clamshells make it easy to take a drive home from work or store elsewhere. A bare drive with it's heads parked can take up to 60Gs

Our work bench docks take a lot of abuse, we had the cheaper USB units before but they were not as good as the Quad interface units we use now.

I'm also curious for the Drobo fans here......just how DO you back up the Drobo?


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## kps (May 4, 2003)

Just as a followup...stopped at Tiger Direct @ Sherway today and picked up a Thermaltake BlacX dualy and a 1TB Seagate. Came to one simple conclusion...'tis all good, but USB sucks big time when transferring huge amounts of data. LOL


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## screature (May 14, 2007)

kps said:


> Just as a followup...stopped at Tiger Direct @ Sherway today and picked up a Thermaltake BlacX dualy and a 1TB Seagate. Came to one simple conclusion...'tis all good, but USB sucks big time when transferring huge amounts of data. LOL


Yup it takes time... but when it is for backup it isn't that bad. Once you have done your first big backup it gets easier/faster thereafter...


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## KC4 (Feb 2, 2009)

Hmmm.. I've been seeking a bigger, better back-up system for the home computers. Right now I have a 1TB TM plus an extra 750GB HD in the Mac Pro covering itself and 2 portables. 

Mostly it's my files on the Mac Pro that require the backup...and that's mainly images, music and some video. 

Both pro photo shops I regularly loiter around are very enthusiastic about the Drobo. For a chronically absent minded person, the set-it-and-forget it feature through TM is so alluring. Consequently, I have been running full steam ahead toward a new Drobo system. It was just a matter of time....

Then I stumbled over Soymac's post, tripped over hayesk's, recovered a bit through ehMax's points but then with the further enlightenment provided by MacDoc and mguertin et al, I've completely wiped out head over heels into the ditch. Ouch. 

I had better slow down and take a good look at my next steps. Thanks for the heads up guys.


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## gmark2000 (Jun 4, 2003)

My Drobo is a as proprietary as my Time Machine back-up. 

It's just one on my back-up means and it's fine.


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## Irie Guy (Dec 2, 2003)

Just finished building my 2TB Mirrored RAID server featuring 2 x 2TB SAMSUNG Spinpoint Drives matched with a Mediasonic HFR2-S3B PRORAID Box 4 Bay Raid Enclosure with USB 2.0, eSATA & FireWire 400/800. It only cost $340.00 to put together. I will be running this via FW400 to the 20" iMac and this will free up my WD FW400 1TB drive for the Mini backup, I will also once a month mirror my RAID contents to my additional 2TB USB 2.0 HD for redundancy...


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