For the ones freaking out about Storage choices.

[masp84]

I was searching the web for 2 TB docks (one SSD and another SATAIII) and set them in daisy chain. I stumbled upon this product:

Drobo DRDR5A21

Specs:

• 2 x Thunderbolt ports; second port for daisy chaining Thunderbolt devices (Mac OS X only)
• 1 x USB 3.0 port
  
• Up to five (5) 3.5" SATA I / II / III hard disk drives or solid state drives (sold separately) and one (1) mSATA solid state drive in the Drobo Accelerator Bay for increased performance
  
• Drives of any manufacturer, capacity, spindle speed, and/or cache
  
• No carriers or tools required
  
• Expandable by adding drives or hot-swapping drives with larger ones

Sounds interesting, what do you think? it has a new "BeyondRaid tech" with its own algorithm.
http://www.demosondemand.com/DemoSta...94&startTime=0

[StephenAndrew]

I watched about 45 seconds of that video before I wanted to punch that guy in the face...

That said, I've heard mixed reviews about Drobos. One of the biggest complaints I've heard is that Drobo uses a proprietary read/write system, so in the event of a failure of the Drobo (not just one of the drives, but the unit itself), your data is basically held hostage until you find a Drobo-based solution. You can't just pop the drives into another enclosure and copy the data over, so you're forced to use another Drobo in order to retrieve your stuff. I have no personal experience with them, but I've considered giving it a shot as a working drive...but definitely not as a backup solution.

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Not to mention it's bloody expensive, especially when you add a handful of decent drives to stick in it!

[masp84]

Originally Posted by StephenAndrew

I watched about 45 seconds of that video before I wanted to punch that guy in the face...

That said, I've heard mixed reviews about Drobos. One of the biggest complaints I've heard is that Drobo uses a proprietary read/write system, so in the event of a failure of the Drobo (not just one of the drives, but the unit itself), your data is basically held hostage until you find a Drobo-based solution. You can't just pop the drives into another enclosure and copy the data over, so you're forced to use another Drobo in order to retrieve your stuff. I have no personal experience with them, but I've considered giving it a shot as a working drive...but definitely not as a backup solution.

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Not to mention it's bloody expensive, especially when you add a handful of decent drives to stick in it!

Well they offer 3 year warranty and it's practically a fusion drive in a box but way more ahead of it, not to mention storage options from Apple are bloody expensive. I'm really looking forward for the write/read test and to see if I can set this as my main HD on a new iMac

[kennyap]

Originally Posted by masp84

I was searching the web for 2 TB docks (one SSD and another SATAIII) and set them in daisy chain. I stumbled upon this product:

Drobo DRDR5A21

Specs:[LIST][*]2 x Thunderbolt ports; second port for daisy chaining Thunderbolt devices (Mac OS X only)[*]1 x USB 3.0 port

I have one of these, this is actually the Drobo 5D. It's working well, and fast too - ex/ 230MB/sec sustained write to my iMac internal SSD. I have 5x4TB drives plus a 128GB mSata SSD drive for cache in the unit.

[masp84]

Originally Posted by kennyap

I have one of these, this is actually the Drobo 5D. It's working well, and fast too - ex/ 230MB/sec sustained write to my iMac internal SSD. I have 5x4TB drives plus a 128GB mSata SSD drive for cache in the unit.

That's great numbers! we'll use 2 SSD 256GB and fill the rest with Seagate Barracudas @ 7200 rpm, It'll be like a Mega fusion drive. I hate the name of the thing though