Drobo

[robrose20]

Anyone have any experience with the new Drobo (FW800) on the Mac platform? I want to get a raid type device for data storage and was thinking of getting the Drobo.

Any suggestions for other devices? Thanks!

[Chundles]

Anyone have any experience with the new Drobo (FW800) on the Mac platform? I want to get a raid type device for data storage and was thinking of getting the Drobo.

Any suggestions for other devices? Thanks!

The TWiT guys all rave about it - that's enough for me. Don't have the $$$ at the moment though.

[brand]

I have the new FireWire 800 Drobo. Everything was going great until it crashed when I was adding a 750GB Seagate hard drive. I have to run DiscWarrior several times in order to get OS X to even recognize the partition. Not very comforting to say the least. Especially when talking about several terabytes of data.

[Cynicalone]

I have Drobo with 3 1TB Western Digital Drives so far it has worked perfectly.

I would avoid Seagate drives with them, seems a lot of people have problems with them, as mentioned above.

[frunty]

I bought the enclosure and added some Seagate drives, but the fan in the back of the case failed and one of the drives died (electronic burning smell, really hot). To be fair, customer support got a new one out ASAP, but I now use a 1TB G-Safe RAID enclosure. It's only got two drives, but it fits my needs nicely and gives peace of mind.

[themoonisdown09]

I was also thinking about getting a Drobo. The only con that I've heard about Drobo is if it breaks, the only way to get the data off all of your drives is to get another Drobo.

[robrose20]

Any other raid devices people would recommend? How about the buffalo enclosure. I have almost 1 TB of data that is not protected, I am afraid to turn the hard drive on! I want to get something soon but will soon outgrow the 1 TB limit.


Thanks!

[blodwyn]

An alternative you should consider, is buying an enclosure and configuring it as a vanilla JBOD, with each of the drives being accessible independently. You can then use the OS X Disk Utility to create and manage your mirror setup. I personally would rather trust OS X to handle my mirrored data than an indeterminate piece of RAID firmware in an enclosure.

[stukdog]

We're looking to store Drobos in our data center soon. Can any Drobo owners give me an idea of power requirements? Specifically, how many Amps to run a Drobo? (I tried writing the Drobo team but haven't heard back yet.

[detz]

I was sooo close to buying one but I've read too many bad things about them so I've decided to do the backup myself. I just purchased two 1TB drives and I'm going to mirror them...I loose one drive but it's nice to know that everything is backed up.

[whynot83706]

Anyone have any experience with the new Drobo (FW800) on the Mac platform? I want to get a raid type device for data storage and was thinking of getting the Drobo.

Any suggestions for other devices? Thanks!

I have had a new drobo for few months now and I have had no problems. Everything works like a charm.

[detz]

I wrote something up in another thread about Drobo but basically it's not worth the money for one if you do the math. If you're willing to spend atleast $700 for a 1TB drobo setup you could buy four 1TB drives and mirror them for cheaper and it would be safer. "Raid 1" Four 1TB drives and you have 2TB of usable storage for under the cost of the Drobo with no drives and in my opinion it's much safer.

[blodwyn]

I bought a Drobo several months ago and set it up with some disks, all seemed OK. Then I applied the latest firmware update, which bricked the whole thing, sending it into a continuous reboot loop. From looking at the Drobo forums this was a very common outcome from trying to update the firmware. The recommended action was to send the Drobo back for a replacement. I returned the unit the next day for a refund. I won't entrust my data to a product manufacturer who releases updates that are buggy and render the device unusable, even if they do have a good RMA policy. So I set up a RAIDZ ZFS array with 3 disks in a USB enclosure. It's pretty slow due to the USB interface, but it's been solid.

[DRI]

Anyone have any experience with the new Drobo (FW800) on the Mac platform? I want to get a raid type device for data storage and was thinking of getting the Drobo.

Any suggestions for other devices? Thanks!


I have used the Firewire 800 with my Mac Mini which uses 400 and my Mac Pro with 800. Works well and usinf the new firmware on the support page it was not a problem to set up with 4TB hard drive storage. I am using my Drobo unit with Final Cut for video production and firewire is nice for this. good performance

[bearcatrp]

Go here for some good options... http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL . I use super duper for my backups in my dual disk setup. Works pretty good.

[johnjay1776]

I bought a Drobo several months ago and set it up with some disks, all seemed OK. Then I applied the latest firmware update, which bricked the whole thing, sending it into a continuous reboot loop. From looking at the Drobo forums this was a very common outcome from trying to update the firmware. The recommended action was to send the Drobo back for a replacement. I returned the unit the next day for a refund. I won't entrust my data to a product manufacturer who releases updates that are buggy and render the device unusable, even if they do have a good RMA policy. So I set up a RAIDZ ZFS array with 3 disks in a USB enclosure. It's pretty slow due to the USB interface, but it's been solid.

Just to be clear here, you mean 3 disks each in a separate USB enclosure, right?

[krisrulz]

Dear friends, please help me..... When I connect my drobo to the drobo share, I open the network drive and it takes much time to open huge folders with pictures. It has just occupied 400 Gb / 1000 Gb. It works fine with USB but when its in my LAN, its very slow and I also need to set user privileges (Read, Write & Modify) for specific users accessing the drobo in LAN. I am using Mac OsX 10.5. Could you please advice me in this issue.

I have been sending mails regarding this issue to the drobo support team for the past 5-6 months. i get reply from them as follows....

"""""" Thank you for contacting Data Robotics, Inc. - The makers of the multi-award winning Drobo!

Your message is important to us, but our office is currently closed. Thank you in advance for your patience, we will get back to you as soon as possible.

In the meantime, please visit www.drobo.com for additional information about our products and how we are changing the way the world stores and protects it's data.

Sincerely,
The Data Robotics Team """""""""""""""""""

They are a bunch of useless people... they just want to sell their product... SO i finally came across this forum... Please help me....

Regards,
Krishna:apple:

[sushi]

The Drobo looks cool. However, it is expensive for what you get.

Some questions come to mind.

What happens when a Drobo fails?

What happens when you have a HD failure that is more than the Drobo can handle?

[awmazz]

I don't have the Drobo Share myself so can't help you there sorry. Can you not just set it up as a shared drive connected to one of your Macs using file sharing? At least temporarily until they get back to you with some answers.

The Drobo looks cool. However, it is expensive for what you get.

Some questions come to mind.

What happens when a Drobo fails?

What happens when you have a HD failure that is more than the Drobo can handle?

I got one when it first came out. Oddly enough I see they have increased in price now by AUD $300. Maybe they're milking the supply/demand, or the retailer just made a mistake in their initial price and I got a bargain. :)

I think in theory you just stick the drives into another Drobo in the same order and away you go again. It's designed to handle one drive failure, how many drives are likely to fail at once?

[geoffreak]

The Drobo can actually handle two drive failures if you have enough extra storage space. It has to rebuild after each drive failure, so if another drive fails while the array is being rebuilt, your data can be ruined.
I use 4x 1TB Seagate 7200RPM drives in my Drobo, so the supposed Seagate problems are bull. Not once had a drive failure and going on 8 months of use.

[rkdiddy]

Does anyone know if Drobo has any plans to release a two drive device? I really don't need 4 bays.

[geoffreak]

You can use a Drobo with only 2 drives if you want, and add more as you go. A two drive setup is like a mirror RAID.

[Cynicalone]

I use 4x 1TB Seagate 7200RPM drives in my Drobo, so the supposed Seagate problems are bull. Not once had a drive failure and going on 8 months of use.

The Seagate HDD's did have issues but have since been fixed with a firmware update. Link http://www.drobo.com/support/faqs.php#43 This effected the new 1.5TB Drives.

[UbuntuFu]

I got a Drobo on Amazon with the $50 rebate it came out to be $330 total. Stuck in 4 x 1TB WD Green hard drives for a total of 2.7TB of space and it has been great. before I put in the 1tb green drives I had 2 old 250gb sata drives lying around so I put those in. Had 242 or so gb of space. I threw on 60gb of movies. Threw in 2tb drives then removed 1 of the 250 and it rebuilt the data in about an hour. Then put the final 1tb in. No data loss. Awesome!!

[gusious]

I was thinking about buying a Drobo myself too but from what i've heard in this thread....

[Rich1963]

I'll keep it simple. I have one and love it. It expands as my media library does.:D

[MowingDevil]

I have about 100 dvds or so plus 400 cds...I'd like to get most of them on a drive to use in conjunction with Apple TV and then put all the discs in storage. Generally I'd go for files that are as high quality as is reasonable...would the Drobo make a good media server for this amount? I was sorta thinking of going for a 2tb external FW drive but was thinking that would fill up rather quick. At least the Drobo can expand as the media does.

A friend of mine has a Drobo, I did find it to be a tad on the noisy side...sounded like a fan. One of the major perks of Macs to me is how quiet they are...I'm a musician/sound artist and value a quiet environment. Anyone out there find the Drobo noisy?

[Rich1963]

Find out if your friend has version 1 or 2. Even DRI acknowledges on their forum that the V1 was far from silent. One of the advertised features of version 2 was a much quieter cooling system.

[pprior]

I have a version 2 and it's way louder than my mac pro. It's annoying.

It's also dog slow. I've just about had it.

I get only ~10mb/sec read and write speeds over FW800. So time machine (which is what I use it for) takes FOREVER when it has to back up a few GB.

I have been a drobo fan for a couple years, but the weaknesses have worn on me over time.

[MowingDevil]

Anyone know of a quieter alternative?

[pprior]

Anyone know of a quieter alternative?

Actually after my post yesterday I realized I'd had enough. I ordered the Lacie 4Big quadra and it will be here tomorrow (hurray Amazon prime!).

It's quite a bit more money than the Drobo, but if it's truly as quiet as they say and performance is 10x-20x the drobo, I think I'll be happy.

I'll post my experience one I get it up and running for others interest.

I'm going to relegate my drobo to time machine backups off my Airport extreme in the basement. For my kids and wife who don't generate much data I think it will serve well in that capacity and noise won't matter.

[MowingDevil]

Wow, pricey but intriguing!
Definitely let us know how it works out.

[pprior]

Initial impresions of 4big Quadra:

Much faster than drobo (AJA shows 120mb/sec in RAID5 with hot spare - using 3 active drives). This using eSATA. My drobo as I posted routinely got 10-12mb/sec using same system on FW800.

Not much quieter, if any. Fan so far has made a varying level of noise which is actually more annoying than the constant drone of the drobo. I'm disappointed in this part which was a major reason for the purchase. I'm majorly annoyed by computer noise, but this is much louder than the mac pro I run below my desk. Not impressed with the silence factor.

[MowingDevil]

I'd be inclined to have it run in a closet, computer noise in my studio drives me nuts as well. Perhaps there's a temperature controlled sound proof box that can be purchased to stick the drive in. I dunno what the solution is. All my external FW drives are fairly quiet but they're low capacity (Maxtor 300gb, WD 500gb & Glyph 200gb).

[pastrychef]

I picked up a Drobo about a month ago and it has been silent. I don't hear it at all. I have it connected to a Mac mini via a Firewire 800 to Firewire 400 cable. Speeds are nothing to write home about... I would say I get anywhere from 10 to 15Mb/sec. When I connect to the Mac mini via AFP on a gigabit ethernet LAN, I essentially get the same speeds. I have absolutely no complaints about how it has been running.

[SkipperStyle]

I was interested in drobo for a while. I have a bunch of work and media files that I would likely jump of a bridge if I lost. I keep semi-annual backups on dvds (in a safe deposit box, in case my house burns down). The drobo, however, seems to have a propensity for dying young.

Ultimately, it seems like just buying a separate normal enclosure from a drive manufacturer like WD or Seagate makes more sense. I'm sporting two WD MyBook mirrors through the Airport BSE, and a WD Elements drive for TM backups. The two MyBooks are somewhat redundant, since each is already a RAID 1 mirroring, but just in case that enclosure dies (as the Drobo enclosure does), I will still have a functioning second. Its got a crazy long 5 year warranty, so I like knowing that I'll be set for awhile. (PS, why the hell are Time Capsules only a year-long warranty?)

Plus, you don't need to worry about having to buy one of those Drobo share network connections.

[pprior]

f/u post: I'm returning the 4big quadra. It's noisier than the drobo and I can't live with the noise, despite the speed improvement.

I'm changing my overall plan and moving the drobo to the basement hooked to my airport extreme for whole house time machine (kids imac and wife MBP) and got a WD 2TB external drive which is fanless and will hopefully therefore be quiet for my TM backup.

The drobo has been very stable in my experience, just noisy and SLOW (biggest complaint).

[pinguthepenguin]

Hi guys, could Drobo be used to easily create off site backups? Could you purchase 3 drives, have one that lives permanently in your Drobo, and swap the other 2 every week, that way you would always have 2 drives in Drobo, and an off site backup. Is this possible?

[ascender]

What's the best way to do a large file copy to a Drobo? I have a FW800 one and need to copy about 3TB of data to it. I've had trouble with a simple copy/paste timing out in the past, so is there a more efficient way to do it?

[pastrychef]

What's the best way to do a large file copy to a Drobo? I have a FW800 one and need to copy about 3TB of data to it. I've had trouble with a simple copy/paste timing out in the past, so is there a more efficient way to do it?

When I first got my Drobo, I just dragged and dropped about 2.5TB to it. I've never experienced any with time outs with my Drobos...

[Bbusyb]

The drobo has been very stable in my experience, just noisy and SLOW (biggest complaint).

Can I ask whether you are using 5400RPM or 7200 RPM drives in the Drobo?

I've heard a about a lot of People editing straight off the Drobo so I'm pretty surprised to hear about such Slow Speeds, even over Firewire.

I'm looking at getting one sometime in the Future (When I can justify the price in the Budget :)) And while Speed is not the most important aspect, It's definitely one of the Added points.

I'lll be curious to hear if other people are suffering similar slow transfers.

[Rich1963]

While 'm not streaming 1080p or editing straight off of the Drobo, I have streamed plenty of 720p / 5000kbps+ content with no problems. Although this isn't the case with every slow Drobo, there is a correlation between having a drive Drobo is beginning to suspect is faulty, and slow transfer speeds.

As I said, this isn't the definitive reason, but after sifting through the forums quite heavily over a year plus, this has been seen in many decoded logs.

Good luck with any decision you make. This is like the Ford/Chevy/Dodge truck debate. They all have their merits, and they all have their deficiencies.

[skellener]

New Drobo question...

Can you hook up a Drobo FS (gigabit) directly to your Mac? My Mac is wireless to the router so my gigabit ethernet port is available. Will that give better performance than the FW800 model?

[reebzor]

To me, the drobo seems like the "idiot proof" solution. When I was looking for a raid storage solution, I was first drawn to the drobo for obvious reasons (ease of use, looks, campatibility) but decided eventually it was not for me. I've heard things about them being slow and not all that great so I began to look around more. IIRC the drobo is like $500, for a little over $300 I could have bought a 4 bay raid enclosure from OWC that had not only fw800 but esata, usb, and fw400. I would lose functionality this way because I would have to buy all the drives at the same time and set the raid up like that. The I discovered the QNAP NAS. This gave me all* the functionality of a drobo (which mainly includes RAID level migration and expansion) along with so much more. The model I picked, TS-410, was only $450. So it was cheaper than a drobo and is basically the same footprint but with added functionality. So there are other options out there. I'm not saying the drobo isnt good, I just don't think the device warrants its high price tag.


*The only benefit to the drobo over any other solution was the mix-n-match of drives with different capacities. This didnt really matter to me since I wanted to fit it with 4 2tb drives anyway

[akm3]

Find out if your friend has version 1 or 2. Even DRI acknowledges on their forum that the V1 was far from silent. One of the advertised features of version 2 was a much quieter cooling system.

I have both an original and a version 2, it is a night and day difference. I had to actually prop the front cover open a little bit with a bit of plastic to keep the vibrations from being ridiculously loud. V1 is a noisy beast! The v2 is silent however, and the FW800 is nice.

[Sparky9292]

To me, the drobo seems like the "idiot proof" solution. When I was looking for a raid storage solution, I was first drawn to the drobo for obvious reasons (ease of use, looks, campatibility) but decided eventually it was not for me. I've heard things about them being slow and not all that great so I began to look around more. IIRC the drobo is like $500, for a little over $300 I could have bought a 4 bay raid enclosure from OWC that had not only fw800 but esata, usb, and fw400. I would lose functionality this way because I would have to buy all the drives at the same time and set the raid up like that. The I discovered the QNAP NAS. This gave me all* the functionality of a drobo (which mainly includes RAID level migration and expansion) along with so much more. The model I picked, TS-410, was only $450. So it was cheaper than a drobo and is basically the same footprint but with added functionality. So there are other options out there. I'm not saying the drobo isnt good, I just don't think the device warrants its high price tag.


*The only benefit to the drobo over any other solution was the mix-n-match of drives with different capacities. This didnt really matter to me since I wanted to fit it with 4 2tb drives anyway

QNAS TS-410 - $449.99 - But no Firewire support which I need.
Lacie 4Big - $749.00 -- Has FW400/800.
Drobo 4Bay - $359.00 - Has FW800 but no FW400! (which I want for my Mac Mini)

1TB 5400 Green drives go for $80. 4X80 = $320. $359.00 + $320 = $679.00.

So the Drobo with 4TB is cheaper than the Lacie 4Big by $70. I wish I could listen to both systems before buying. I want one that's quiet since we will be running Boxee off it though our Mac Mini

[Grimace]

FW400 --> FW800 cable... there is your solution!

[Sparky9292]

FW400 --> FW800 cable... there is your solution!

Doesn't exist. That's like FW400->USB

[reebzor]

Doesn't exist. That's like FW400->USB

actually, fw400-800 cables do exist (http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=103&cp_id=10301&cs_id=1030105&p_id=3542&seq=1&format=2). Anyway, why do you NEED firewire? Remember, just because something is connected with FW800 doesn't guarantee you 800Mb/s. I've read reports that the Drobo averages around 15MB/s write where as my NAS over Gig Ethernet writes at about 28MB/s on average. That was the point I was trying to make. If you have some other specific reason why you "need" firewire, then by all means disregard my post.

[pastrychef]

actually, fw400-800 cables do exist (http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=103&cp_id=10301&cs_id=1030105&p_id=3542&seq=1&format=2). Anyway, why do you NEED firewire? Remember, just because something is connected with FW800 doesn't guarantee you 800Mb/s. I've read reports that the Drobo averages around 15MB/s write where as my NAS over Gig Ethernet writes at about 28MB/s on average. That was the point I was trying to make. If you have some other specific reason why you "need" firewire, then by all means disregard my post.

According to the following review, using Firewire yields better performance.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/08/drobo-second-gen-mini-review/

[Sparky9292]

actually, fw400-800 cables do exist (http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=103&cp_id=10301&cs_id=1030105&p_id=3542&seq=1&format=2). Anyway, why do you NEED firewire? Remember, just because something is connected with FW800 doesn't guarantee you 800Mb/s. I've read reports that the Drobo averages around 15MB/s write where as my NAS over Gig Ethernet writes at about 28MB/s on average. That was the point I was trying to make. If you have some other specific reason why you "need" firewire, then by all means disregard my post.

Yeah, I think that for 90% of all people USB 2.0 will work fine on Drobo. All we do is put our bittorrent movies *COUGH* i mean store bought DVD's on it and they all stream fine in 720p.

[Scrib]

Would like some feedback. And I may be asking some "dumb" questions, so... Forgive me! :)

In a Drobo environment; let's say the Drobo FS... If I have a a 4x1.5TB setup. Can I assign one of the disks to be for iTunes/iPhoto libraries and other video files? Can I assign another disk for the TM backups? Or it it viewed as a 6TB disk minus the overhead and backup partition?

If I can "partition", will the iTunes/iPhoto libraries be placed into the TM backups? And will the TM backups be spread across the drives?

Not a lot of info out there on this. Everyone says it works, which I'm sure it does. But I'd like to put all my shared files on this as well as have it do my TM work.

[Sparky9292]

Would like some feedback. And I may be asking some "dumb" questions, so... Forgive me! :)

In a Drobo environment; let's say the Drobo FS... If I have a a 4x1.5TB setup. Can I assign one of the disks to be for iTunes/iPhoto libraries and other video files? Can I assign another disk for the TM backups? Or it it viewed as a 6TB disk minus the overhead and backup partition?

If I can "partition", will the iTunes/iPhoto libraries be placed into the TM backups? And will the TM backups be spread across the drives?

Not a lot of info out there on this. Everyone says it works, which I'm sure it does. But I'd like to put all my shared files on this as well as have it do my TM work.

Yes, I have it partitioned into two disks.

[NightStorm]

Can anyone speak to the read/write performance of the Drobo S via FW800 (iMac doesn't have eSATA port)? I'm debating retiring my ReadyNAS NV+ and switching to a direct-attached storage solution for my iTunes library.

The ReadyNAS NV+ achieves R/W speeds of approximately 20Mb/s on my gigabit network. These numbers would be higher if I enabled jumbo frames, but I found it led to issues streaming via 802.11n to my AppleTV.

[Yank]

I'm hoping this is the right discussion to hijack/jump into. I picked up a Drobo last fall and currently have four 1.5TB drives in it. It was working like a dream connected to my Mini (via FW400 to FW800 cable), but a few weeks after upgrading to an iMac quad core i7 (and switching to a standard FW800 cable) I started noticing a lot of slowness.

The only thing I use the drobo for is iTunes storage. Currently it consists of about 1.5TBs of movies, 1.3TBs of TV Shows, and 300GBs of Music/Podcasts. That puts me at about 80% capacity for my 4.0TBs of space, but I've run closer to the cap in the past (with smaller drives) and never noticed any problems.

Since I started having problems I've noticed that iTunes frequently throws me a pinwheel and locks up on general navigation. I copied the music to the internal drive and tried running iTunes from those files and things were back to normal. Reformatted the drobo, verified that it was connecting at FW800, and copied all of the data back. Things were pretty good at first, but it's been a few days and is already back to being very spotty.

In fact I had iTunes lock up and throw a pinwheel 3 times in an hour of streaming music to an AppleTV. I've had the ATV stutter on music in the past, but never because iTunes was frozen on the other end.

Drobo support is close to sending me a new unit, but I'm also wondering if anyone else has experienced anything similar.

-Ryan