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Any reason not to buy a Drobo?
- Thread starter shinji
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Proprietary system, can't just pull out drives and recover data like with other alternatives (Synology/Qnap etc).
Limited warranty, reports of some pretty poor customer service if the device fails.
Limited warranty, reports of some pretty poor customer service if the device fails.
I agree with shinji. That was the reason I didn't buy one. They sells lots of them, though, so it might be fine for you. I went with a Synology myself in the end and have been using it for 18 months now. I've found it very reliable with regular software updates from Synology introducing new features.
The only thing I miss is not being able to do spotlight searches on the network drives. That'll be the case with any kind of NAS solution so it's not specific to Synology.
Its really a personal choice regarding many of the things.
I had very good customer service, although being technical then could show that done a lot of the usual testing so got through the usual first line things pretty quickly. I also have the 8 bay DroboPro rather then the 4/5 bay Drobo's so not sure if get better response because of that.
Had the unit replaced under warranty twice, never an issue. Slotted the hard drives into the replacement unit in the correct order and no problem at all.
Performance wise then my drobo has been fine. FW800 connection to a mac mini 2009 streaming iTunes, elgato pvr etc.
In terms of Data Recovery then for me is a non-issue. iTunes library can be redownloaded/re-ripped. elgato recordings will be rebroadcast.
Any thing on there that need to worry about losing I take a backup of.
When I come to upgrade then no problem as far as I am concerned in getting another drobo, at the moment would be the 5D ( though wouldn't mind seeing a TB2 interface Drobo out, just so is on current tech. TB1 is fast enough for a single Drobo )
I had very good customer service, although being technical then could show that done a lot of the usual testing so got through the usual first line things pretty quickly. I also have the 8 bay DroboPro rather then the 4/5 bay Drobo's so not sure if get better response because of that.
Had the unit replaced under warranty twice, never an issue. Slotted the hard drives into the replacement unit in the correct order and no problem at all.
Performance wise then my drobo has been fine. FW800 connection to a mac mini 2009 streaming iTunes, elgato pvr etc.
In terms of Data Recovery then for me is a non-issue. iTunes library can be redownloaded/re-ripped. elgato recordings will be rebroadcast.
Any thing on there that need to worry about losing I take a backup of.
When I come to upgrade then no problem as far as I am concerned in getting another drobo, at the moment would be the 5D ( though wouldn't mind seeing a TB2 interface Drobo out, just so is on current tech. TB1 is fast enough for a single Drobo )
I've had a Drobo for five years now. No problems at all. I think some people avoid Drobos because they are afraid of them. As for data recovery, remember that Drobo is not a backup solution. The data on your Drobo should be backed up on something else. If your Drobo fails, you operate from your backup until you get the Drobo repaired or replaced.
Are you saying, that you could swap your Syno drives into Qnap enclosure and be good to go?
I don't mean RAID0/1 but RAID5 or, for the sake of fair comparison, Hybrid RAID-formatted disks?
I'm not an expert, so anyone reading please correct me if I'm wrong. But to my knowledge, HDD's in a Synology or QNAP system (even if using a form of hybrid raid) can have all their data recovered if the the actual NAS unit itself dies (often by having to put them into Linux).
If a DROBO unit dies, you're only recourse is....to get another DROBO unit.
This is how I understand it at least, if I stand correct then apologies but I think that's correct.
I think you are correct in general except buying a new Drobo isn't the ONLY recourse. You should have a backup of the data and you restore from that. Otherwise I'd expect the solution for any failed RAID device is to buy a new one.
True for hardware based RAIDs, one of the advantages of software RAIDS is that you can throw just about any drives at them.... .
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Perhaps, but its way easier, safer, more reliable, to just buy or borrow another NAS unit.
I'm not a fan of drobo either, but fwiw, synology / drobo are both proprietary operating systems as well.
Open source NAS alternatives include FreeNAS, Nas4Free, unRAID, etc. As a FreeNAS user, though, I can say that these things aren't super user friendly - so if you're not a tech savvy person, I do recommend Synology. I have owned one before, and it worked just fine.
I am no expert either, but I recall having read in this very forum, that e.g. Syno NAS's single point of dependency is also MoBo, just as for the Drobo.
I don't own the Drobo, but have played with their Dashboard and to me it looks as the most Apple-ish NAS of them all. Meaning it is minimalist and simple in UI, setup and operation, just like the Mac
Thanks for the help, guys. I'm actually not going to use it as a NAS, this will just be regular direct attached storage. I have some old hard drives that I'm not using, and it seems like the only simple way to combine them all with a bit of redundancy.
If the Drobo itself fails within warranty, do you just send it back and they replace it? Or they're a pain in the ass about it? I notice they want you to buy "DroboCare."
If the Drobo itself fails within warranty, do you just send it back and they replace it? Or they're a pain in the ass about it? I notice they want you to buy "DroboCare."
Ah that's it? Then... You're probably fine.
Now that being said, if you have a "few extra drives" laying around, rather than invest in a Drobo, I'd rather just buy this and sell the drives. A 1TB USB powered SSD is going to be way faster and way more durable than a drive array, and you don't need to deal with the power, the bulk, the noise, the heat, etc. Drobo aren't cheap - I'd just get that.
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Have you considered one of these?
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/External-Drive/OWC/ThunderBay-4
Assuming you have Thunderbolt... these are excellent enclosures, I have two of them, and you can use Disk Utility to setup RAID1 or RAID0 with the drives, or just leave them as separate drives...
I put 6TB drives in my older LaCie enclosures and RocketStor toaster without any problem.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/con...N2ijq78ncUCFdY8gQodK5QA5g&Q=&is=REG&A=details
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/con...N2ijq78ncUCFdY8gQodK5QA5g&Q=&is=REG&A=details
edit: to remove personally identifying information not relevant to the thread. Also remove some unsupported BBcode
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can you use iscsi and mount the entire synology as a local hard drive on a mac? so you can spotlight it? I'm NO expert on that, just thinking this MIGHT work.
one major fallback is once your hard drive capacity exceeds 16TB, drobo will give you two separate volumes, instead of one, even you only got one drobo.
yep, volume size. it may be inconsequential for now, but eventually it will become a problem. for now 4tb is kinda 'large' for mainstream hard drives, so the maximum for 4 drives is 16tb, you are not gonna exceed that. but now 6tb is already supported, and 8tb will become more accessible soon (it's already just doubled the price as 4tb's, and i saves half of 'rack spaces', so why not use 8tb's?) 16 will be a significant limit for 4 (usable) bay unites. others like qnap and syno don't have such problem...
yes different people have different needs, different products have different problems. i wasn't saying drobo is a no-go, just say drobo has a 16tb limit problem.