To Drobo or not to Drobo

scottV · February 8, 2010

I really like the idea and coolness factor of the drobo and would love to get one... except for all the horror stories I hear about the unit going bad and not being able to recover any data because everything is stored in their proprietary format. My current system involves an expanding number of external usb drives and it is starting to crowd my desk. Over the weekend one of my 500gig drives went bad, fortunately I use mozy and am in the process of restoring but now I have to buy another external drive to replace it, would be much easier to swap drives in and out of the drobo.
Listening to twip and other photo podcasts you hear nothing but rave reviews about them. Since I wont be relying on it for a real backup, maybe the potential for failure doesn't matter so much?

http://www.amazon.com/Data-Robotics-FireWire-Storage-DR04DD10/product-reviews/B001CZ9ZEE/ref=cm_cr_dp_hist_1?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&filterBy=addOneStar
http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1GGLS_enUS320US320&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=drobo+fail

My friend has a readyNas that is pretty cool, would love a simple 2 drive raid setup like that but I don't want nas... need either usb or firewire connection directly since I use the drives as my working copies in lightroom.

CatOne · February 9, 2010

If you don't mind matching the drive sizes, IMO the Promise DS4600 is a better deal. It uses RAID 5 and is MUCH faster (really, 3x-5x faster than the Drobo), and it's cheaper.

The only advantage the Drobo has is that you can use ghetto drives... pick a couple drives and slap them in, and later add more and continue to add space mish-mosh along the way. Other than that, a traditional RAID solution is better.

I say this, having used the Promise and the DS4600 both.

aquaticvideographer · February 9, 2010

Satisfied customer
I've had a Drobo v2 (the one with USB2 and FW800) for a year now and absolutely love it. I think it's probably a great backup solution, although I use mine for fault-tolerant primary storage. If you like Apple products, you'd probably be quite pleased with a Drobo. In my experience, it "just works", as advertised.

I'm not an expert on the subject matter but my understanding is that Drobo is more flexible than a "traditional" RAID setup-you don't have to have identically-spec'd drives to make it work. (Data Robotics is careful to not call their technology "RAID".) Also, you can add and remove drives as you please and the Drobo takes care of moving the data around and keeping everything fault-tolerant.

I have also heard/read some of the horror stories, but I can only speak for my own experience and that has been 110% satisfaction. I had a drive go bad on me in the Drobo-no prob, just popped it out and popped in a new one and everything just worked. I could access my data while it was rebuilding.

I will say that the Drobo v2 is not a super speed demon. For example, in my experience it's not suitable for basic video editing. As a backup drive, though, it's plenty fast. And if you need more speed, there is now the Drobo S, which people on the Drobo forums say is quite a bit faster than the previous Drobo v2. The Drobo S also has dual-disk fault-tolerance, meaning you can set it to recover from two drives failing at once (at the cost of some storage space). It does some other cool stuff that the v2 doesn't do, but I don't understand all of it.

I don't know about the price of the other solutions mentioned in this thread, but just now I priced a Drobo v2 at about $300 A/R ($40) from Amazon. Then you need to add drives, but you can buy the cheapest ones you can find and they will work a-OK. I just looked at NewEgg and saw some 1TB Hitachis for $75 A/R. If you bought 4 of those, you would have about 2.7TB of useable, fault-tolerant, expandable space on a Drobo v2 for about $600. For me, that's a reasonable price, and like I said, my experience with the product has been great.

Bottom line: I can wholeheartedly recommend Drobo to you.

Pupator · February 9, 2010

I thought about the Drobo but I couldn't get over the high cost. I'm using USB docking stations for SATA drives. I can pop drives in and out depending on the size I need and what kind of data I want to put on them. 2BrightSpark's SyncBack handles the software side of things.

I also use an online backup service (Mozy now - I wouldn't sign up with them again) for all my photo data and a different one (SugarSync - absolutely awesome) for my documents.

SamirD · March 16, 2010

I just found a listing on the drobo DR04DD10 at Mac mall for just at $300, about $30-$50 cheaper than google products has it listed for:
http://www.macmall.com/p/Data-Robotics-NAS-(Network-Attached-Storage)/product~dpno~7526070~pdp.eiafbia

r9jackson · March 19, 2010

aquaticvideographer wrote:

I've had a Drobo v2 (the one with USB2 and FW800) for a year now and absolutely love it. I think it's probably a great backup solution, although I use mine for fault-tolerant primary storage. If you like Apple products, you'd probably be quite pleased with a Drobo. In my experience, it "just works", as advertised.

I'm not an expert on the subject matter but my understanding is that Drobo is more flexible than a "traditional" RAID setup-you don't have to have identically-spec'd drives to make it work. (Data Robotics is careful to not call their technology "RAID".) Also, you can add and remove drives as you please and the Drobo takes care of moving the data around and keeping everything fault-tolerant.

I have also heard/read some of the horror stories, but I can only speak for my own experience and that has been 110% satisfaction. I had a drive go bad on me in the Drobo-no prob, just popped it out and popped in a new one and everything just worked. I could access my data while it was rebuilding.

I will say that the Drobo v2 is not a super speed demon. For example, in my experience it's not suitable for basic video editing. As a backup drive, though, it's plenty fast. And if you need more speed, there is now the Drobo S, which people on the Drobo forums say is quite a bit faster than the previous Drobo v2. The Drobo S also has dual-disk fault-tolerance, meaning you can set it to recover from two drives failing at once (at the cost of some storage space). It does some other cool stuff that the v2 doesn't do, but I don't understand all of it.

I don't know about the price of the other solutions mentioned in this thread, but just now I priced a Drobo v2 at about $300 A/R ($40) from Amazon. Then you need to add drives, but you can buy the cheapest ones you can find and they will work a-OK. I just looked at NewEgg and saw some 1TB Hitachis for $75 A/R. If you bought 4 of those, you would have about 2.7TB of useable, fault-tolerant, expandable space on a Drobo v2 for about $600. For me, that's a reasonable price, and like I said, my experience with the product has been great.

Bottom line: I can wholeheartedly recommend Drobo to you.

I agree here. We use the Drobos at work and I have one on order for home. It is perfect for backup and working storage. It is not appropriate for data intensive work like video editing. It does work fine for Photoshop and Lightroom editing.
I have seen the price coming down over the last several weeks and the 1TB and 1.5 TB drives are coming down too.

Art Scott · March 19, 2010

I like PUPATOR have switched from external (encased harddrives) to using USB docks for SATA drives.......I have a double and a single so I can do all of my 3 drive back ups at once and then file them away until needed again.......the internal drives take up way less rooom than an external......I might for the drobo has always been....it holds x amount of drives when they are full do you buy more drobos and add more drives.....that box is not exactly small (drobo=box).......and after talking to several computer repair people across the country I am getting ready for my nex wave of harddrives to be 2.5" form factor instead of 3.5"........even more space saving...............

aquaticvideographer · March 19, 2010

As previously mentioned, a Drobo is not strictly comparable to an external HD, because once you've got at least two drives in it, it is fault-tolerant, which a single external HD is not. That fault-tolerance is nice piece of mind if you've ever had an external fail, backup or not. The newer ones offer dual-disk fault tolerance, meaning that up to two drives could fail at once, and you wouldn't lose any data.

And, although it's true that a Drobo will eventually fill up, what's nice about it is that once it does, you can just swap out a few of the smallest drives, add larger ones, and it moves all of that data for you onto the newer drives, ad infinitum. Right now, the Drobo can handle a logical 16TB partition, but there's no limit to how much space you can put in one-you would just end up with multiple 16TB partitions. As drives get larger (and cheaper), you can just keep adding them and replacing the smaller drives. You wouldn't need to buy a new Drobo.

I have a 4-disk Drobo, and it's about the size of two external 3.5" HDs sitting in docks, which I guess isn't "small" but it's not huge either, especially since it replaced 5 external HDs. There are 4-, 5- and 8-disk configurations.

Pupator · March 20, 2010

I just received my Pogoplug and so far I'm very impressed. Setup was a breeze (plug it in, installed some software on the computers) and functionality seems really neat. Basically, it creates my own cloud. I hook my USB drives up to it and I can access them from any computer (through explorer if I've installed the software), web browser (with secure login), or mobile phone (apps for iPhone, webOS, and Android). I can use it to mirror folders between computers or drives and can easily share files with others (dropbox style, but the "box" is my own USB hard drive. It has 4 USB ports so I can hook up a lot of storage.

I don't work for the company, get any kick back from recommending them, and I've only been using it for 2 days but I've really impressed.

Bonus feature is that it is recognized (over the network) by my PS3 for media streaming. This means that I can download TV shows from my desktop straight to the attached drives and watch them on the TV. Awesome.

jdorseydesign · March 22, 2010

Pupator wrote:

I just received my Pogoplug and so far I'm very impressed. Setup was a breeze (plug it in, installed some software on the computers) and functionality seems really neat. Basically, it creates my own cloud. I hook my USB drives up to it and I can access them from any computer (through explorer if I've installed the software), web browser (with secure login), or mobile phone (apps for iPhone, webOS, and Android). I can use it to mirror folders between computers or drives and can easily share files with others (dropbox style, but the "box" is my own USB hard drive. It has 4 USB ports so I can hook up a lot of storage.

I don't work for the company, get any kick back from recommending them, and I've only been using it for 2 days but I've really impressed.

Bonus feature is that it is recognized (over the network) by my PS3 for media streaming. This means that I can download TV shows from my desktop straight to the attached drives and watch them on the TV. Awesome.

Hrm, I wonder, could you use a PogoPlug + external hard drive at say another location (parent's house, a friend's house) as an offsite backup?

Cameron · March 22, 2010

jdorseydesign wrote:

Hrm, I wonder, could you use a PogoPlug + external hard drive at say another location (parent's house, a friend's house) as an offsite backup?

Yes.

Pupator · March 22, 2010

CSwinton wrote:

Yes.

Yep. You'd just want to make sure that they have good internet speeds.

SamirD · March 23, 2010

Art Scott wrote:

I like PUPATOR have switched from external (encased harddrives) to using USB docks for SATA drives.......I have a double and a single so I can do all of my 3 drive back ups at once and then file them away until needed again.......the internal drives take up way less rooom than an external......

But the disadvantage of this is two-fold. One is that drives are used to operating in some sort of forced air cooling environment so you risk overheating, and two is that it only takes a drop from as little as an inch to damage a drive. Even a fairly light object denting the top cover can be disastrous. Not to say an external enclosure would save you from a one inch drop, but there is a lot more to absorb the shock, especially when shock mounted inside the enclosure (which I've noticed all the Seagate brand external drives seem to do).

SamirD · March 23, 2010

aquaticvideographer wrote:

As previously mentioned, a Drobo is not strictly comparable to an external HD, because once you've got at least two drives in it, it is fault-tolerant, which a single external HD is not. That fault-tolerance is nice piece of mind if you've ever had an external fail, backup or not. The newer ones offer dual-disk fault tolerance, meaning that up to two drives could fail at once, and you wouldn't lose any data.

And, although it's true that a Drobo will eventually fill up, what's nice about it is that once it does, you can just swap out a few of the smallest drives, add larger ones, and it moves all of that data for you onto the newer drives, ad infinitum. Right now, the Drobo can handle a logical 16TB partition, but there's no limit to how much space you can put in one-you would just end up with multiple 16TB partitions. As drives get larger (and cheaper), you can just keep adding them and replacing the smaller drives. You wouldn't need to buy a new Drobo.

I have a 4-disk Drobo, and it's about the size of two external 3.5" HDs sitting in docks, which I guess isn't "small" but it's not huge either, especially since it replaced 5 external HDs. There are 4-, 5- and 8-disk configurations.

Ahh, but on the subject of availability and fault-tolerance, there is one more point of failure that can cause data loss--the controller. If the controller inside the Drobo fails, your data is not only inaccessible, it's stuck in a proprietary format that only another identical Drobo controller can read. This means a lot when thinking about a storage solution that will last 5 years or more. If you can't get another controller, your data is practically lost. (It can be easily recovered by recovery specialists, but that costs too.)

SamirD · March 23, 2010

Pupator wrote:

I just received my Pogoplug and so far I'm very impressed.

Thank you for posting this. I heard about this device about a year ago, but thought it never made it to production. Researching...

aquaticvideographer · March 23, 2010

SamirD wrote:

Ahh, but on the subject of availability and fault-tolerance, there is one more point of failure that can cause data loss--the controller. If the controller inside the Drobo fails, your data is not only inaccessible, it's stuck in a proprietary format that only another identical Drobo controller can read. This means a lot when thinking about a storage solution that will last 5 years or more...

I see your point, but I'm comfortable with that risk--and, all of the data I keep on the Drobo is backed up via Time Machine as well as off site. In both cases, the backups are not on another Drobo. The Drobo is a primary storage solution for me, not a backup.

All storage solutions involve some risk, I suppose. As far as the longevity of the solution, in fact, I don't think I have ever relied on one storage solution for 5 whole years.

No solution is perfect, but the Drobo meets my needs very well.

SamirD · March 23, 2010

aquaticvideographer wrote:

I see your point, but I'm comfortable with that risk--and, all of the data I keep on the Drobo is backed up via Time Machine as well as off site. In both cases, the backups are not on another Drobo. The Drobo is a primary storage solution for me, not a backup.

All storage solutions involve some risk, I suppose. As far as the longevity of the solution, in fact, I don't think I have ever relied on one storage solution for 5 whole years.

No solution is perfect, but the Drobo meets my needs very well.

Glad it fits into your storage needs.

To Drobo or not to Drobo

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