Anyone use Drobo?

digitalfailure

digitalfailure

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Does anyone have experience with the drobo storage system?

In recent months i've had a hard drive fail in a laptop and a usb external drive and due to my own stupidity of not backing up the back up I've lost a fair bit of info.....nothing critical but an annoyance all the same.

Whilst mooching around the interweb I came across the drobo system which looks to be ideal, my question is....is it really that easy?

Also, I run 2 imacs and a windows laptop, currently they all operate independently as I can't set up networks for toffee, so the have their own usb hdd's attached. I'd like to centralize the storage across the 2 imacs at the minimum if possible, any idea how thet would be done on the 4 bay drobo? Or would I need to go for the much more expensive fs version which has the network connection instead of firewire and usb?

I use a BT home hub 3 router which has network ports and a usb, although i've never had anything connected to the usb to know if it does anything :D
 
i have no experience of the drobo.

i do have experience of a similar device from synology however. multi hard drive device with raid spanning and network access etc. its a good idea if you want expandable data shared over several machines.

however please do not be fooled into raid or the drobo version of raid giving you a false sense of security. keep another copy of your data on another physical device(s) as you are still at risk of data corruption/deletion etc. i think one of the other mods (robertp?) had a drobo which failed, it might be worth asking them of their experiences.
 
The video of the drobo in operation suggests that 4 of the 4 drives can fail and not result in data loss. :thinking:
 
id say thats misleading :LOL:

it depends how much data you have, if you lose more hard drives than the remaining free space that data will have nowhere to go.

i still copy data to USB hard drives and blu-ray media to spread the risks. drobos/other nas devices are still eggs in one basket.
 
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Drobo is great. I have a 4 drive 5TB version.
 
Ive done the burn to dvd before and found that they've become unplayable before now, so not willing to start burning to disc again and blu ray discs are still too expensive to be an option. During an event I can easily fill a 16gb card and doing 50gb in a week isn't unknown.

Andrew, how have you got yours plugged in? Do you use it on a single machine?
 
blu-ray are not vunerable to environmental issues like dvd due to different dyes and construction. just picked up spindles of 10 BD-R for £8/ea.

either way keep your data on another device/media as well as a drobo/nas.
 
digitalfailure said:
Andrew, how have you got yours plugged in? Do you use it on a single machine?
Click to expand...

It's plugged in via USB - on a single machine to back up my pictures. To put it on a network requires extra hardware - and cost - not sure what exactly - but it can be done if you need that. 5TB disks - with around 3.5 available for storage - rest is reserved for emergencies so that you can swap out a dying drive without losing data. Very re-assuring really.
 
I'm looking at getting a HP proliant micro server £130 (after cashback) then 4 x 1tb or 2tb drives and running freenas on the system.

Much more powerfull and expandable for the money
 
Drobo looks nice but is very expensive compared to things like ReadyNAS. It is more advanced, but whether that is beneficial for home or small business users is debatable.
 
I want something that will sit in a corner and mind it's own business while keeping my data safe, the ability to open files and save files to it from any machine I'm using is a huge plus point in what ever system I go for.
 
Ive got an XC cube AV with two 500GB drives connected to the router. I can access all my files on it from any of my 5 computers in the house.
I also stream my music from it to the Xbox and surround sound :love:
Ive also opened up some of the other folders on my PC's to the network that arent on the server.

I have a backup set up in windows to automaticly back up my pictures to the NAS and also too another external drive and an internal drive
 
Friend has a usb drobo and loves it. Was planning to get one but wanted network version because of having mac and pcs. Another friend recommended netgear readynas, a lot cheap, brought one. I'm not very techie but found it pretty easy to set up and not had long but very happy so far. As said before you still need off-site back up, I do that with external drives.
 
Confused now, simple set up and fail safe is the order of the day
 
thing is brian nothing is fail safe hence i keep banging on about more than 1 copy on separate devices :) in the day job i look after a £100k+ bit of storage kit with 2 layers of disk redundancy but it still gets copied off to tape every night because the worst can and does happen. like i say data corruption, deletion, hardware failure..

if it was me id be looking at 4-5 bay synology devices (i know the synology brand and performance is very good, storing images on them over a 1gbit network for lightroom is fast, tried a couple of netgear readynas and promptly got returned and sold) and an equal amount capacity wise USB hard disks and copy the data from the NAS device. the more baskets for your eggs the better.
 
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I've got a 4-bay Drobo connected to my iMac via FireWire. I use it as primary storage. It's mirrored by a separate 4TB drive unit (contains 2 x 2TB drives in RAID 0) which is connected to the Drobo via FireWire.

The great thing about the Drobo is the ease of use and the mix 'n' match approach to hard drives. File sharing with other computers on my home network would be possible, but it would have to be done via the iMac or by the optional FS unit as you've already noted.

The Drobo suits my needs as a primary storage device. For NAS functionality, I'd probably look at the FS option or one of the more conventional NAS units.
 
I have the 4bay Gen 2 Drobo connected to my PC via firewire and have run this setup for close to 2 years i would say. In that time i have had 2 drive failures and also had to add/replace drives to increase storage space.

For ease of use it is absolutley brilliant. Working in IT as a profession, the last thing i want to do when i get home is play about with more config! It works exactly as it shows on the websites.

On the downside, it is expensive and data access, due to the connections, will always be slower than on local hard disk.

As someone else has mentioned though, don't just rely on the drobo. Not only do i have the drobo but i also perform regular backups to a pair of external USB drives of the most important data.

Instead of the NAS share device i have just shared the folder on my PC which is always turned on anyway.
 
I would be tempted to get one if they weren't so expensive.

I think I'm more likely to turn my old PC into an unRAID machine when it's time to upgrade.
 
I use a synology box attached to my router for general data storage/sharing for the house PCs with backups on two different USB HD drives & one USB flash drive.

:)
 
After looking at the Synology demo, I think it might be a little more in depth than I need.

I just want something that'll sit in the corner minding it's own business and carry out a back up when I tell it too rather than be constantly online iykwim

I'll use the existing external hdd's to back up the drobo drives if I get one :)
 
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