Anyone Use a Drobo

ianbarber said:
i have 4 external USB drives which I use as backups with a backup program but I liked the idea of having 4 drives in a single box which is hot swappable and the way in which it spreads the data across all drives and also the way in which Windows shows it as a single volume
Click to expand...

fair enough but personally i think the drobo is overpriced for what if offers..

id have a shop around with other devices from netgear, synology etc, theyll all offer the same sort of kit with more features (NAS support etc) and any RAID box will give you disk redundacy.

you also say youre looking to use it for your backups, how are you planning to configure those?
 
The drobo looks very nice and does a good job, but in my opinion, its very over priced for a caddy + some funky software. I would prefer spending less money on a solution from netgear/qnap etc
 
I had a Drobo and the best way I could describe it is flaky - it never lost any data, but occasionaly would lose connection, fail to start first time after firmware updates, sometimes would drop a volume which would only come back after a power recycle. I never quite trusted it.

I have a Netgear ReadyNAS now and it's worked flawlessly for the last year, a much better product IMHO. A bit more complicated to setup, but a much more professional bit of kit.
 
WeddingHack said:
I have a Netgear ReadyNAS now and it's worked flawlessly for the last year, a much better product IMHO. A bit more complicated to setup, but a much more professional bit of kit.
Click to expand...

I almost wish I had gone for a readynas rather than a stora- not that there is anythign wrong with a stora, just want some more power.
 
ianbarber said:
Thanks for the reply, do you have any regrets buying it and have you had any issues with it
Click to expand...

I have looked at a lot of the other options and whilst not cheap it allows good flexability in what hard drives you can use and the amount of them. I can load events (the Photos) onto it from any computer, upload to web, lab etc. and it has done all of these without issue as you would expect.

Mine was second hand but I know the history of why bought and why sold (all for the right reasons). Mine is the 4 drive bay model with the extra share base, if I was buying new I would probably have one of the newer higher bay capacity machines.

Might not be everybodys choice but so far so good and no issues.

Mike
 
I use a QNAP which is similar to the DROBO but when i looked and got mine it was significantly cheaper.

I am planning on setting up my Mac to sync to it but never got round to it. I have Time Machine running on the iMac and Carbonite making an offline copy of anything important....

Mac
 
ianbarber said:
I'm quite interested in the Drobo system for my backups and was wondering if anyone is using one or has tried one.

I would want to use it with Windows 7
Click to expand...

Drew Gardener has had some fairly serious issues with Data Robotics:

http://photography-thedarkart.blogspot.com/2010/09/end-of-my-tether-with-drobo-iscsi.html

Maybe the issues aren't so bad with Windows though :shrug:

neil_g said:
the readynas was a nice bit of kit but their support is utter tripe. they're not the fastest of boxes either, my synology that replaced it blows it out of the water.
Click to expand...

How much was that Neil? I've been tippy toe'ing around a NAS system but don't know too much about them.

I seem to be getting more enquiries for images when I'm out and about, it be great to have the info on my HD's accessible from the t'interweb.
 
Tyke Tiler said:
How much was that Neil? I've been tippy toe'ing around a NAS system but don't know too much about them.

I seem to be getting more enquiries for images when I'm out and about, it be great to have the info on my HD's accessible from the t'interweb.
Click to expand...

a fair bit.. i chopped in 2 readynas nv+ for it (sent one back for refund and another sold on ebay) so that covered most of the cost.. at the time i paid £537 for it, the same place is now selling for £591 unfortunately.

but like i say it blows my old readynas's/es/i (?!) out of the water, previously lightroom took a couple of seconds to render large previews etc even on a cabled gigabit and in large collections stalled on scrolling, but its plain sailing on the synology.
 
I use a Synology DS408+ (the older version of the DS410) and have done for a couple of years now. I'm halfway through adding bigger drives but its been faultless so far (apart from a drive failure which is not Synology's fault) so I'd recommend them

Paul
 
neil_g said:
a fair bit.. i chopped in 2 readynas nv+ for it (sent one back for refund and another sold on ebay) so that covered most of the cost.. at the time i paid £537 for it, the same place is now selling for £591 unfortunately.

but like i say it blows my old readynas's/es/i (?!) out of the water, previously lightroom took a couple of seconds to render large previews etc even on a cabled gigabit and in large collections stalled on scrolling, but its plain sailing on the synology.
Click to expand...

Cheers for the info mate, having a look at Synology stuff now...

Can you recommend a good seller?
 
Tyke Tiler said:
Cheers for the info mate, having a look at Synology stuff now...

Can you recommend a good seller?
Click to expand...

i got mine from www.redstore.com was the cheapest supplier i could find for the DS1010+ at the time (and still is according to google shopping), mind you its also the cheapest for the DX510 add-on unit for the DS1010+ at the moment too..

id never heard of them before but shipping was reasonably quick and didnt have any problem.
 
neil_g said:
i got mine from www.redstore.com was the cheapest supplier i could find for the DS1010+ at the time (and still is according to google shopping), mind you its also the cheapest for the DX510 add-on unit for the DS1010+ at the moment too..

id never heard of them before but shipping was reasonably quick and didnt have any problem.
Click to expand...

Your a champ :thumbs: Cheers Neil ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top