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Drobo 5D

The price of the Lacie exceeds what I'm willing to lay out to be honest.
I'm looking at 3TB drives for now (probably WD Reds, £115 each) since filling a unit with 5x3TB drives would give me enough storage space to last me several years.

The Lacie looks great but I would like to buy with no drives at the moment and expand as and when i need to. I need to backup around 3TB of data at the moment, and by the time I come to needing to expand, drive prices will have fallen etc.
 
Another possibility for the LaCie 5big is to use Disk Utility to:
- stripe drives 1&2 into one 4TB or 8TB RAID-0 volume #1
- stripe drives 3&4 into a second 4TB or 8TB RAID-0 volume #2 and use to backup volume #1
- use drive 5 for general scratch disk or spare

or

- set up RAID-1, drives 1&2 mirrored to drives 3&4

Lots of possibilities with Disk Utility.

Perhaps someone knows of some RAID-5 software?
 
Must admit, the Lacie does give more possibilities.
So it uses Software RAID? Is that taxing on the system its connected to? Also does it mean the Lacie cannot be unplugged and connected to another machine?
 
Ifti said:
Must admit, the Lacie does give more possibilities.
So it uses Software RAID? Is that taxing on the system its connected to? Also does it mean the Lacie cannot be unplugged and connected to another machine?
Click to expand...

ON the Macs with Thunderbolt, the CPU utilization is quite low. Yes, uses Apple's Disk Utility to create the RAID volume.

A drive formatted on one Mac can be used with any other Mac with Thunderbolt. The Apple driver is built-in to the OS, and the drives have info on each drive identifying which part of the RAID set they are.

Apple Disk Utility can also be used to create a RAID from multiple independent external drives.

Just remember, with RAID-0, be sure to backup! RAID-0 arrays are for performance, not redundancy. RAID-1 will give you some protection if a drive should go bad.
 
g4cube said:
ON the Macs with Thunderbolt, the CPU utilization is quite low. Yes, uses Apple's Disk Utility to create the RAID volume.

A drive formatted on one Mac can be used with any other Mac with Thunderbolt. The Apple driver is built-in to the OS, and the drives have info on each drive identifying which part of the RAID set they are.

Apple Disk Utility can also be used to create a RAID from multiple independent external drives.

Just remember, with RAID-0, be sure to backup! RAID-0 arrays are for performance, not redundancy. RAID-1 will give you some protection if a drive should go bad.
Click to expand...
In a RAID1, all disks are exact copies, and if one fails, the others continue to work without any data loss. How is that "some protection"?

As far as this topic is concerned, with two disks in RAID0, mirrored to another two disks in RAID0, you have the speed and disk space of two drives. On the Drobo, only one drive is used for redundancy, so you have the space of three drives available. And with even a 64GB mSATA SSD installed, the differences in speed are negligible.
 
Giuly said:
In a RAID1, all disks are exact copies, and if one fails, the others continue to work without any data loss. How is that "some protection"?

As far as this topic is concerned, with two disks in RAID0, mirrored to another two disks in RAID0, you have the speed and disk space of two drives. On the Drobo, only one drive is used for redundancy, so you have the space of three drives available. And with even a 64GB mSATA SSD installed, the differences in speed are negligible.
Click to expand...

I don't really have an opinion on the Lacie or RAID0 or RAID1 using the OS to manage, but I would like to point out that Drobo does offer dual disk redundancy to protect against 2 simultaneous drive failures... I don't do it because the likelihood of that happening is slim and I have my data backed up elsewhere just in case.

http://support.drobo.com/app/answer...ow-do-i-enable-it-on-my-drobo-storage-device?
 
Giuly said:
In a RAID1, all disks are exact copies, and if one fails, the others continue to work without any data loss. How is that "some protection"?
Click to expand...

Some protection: for LaCie or Drobo, failure of the chassis means you would lose access to your data, even if RAID-1, however...

You can move your bare drives in the LaCie situation to separate drive docks or external drive casings, and still recover all your data.

For the Drobo, you would need another identical drive chassis if the original fails.

That is what I meant when writing "some protection".

Just remember, RAID-1 (or RAID-5/6) is not backup. It is just redundancy. Te system can still fail.
 
g4cube said:
Some protection: for LaCie or Drobo, failure of the chassis means you would lose access to your data, even if RAID-1, however...

You can move your bare drives in the LaCie situation to separate drive docks or external drive casings, and still recover all your data.

For the Drobo, you would need another identical drive chassis if the original fails.

That is what I meant when writing "some protection".

Just remember, RAID-1 (or RAID-5/6) is not backup. It is just redundancy. Te system can still fail.
Click to expand...

RAID1 is exactly backup, just automatic and all the time. If you use Disk Utility, you can pop the drives into any $5 SATA enclosure and off you go again.
As far as the Drobo goes, you'll have to send it in and have the unit replaced. But it's more likely that a drive fails, anyways.
 
I decided to try my luck with the Drobo 5D.
I'm starting with 3x3TB WD Red drives for now and will expand as and when I need to.

Although the Lacie looks pretty nice, the huge glowing ball at the front will become an eyesore in a dark room (its being placed in my multimedia centre) and the cost far exceeds what I am willing to pay since I want to expand capacity as and when I need to.

My first Drobo, so will see what its like and report back ;)
 
I would be interested to hear your opinion on how the system performs when you get it. I ordered the exact same setup. A drobo 5d with 3 3TB western digital red drives. The drives are here now I'm just waiting for the case.
I'm going to go for the dual disk redundancy. I might be overdoing it but from what I understand system restructuring when a drive fails takes quite a bit of time. If another drive fails at that point before the system is ready you're pretty much screwed.
It hurts me to see that out of those 9TB I'll be having only 2,7TB but for me it's better to be safe than sorry!
 
Giuly said:
RAID1 is exactly backup, just automatic and all the time. If you use Disk Utility, you can pop the drives into any $5 SATA enclosure and off you go again.
As far as the Drobo goes, you'll have to send it in and have the unit replaced. But it's more likely that a drive fails, anyways.
Click to expand...

I'll respectfully disagree. Any programatic or user error, propagates to both drives simultaneously. There is no backing up to recover. The drives are essentially clones of each other. Hence... not backup.

/Jim
 
phobos said:
I would be interested to hear your opinion on how the system performs when you get it. I ordered the exact same setup. A drobo 5d with 3 3TB western digital red drives. The drives are here now I'm just waiting for the case.
I'm going to go for the dual disk redundancy. I might be overdoing it but from what I understand system restructuring when a drive fails takes quite a bit of time. If another drive fails at that point before the system is ready you're pretty much screwed.
It hurts me to see that out of those 9TB I'll be having only 2,7TB but for me it's better to be safe than sorry!
Click to expand...

I'll be setting it up with single disk redundancy as I'm after the capacity as well. Never had a RAID array fail on me to date so hopefully I'll continue to be as lucky!
I've also ordered a msata card to place in the bottom. From reading reviews etc it seems it makes quite a difference. Went for the 64GB card since I read on drobo's site that 64GB is the optimal size. Anything bigger would be a waste.

Out of curiosity, where did you purchase your drives from? I found ebuyer had the cheapest prices (in the UK).

Will let you know how I get on. Please do the same!

----------
flynz4 said:
I'll respectfully disagree. Any programatic or user error, propagates to both drives simultaneously. There is no backing up to recover. The drives are essentially clones of each other. Hence... not backup.

/Jim
Click to expand...

I agree with this.
If you have a mirrored array, if you delete a file by mistake, it's also gone from the mirrored set as well, so you actually have no way of retrieving a file. The whole point of a backup is that you should be able to restore and retrieve files as and when need be.
 
It seems I'll be receiving the drobo today. I'll give you some first impressions when I set it up. I'm a little bit concerned about the noise though.
I'm reading some conflicting reports on the internet. Some say it's very silent others say the noise is intolerable. Drobo gives a 30db value while the disks are working which is obviously audible but not irritating. Others also mention a vibrating sound depending on the surface it's on. I guess I'll just have to wait and see!

I'm thinking of maybe using single disk redundancy at first and when I fill up the system with drives use the dual disk redundancy. It's not clear to me though if that can be changed at a later time. Are we stuck on whatever setting we used the first time we setup the system?
 
phobos said:
It seems I'll be receiving the drobo today. I'll give you some first impressions when I set it up. I'm a little bit concerned about the noise though.
I'm reading some conflicting reports on the internet. Some say it's very silent others say the noise is intolerable. Drobo gives a 30db value while the disks are working which is obviously audible but not irritating. Others also mention a vibrating sound depending on the surface it's on. I guess I'll just have to wait and see!

I'm thinking of maybe using single disk redundancy at first and when I fill up the system with drives use the dual disk redundancy. It's not clear to me though if that can be changed at a later time. Are we stuck on whatever setting we used the first time we setup the system?
Click to expand...

In theory, it should be able to re-arrange the data, but Im not entirely sure to be honest.
I havent really read much about the noise - Im expecting a little, but hopefully not too much!

My Drobo arrived yesterday - I havent taken it out of the box yet since Im still waiting for my drives to arrive (3x3TB Reds). Ive been looking everywhere for a Crucial 64GB mSATA card to put in it as well but cant seem to find stock anywhere! Even Crucial have none in stock!
Although 64GB is the optimised size, I may have to go for the 128Gb version instead, which is still in stock at some places. I'd rather get the card in from the start while I set everything up ;)
 
phobos said:
It seems I'll be receiving the drobo today. I'll give you some first impressions when I set it up. I'm a little bit concerned about the noise though.
I'm reading some conflicting reports on the internet. Some say it's very silent others say the noise is intolerable. Drobo gives a 30db value while the disks are working which is obviously audible but not irritating. Others also mention a vibrating sound depending on the surface it's on. I guess I'll just have to wait and see!

I'm thinking of maybe using single disk redundancy at first and when I fill up the system with drives use the dual disk redundancy. It's not clear to me though if that can be changed at a later time. Are we stuck on whatever setting we used the first time we setup the system?
Click to expand...

I have the Drobo running on my desk next to me, I hardly hear it at all, if everything is whisper quiet you can hear a soft fan noise, but you'll need to listen for it though... I don't notice it.

The Drobo functions as expected so far, haven't gotten round to do any performance testing to give you numbers though.
 
spravtek said:
I have the Drobo running on my desk next to me, I hardly hear it at all, if everything is whisper quiet you can hear a soft fan noise, but you'll need to listen for it though... I don't notice it.

The Drobo functions as expected so far, haven't gotten round to do any performance testing to give you numbers though.
Click to expand...

Do you have a mSATA card in yours?
 
spravtek said:
Yes I have (the 128mb one), along with 5 WD REDs of 1TB
Click to expand...

Did you find the mSata card made a difference?
Reviews state its makes a big difference......

Considering the 128GB instead as the 64GB doesnt seem to be available anywhere at the moment (Im pretty impatient!)
 
Ifti said:
Did you find the mSata card made a difference?
Reviews state its makes a big difference......

Considering the 128GB instead as the 64GB doesnt seem to be available anywhere at the moment (Im pretty impatient!)
Click to expand...

I haven't compared my performance with anything yet, since I'm still in process of setting everything up, I think I read somewhere that it doesn't matter much which size of the mSata you get, you might benefit a little from better write speeds, but hardly ... (someone correct me if I'm missing the ball).
 
spravtek said:
I haven't compared my performance with anything yet, since I'm still in process of setting everything up, I think I read somewhere that it doesn't matter much which size of the mSata you get, you might benefit a little from better write speeds, but hardly ... (someone correct me if I'm missing the ball).
Click to expand...

Not sure when the 64GB would arrive so I went ahead with the 128GB instead which should arrive along with the drives tomorrow, for me to setup on the weekend ;)
Yes the write speeds on the 128GB are almost twice as fast as the 64GB, although probably wouldnt notice too much!
 
£450 for a 5d doesn't exist far as I've seen. Where? I'd take one or two!
 
musio said:
£450 for a 5d doesn't exist far as I've seen. Where? I'd take one or two!
Click to expand...

I get a reviewers discount directly from Drobo so I can review the item for YouTube - link in sig. ;)
 
phobos said:
It seems I'll be receiving the drobo today. I'll give you some first impressions when I set it up. I'm a little bit concerned about the noise though.
I'm reading some conflicting reports on the internet. Some say it's very silent others say the noise is intolerable. Drobo gives a 30db value while the disks are working which is obviously audible but not irritating. Others also mention a vibrating sound depending on the surface it's on. I guess I'll just have to wait and see!

I'm thinking of maybe using single disk redundancy at first and when I fill up the system with drives use the dual disk redundancy. It's not clear to me though if that can be changed at a later time. Are we stuck on whatever setting we used the first time we setup the system?
Click to expand...

How did you get on with the setup?
I didnt get time to do mine! I need to review it as I setup as well (part of the reason why Drobo gave it to me with a discount) which is going to hold things up a little. Will have everything together for next weekend so will be doing my setup then - itching to get going with it though! lol
 
I have the 2nd Gen FW800 drobo and I abosolutlely hated it. I had big time buyers remorse as it was so incredibly slow.

I then actually complained to Drobo about year in and it turned out I had a faulty unit lol. They fixed it and then that was faulty and then they replaced the unit and its been perfect ever since.

My only complaints with this one is that its very noisey to me! I'd compare it to the first gen xbox 360.

So i'm very interested with how you find the noise on the new one?

Also on a side note.. since having my itunes on the drobo it keeps damaging my library file.. any ideas?
 
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