It's like RAID, except much simpler, for example you can use any ol' disks you have lying around, they don't all have to be identical.
It's a once a solution to capacity and worry about disk failure. If one of the disks fail, you just pop in a new one, there are no data lost.
[Update: Some of the comments to this post paints a less rosy picture.]
TidBITS recommends it. And not that that's important, but it's a very pretty box also, methinks. It comes in various flavors and sizes, but I think the basic four-slot model (named Drobo simply) is fine for most people.
Update: Ooh, one of the videos even has an MTV-like-perky cute girl presenting. Like really cute. She must be an actress/presenter rather than an employee. (Stay for the outtakes at the end.) ... Aha, she's called Cali Lewis. A missing link of cuteness and geekiness. (Funny thing, she seems totally different in the second video.)
Cali hosts an interesting vid podcast, Geekbrief. This is the HD version.
I would get the new Drobo FS model (5 drive bays). It can serve the files over the network to all puters in your LAN, including the 'pad.
ReplyDeleteI'd half decided on the S model.
ReplyDeleteBut the FS is wireless too?
If you don't need to access the files from more than one computer, then the S model is sufficient.
ReplyDeleteBut keep in mind that it's probably quite noisy. This is why a network based file server is better: you can physically locate it far away from your work station.
I'd half decided on the S model. But the FS is wireless too?
I don't think it has inbuilt wireless, but if you have a WiFi router on your LAN, you can, of course, access the Drobo through it.
I'd been looking at this, but decided against it, primarily because of the slow rate of data transfer, limited to USB2 and Firewire (no eSATA). I'm already using external drives via USB2 / Firewire, and the data transfer rates can be painful: bad enough moving a few large files, but really lethargic if trying to move around larger numbers of smaller individual files. And simulateous data transfer to AND from the drive? Forget about it ... try way less than 2MB/s!
ReplyDeleteI REALLY can't understand the lack of an eSATA port along with the rest, particularly as you can only use SATA drives with this (not IDE).
As an aside, I was chewing this over with my local guy, who REALLY knows his way around PC hardware: he's decided to stop selling them for the time being, as many of his customers were coming back with 3 specific complaints. 1/ recovery, in the event of a drive failing, was VERY slow (24 hours or more on a 1TB drive), and integrity of recovered dats was significantly less than 100%.
The time issue I can understand, though was surprised at; the data integrity (or lack of it) did not impress me at all.
Ever tried to manually sort through a TERABYTE of photographs and data, and decide precisely what is (and isn't) usable / corrupt ????
I have, unfortunately, and I don't recommend it unless as a cure for insomnia.
These problems could be explained away as endemic to this type of product, but his main reason for suspending sales was an apparent 'glitch' with several of the units he had sold, which would spontaneously re-boot / power cycle for no reason at all, even during read / write operations, which cannot be good.(I've actually experienced a disk crash caused by precisely this happening, which resulted in having to do a complete recovery of the drive, then re-format!)
To date, he has had no response to a direct approach (as a retailer) to the company, so in his words 'decided not to sell any more potential problems that I have no solution for' ... at nearly 300 quid each, just for the case!
Don't wish to rain on the parade, and I REALLY wish I had a better to solution, but so far, I'm still looking!
Just a minor aside that occurred to me too ... in the event that you have say 6 drives that you wish to swap in and out of the Drobo ... anyone have any thoughts about how to keep / store then so that they are physically safe outside of the Drobo unit?
ReplyDeleteA typical drive has circuit boards etc exposed ... just wondering if anyone has come across something like a protective case for an unmounted hard drive, preferably something that is stackable and looks half-decent, as well as giving protection against random knocks / bumps / dust etc?
Thanks, you guys have given me food for thought.
ReplyDeletePhilocalist:
ReplyDeleteThe S model and bigger does have eSATA.
The splintered files you experienced, were they from a Drobo system?
I own the base-model Drobo, which has FW800 and USB2. I use it primarily as media storage, so the FW800 speed is acceptable. If I were doing heavy photo editing or video editing, I'd go for the eSATA model due to the speed increase.
ReplyDeleteI have also not encountered any data problems. I think there were more issues with the first revision Drobos (which were just USB2), but that's anecdotal memory on my part.
My Drobo is quiet, which I appreciate. It's true that when you need to replace a drive, the process can be time consuming. I haven't had a drive fail (knock on wood), but pulling a 250 GB drive and replacing it with a 750 GB drive took hours to completely come up to speed (I think it was maybe 6 hours? It was a while ago).
But otherwise it just hums along on the desk beside my MacBook Pro. My actual data usage on it is still below 1 TB (like Eolake, I took advantage of starting with several drives that were no longer being used), so for now I occasionally duplicate the volume to a 1 TB external drive for a backup, now that 1 TB drives are so much more affordable than when I first got the Drobo.
Jeff
Thank you, Jeff.
ReplyDeleteI'm using just over 1.1TB, all told with work, music and lesbian videos. In my Mac Pro tower I have that on a 2TB disk, with Time Machine Backups on another 2TB disk. And I have a 1TB not in use, and another 2TB ditto. (That one by the way does not show up in Finder window sidebars, though it does when click the computer icon...)
So I'm thinking to leave the 2TB Time Machine disk in the machine, and put the other three in a Drobo S with eSATA, to use as my main disk.
"I'm using just over 1.1TB, all told with work, music and lesbian videos."
ReplyDeleteWell, what would life be without a few terabytes of lesbian video? ;-)
Not to mention my own little personal vice: japanese cartoon porn! 8-p~~~
No no, not porn. I have 300GBs of hairy-lipped, crew-cut lesbians discussing which are the worst aspects of men.
ReplyDeleteWow! You've got even better taste than I imagined!
ReplyDeleteOnly 300GBs?
ReplyDeleteYou disappoint me. Direly.
That's not even enough to serve as documentation for your work!
ReplyDeleteYou got something against lip hair, you unkempt hippie with a goatee?
ReplyDeleteSILLY YOU's!! :-D
ReplyDeletePhilocalist, I hear your (second-hand) complaint about how long it takes to recover a failed drive, but I think that's just a case of people having unreasonable expectations. I just bought two 1.5 TB drives. As always, I reformatted them, writing zeros to every sector, before I started copying data to them. Just zeroing out the drives took about 13 hours each. Based on progress on copying real data so far, it looks like it will take about 2 or 3 days to fill them up.
ReplyDeleteI think this is a case where people had experiences with smaller drives, and haven't scaled down their expectations. It is possible to get drives with higher transfer rates, just more expensive. And, for a given interface speed, you can get much bigger drives now, leading to it taking a lot longer to actually transfer that much data.
In short, I think that the people who complain about day-long recovery times haven't really thought through the issue, and they want magic instead of technology.
Pat
Actually Pat, I did say in my post:
ReplyDelete'The time issue I CAN understand, though was surprised at; the data integrity (or lack of it) did not impress me at all'
My surprise was at how long the date recovery actually took, based on the fact that this would in effect have been a matter (more or less) of writing existing data from one hard drive to another. I was expecting typical read / write speeds commonly seen on hard drives, rather than a rate which seems to have more in common with USB! On that basis, no way should it have taken 24 hours to fill a 1TB drive.
Eolake: the corrupted files were nothing to do with a Drobo unit specifically, just the result of power outages on a standard hard drive, external to the computer chassis, which is in effect what you have with a Drobo unit: I'm making the assumption that a power outage will possibly cause the same problems regardless of the drive location, i.e. Drobo or not. What actually happened was it caused a corruption of types within the MFT on the drive in question. This can happen to ANY hard drive if power outs during a read / write operation. After a LOT of searching and head scratching, the ONLY alternative I had (and this was confirmed by the manufacturer of the drive, a Seagate) was to attempt a data recovery (which took forever), reformat the hard drive, and then re-write the data back to the drive.
Was unaware of the eSATA option ... but don't like the price too much either ... I'm unsure what it offers at this price beyond convenience? I currently spread my stuff over several drives, duplicated where necessary as a precaution, either standard external drives or latterly direct onto big SATA drives that I can use in a dock via an eSata cable, much like a massive 1 or 2 TB floppy! :-)
Works for me, and I've the backups and duping semi-automated to happen at times when I should(!) be in bed so neither the time element involved, nor the drain on machine resources is detrimental to anything else.
The main headache for me with this sytem is highlighted by my second post: how to keep 'loose' drives clean and safe when not in use :-)
Incidentally, if you DO choose a USB option (and I'm guessing that perhaps the same will apply to firewire and eSATA) be very careful about the location of cables. I inadvertently removed a USB cable while doing a write operation (kicked it out accidentally!): it had the same effects as a power outage! ... USB cables and sockets are not the most secure of fits; I think eSATA has similar problems, and perhaps Firewire too? It surprises me that the design has not been improved upon in this respect; even connections within a machine case can come adrift quite easily, as things are.
Superglue, anyone? :-)