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rawdawg

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 7, 2009
550
111
Brooklyn
Please excuse the blunt question. But I am in need for an easy redundant and large disk solution (read: easy). I've known about Drobo for years and have read countless reports on it's insanely slow read/writes and the days it took to rebuild. To the point where I wondered how their marketing team found an angle to convince others to even purchase them.

After taking another look tonight it seems things may have changed. At least on the site I was looking at tonight I was seeing 200+MB/s read speeds.

Can anyone say they are actually getting 100+MB/s read/write speeds on their Drobo? If so it will perform better than any of my single HDD docks that have been doing the task of juggling multiple HDDs and it may be time to go with a multiple drive solution.
 

Giuly

macrumors 68040
The Drobo 5D is basically a standalone hardware Fusion Drive, using a mSATA SSD to speed things up.
As such, they will hit even 300MB/s read speeds, but only for commonly accessed data - just like Apple's Fusion Drive. However, you can add more 2.5" SSDs to speed things up even further when accessing the hard drive section.
 

rawdawg

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 7, 2009
550
111
Brooklyn
That would explain the suddenly much higher reported read/write speeds. Is this to say the data stored on the HDDs are incredibly slow like their earlier (non-fusion style) drives?

I am looking to backup large media files (nothing smaller than 25MB each and up to GBs).
 

rawdawg

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 7, 2009
550
111
Brooklyn
Thank you, Giuly, for your input. I saw that on their site. Unfortunately, as exciting as their products seem, I believe the speeds they've claimed in the past have been incredibly exaggerated.

Anyone may correct me if I'm wrong, but in the past years when I've researched their past Drobo's they've claimed high speeds but literally every review I've read said the speeds were ridiculously low. Of course I don't remember specifics, but I thought read/write speeds in real world tests were ~20/MBs far below what they've claimed. Which is why I always thought it was ridiculous they even bothered touting FW800 or especially eSATA (aside from connectivity) because their speeds appeared to be well below USB 2.0.

Again, anyone please chime in if they've had another experience.
 

StevethePirate

macrumors newbie
Jan 11, 2013
18
0
Performing better? Probably, but only by a fraction of the amount they claim

Reliable? = Same as before = Not very

Tech Support? = Non-existant

source: former owner of 4 different Drobo units. Since moved to Synology and never had a problem.
 

sfxguy

macrumors regular
Oct 14, 2011
121
3
Los Angeles
If you want a high speed direct attached system, your only other option is the Promise Pegasus.

I went with the Drobo 5D and am getting between 300-400MB/s and don't have an Msata in it, just 5 4tb 7200 drives.

If you don't need that league of devices transfer rates, Synology makes great units.
 

turtle777

macrumors 6502a
Apr 30, 2004
686
29
After owning a Drobo for a year, and now owning a Synology, I don't see a reason to ever go back to a Drobo.

-t
 

Tanax

macrumors 65816
Jun 15, 2011
1,018
335
Stockholm, Sweden
Don't waste your money - this thing is $850 without any drives, just a bare bones enclosure. That's insane.

OP, do yourself a favor and get a couple of 4TB WD drives. You can connect them up in a RAID set at an OS level, without dropping a grand on a useless Drobo enclosure.

And how much is the Pegasus R4 with 4x1TB? Oh wait, 1000$.
That's just normal pricing of Thunderbolt - insanely high. So Drobo's aren't really any different from any of those.
 
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