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Apple Airport Extreme w/ Drobo OR Drobo w/ Drobo Share

T

TheSandman2236

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 11, 2008
255
0
Atlanta, GA
As the title states I'm having a bit of trouble figuring this out. My brother and I are moving into an apartment together and are trying to hammer out our network setup.

Currently there will be a Mac Mini attached (and streaming Movies/Music) off my Drobo like it is now. It's being shared on my PC.

We haven't gone gigabit yet, so this might a good time to do so. We each have a desktop and laptop. Plus whatever consoles we both have.

Would you guys say getting a Droboshare would be a better solution then getting an Airport Extreme (with the USB HDD Support)? Gizmodo just had an article about it, and it made me think things over a bit.

http://gizmodo.com/5067201/how-to-choose-the-best-network-storage-for-a-macpc-home

Thanks for the help!
 
If you want to do Time Machine backups to the Drobo, then the AEBS is the only solution that will work without hacks; some have said that Apple still does not support it, but how can they provide it and not support it? Otherwise I believe the speed is about the same either way, both in the 3-6MB/s range. I just recently got a Drobo but have it connected directly (for now at least).
 
Does the drobo share add an OS/front-end functionality or do both versions have a 'control panel' like interface?

TheSandman2236 said:
As the title states I'm having a bit of trouble figuring this out. My brother and I are moving into an apartment together and are trying to hammer out our network setup.

Currently there will be a Mac Mini attached (and streaming Movies/Music) off my Drobo like it is now. It's being shared on my PC.

We haven't gone gigabit yet, so this might a good time to do so. We each have a desktop and laptop. Plus whatever consoles we both have.

Would you guys say getting a Droboshare would be a better solution then getting an Airport Extreme (with the USB HDD Support)? Gizmodo just had an article about it, and it made me think things over a bit.

http://gizmodo.com/5067201/how-to-choose-the-best-network-storage-for-a-macpc-home

Thanks for the help!
Click to expand...
 
you do not need to buy droboshare if you alaready have a airport extreme base station.
the droboshare gives the drobo the network functionality, and that's all it does. and that's what's included in the airport, and you have network printer, wireless-n... etc

the extra money is better spent on large capacity hard drives
i'm speaking from my own experience.
 
phuong said:
you do not need to buy droboshare if you alaready have a airport extreme base station.
the droboshare gives the drobo the network functionality, and that's all it does. and that's what's included in the airport, and you have network printer, wireless-n... etc

the extra money is better spent on large capacity hard drives
i'm speaking from my own experience.
Click to expand...

I'm looking for a large networked solution that I can stream my music/movies off of. I already own the Drobo attached to my PC. We are doing a completely wired setup minus the laptops.
 
TheSandman2236 said:
I'm looking for a large networked solution that I can stream my music/movies off of. I already own the Drobo attached to my PC. We are doing a completely wired setup minus the laptops.
Click to expand...

elaborate "large networked solution" please?

i dont know what you mean, but to give you some perspective.
but my setup is as follows

4x1TB on Drobo gen 1 (that is, usb only)
AEBS gigabit
xbox
macbook pro
mac pro
intelli z pro (ibm tower workstation, very old, running non-stop since 2002, so stable i wouldn't want to sell it)
TV

the xbox cannot produce any 720p output, but every other computer has no problem, even with wireless-g
1080p movies in h264 can only be watched from mac pro
1080p movies in other formats can be watched just fine from the macbook pro which is C2D 2.16GHz
 
my understanding is that the droboshare is for routers that DO NOT have a usb port for connecting drives. the droboshare allows you to plug the hard drive via usb INTO an ethernet connection. skip the droboshare and get the airport extreme. save money and space without the extra component.
 
So, is this still the latest?

I'm going to be replacing my old (and failing) 1st-gen G5 PowerMac with a new iMac 27"/i7 and use the iMac-MacPro savings to buy a Drobo and a few extra hard drives. I've had far too many failed HD disasters the last couple of years (side note: are hard drive really getting more fragile, or are we just using them more? Before 2005, I'd had two hard drives fail on me, ever; the others were discarded when I needed more space; since then I've had three desktop drives and two laptop drives fail on me!)

In any case, I'm mulling over an Airport Extreme ($165 through my company's Apple discount store) or a DroboShare ($189.99 at newegg.com).

I'm (strongly) leaning towards the Airport Extreme, as I can then shift my existing Airport Express over to address a wifi "dead zone" in the house. But, I want to make sure I'll be able to use the Drobo as well with the AEBS as with the DroboShare.

  1. How easy is it to "detach" the Drobo from the AEBS to direct-connect it to the iMac for better throughput? I know this is necessary with the DroboShare, which gets about 1/3rd the throughput that a direct-connect USB Drobo does, and that one only need "sleep" the Drobo and change the physical connections.
  2. What is the throughput like connected via Airport Extreme? The figures I'm seeing are about 40Mbps via DroboShare vs about 140Mbps via USB 2. How does the AEBS connection compare? I'm hopeful here because I've heard good things about AEBS-connected drive speeds with other hard drives.
  3. Is any of the Drobo software functionality lost?

Any thoughts out there?
 
DroboShare is absolute crap, so I would not even consider that.

It's very slow not to mention expensive.
 
jettredmont said:
So, is this still the latest?

In any case, I'm mulling over an Airport Extreme ($165 through my company's Apple discount store) or a DroboShare ($189.99 at newegg.com).

I'm (strongly) leaning towards the Airport Extreme, as I can then shift my existing Airport Express over to address a wifi "dead zone" in the house. But, I want to make sure I'll be able to use the Drobo as well with the AEBS as with the DroboShare.


Any thoughts out there?
Click to expand...

I have a Drobo connected via USB to an AEBS. I also have a Drobo connected via FW800 to a Mac Mini.

It is easy to disconnect the Drobo connected to the AEBS. That can be done via Apple's client. It's pretty neat. It gets shared via afp to my Mini.

I have been debating moving my FW800 Drobo to a DroboShare which is a pretty neat addition. The connection would not be as fast of course but more than fast enough for my needs. You can easily stream HD video if that is your thing. Some people claim it is slow but they are often forgetting what the Drobo is doing when writing. Anyway, it's not a speed demon but fine by me (and I do have a gigabit network). The advantage to the DroboShare is all the apps that can communicate and manage the networked Drobo. You lose that going the AEBS route.

philip
 
pmcdunnough said:
I have a Drobo connected via USB to an AEBS. I also have a Drobo connected via FW800 to a Mac Mini.

It is easy to disconnect the Drobo connected to the AEBS. That can be done via Apple's client. It's pretty neat. It gets shared via afp to my Mini.

I have been debating moving my FW800 Drobo to a DroboShare which is a pretty neat addition. The connection would not be as fast of course but more than fast enough for my needs. You can easily stream HD video if that is your thing. Some people claim it is slow but they are often forgetting what the Drobo is doing when writing. Anyway, it's not a speed demon but fine by me (and I do have a gigabit network). The advantage to the DroboShare is all the apps that can communicate and manage the networked Drobo. You lose that going the AEBS route.

philip
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply!

What apps communicate and manage the networked Drobo? Are you talking about the apps at http://www.drobo.com/droboapps/ or something else? The apps there seem to fill niches that might be useful to some, but I don't care about:

1. A utility to install other DroboApps from the web without restarting the Drobo. But that assumes I'll want to install other DroboApps ...

2. Remote access to the Drobo from the web or iphone ... don't see a need for this for me.

3. An iTunes Media Server ... I'd rather have a "real" iTunes instance running as my media server (on a machine which can be woken up from sleep when its needed). Too many moving parts in iTunes servers I've seen that tend to break whenever Apple updates any part of their ecosystem.

4. A Time Machine "sparse disk image" creator / manager. Can't I just do this with a desktop app, instead of trying to do that on the DroboShare?

5. Apparently they used to also have a bittorrent client up there, but that's no longer available.

Are there sources for DroboApps besides those? It looks like they offer an SDK for creating apps, so it's odd to only see four/five niches covered here.

How about the desktop management apps? Do those still work if the Drobo is connected to an Airport?
 
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