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Drobo 5D
- Thread starter Ifti
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That's what he said.Truly i have never seen that.Any one here who can show me pics?
On another notice, buying a Crucial m4 right now is kinda a bad idea, as the Crucial M500 is about to be released every day now - that's why nobody has the m4 in stock.
I'm talking of mSATA not full SSD - and the speed dfferences are so small its almost non-noticable.
EDIT - It seems the M500 has slower write times then the M4??
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The M500 is less expensive while enhancing the write speeds, as well as speed for small files.
The 128GB m4 is rated at 175MB/s, while the 256GB M500 is rated at 250MB/s and is supposed to cost around £100 or $150. (I've seen the retail prices for the various M500 drives, but they are still marked as "ordered at the manufacturer" and that says nothing about what they'll cost once they actually arrive at the retailers).
And it'll be available in an mSATA form factor.
The 256GB mSATA M4 is rated at 260MB/s? So the newer M500 is slower??
I understand the actuall full on SSD's have faster write times though, and go up to 960GB finally at a reasonable price!
The 128GB mSATA M4 has a write speed of 175MB/s, whereas the same size 128GB in the m500 is rated at a lower 130MB/s - nevertheless, the difference in speed when its being used as a cache for the Drobo 5D may be too little to notice anyway?
I dont really want to go for a 256GB since it will be wasted in the Drobo - considering the optimal size is only 64GB! The only reason I went for the 128GB was the availability and the cost (I managed to get it for £44).
I do see what you mean though - the m500 may well be better value then the m4, but for my uses (in the Drobo) would I really see any difference in normal day to day use (backups, and video editing, using Thunderbolt connection)?? And from what I see write speeds of the mSATA variations are slower then the M4?
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There is no 64GB M500 anymore, so you have to compare the 128GB m4 to the 256GB M500, as they are similarly priced.
I think by 'perfect size' they mean that you shouldn't put a 32GB in there rather than installing something larger. It just caches more frequently used blocks that way and hence it's beneficial. Apples Fusion Drive comes in 128GB as well, and other than moving rather than copying the data, it's the same idea.
Ah, I got ya.
I'll take a look at the M500 when its available in that case - still have time to return my M4 if I decide to switch
Thanks.
Here are my first impressions.
I haven't used it extensively though so my opinion might change in the future.
I think that these RAID systems will show their worth when a drive fails. How fast can you be back up and running? How smooth is the transition process etc. I hope I won't find that any time soon.
So far I guess I'm pretty much ok with it. It's not going to win any awards for speed that's for sure but I knew that from the reviews so no surprises there. On average I'm getting read and write speeds somewhere around 100MB/s. Sometimes it's quite faster than that (190MB/s) and others slower (around 70MB/s) so I guess it's safe to say it's somewhere around the 100 mark.
I did some light video editing and I was pleased it didn't choke on me. But more on that as more projects are coming through.
The thing I didn't like that much was the noise coming from it. Drobo says it's 30db while working. I don't know if that's really the truth but I can say it's noisy. Sometimes when I don't have work to do and will only browse or do non work related stuff I just keep it off just so I can appreciate the silence!
For some people it might not be so annoying so don't let that detract you from buying the product. For example I get really irritated with the fan of my home cinema which is less noisy than the Drobo but has a quite prominent base sound.
Other than that it works as expected. I'm not blown away by it. It does its job and that's about it. That's not a bad thing in any way but I would have preferred to have my jaw drop on the floor!
By the way I haven't had the chance to try it out with a mSata disk so we will see how that goes when crucial restocks their products.
I haven't used it extensively though so my opinion might change in the future.
I think that these RAID systems will show their worth when a drive fails. How fast can you be back up and running? How smooth is the transition process etc. I hope I won't find that any time soon.
So far I guess I'm pretty much ok with it. It's not going to win any awards for speed that's for sure but I knew that from the reviews so no surprises there. On average I'm getting read and write speeds somewhere around 100MB/s. Sometimes it's quite faster than that (190MB/s) and others slower (around 70MB/s) so I guess it's safe to say it's somewhere around the 100 mark.
I did some light video editing and I was pleased it didn't choke on me. But more on that as more projects are coming through.
The thing I didn't like that much was the noise coming from it. Drobo says it's 30db while working. I don't know if that's really the truth but I can say it's noisy. Sometimes when I don't have work to do and will only browse or do non work related stuff I just keep it off just so I can appreciate the silence!
For some people it might not be so annoying so don't let that detract you from buying the product. For example I get really irritated with the fan of my home cinema which is less noisy than the Drobo but has a quite prominent base sound.
Other than that it works as expected. I'm not blown away by it. It does its job and that's about it. That's not a bad thing in any way but I would have preferred to have my jaw drop on the floor!
By the way I haven't had the chance to try it out with a mSata disk so we will see how that goes when crucial restocks their products.
Thanks for that. I'll be setting mine up on the weekend with the same 3x3TB WD Red disks along with the mSATA card, so ill come back with some tests also
I took the liberty of contacting Drobo on this. They told me that while initially you didn't see performance increases with larger SSDs, the latest firmware for the 5D and Drobo Mini supports SSDs up to 640GB, and the performance increases with a larger SSD. A firmware update for the 5N that takes advantages of larger SSDs will roll out later this month.
So the M500 will actually prove useful in those devices.
So the M500 will actually prove useful in those devices.
Ok, so I finally set up my Drobo today.
With 3x3TB WD Red drives and the 128GB mSATA, I'm peaking at 250-280MB/s Write and around 208MB/s read. Bear in mind that's a 2GB file test using BlackMagic.
With 3 drives I'm pretty happy with that speed. Hopefully will go higher as I add drives in the future.
Will have a full review and speed tests up on my youtube channel soon.....
With 3x3TB WD Red drives and the 128GB mSATA, I'm peaking at 250-280MB/s Write and around 208MB/s read. Bear in mind that's a 2GB file test using BlackMagic.
With 3 drives I'm pretty happy with that speed. Hopefully will go higher as I add drives in the future.
Will have a full review and speed tests up on my youtube channel soon.....
Is the mSata drive making such a huge difference? We have the exact same number of drives and brand but without the mSata (I'm still waiting for crucial to restock their supplies)
My results on write are nowhere near as good as yours.
At best on a 2GB write I'm getting 200MB write (175 on average) and somewhere around 215 for read. If the mSata is making such a huge difference than I can't wait to get my hands on one!
And I'm definitely going for a higher capacity since the read write times are better on the bigger ones and finally drobo seems to utilise the extra space for speed.
Im not sure to be honest as Ive not used the Drobo without the mSATA at all.
I may try it as a test though
When you run the test it seems to jump up and peak and then come down to around your speeds after a while to be honest (2GB test) - so whether its making a huge difference, I dont know.
I agree with a lot of others though - its certainly no as quiet as I thought it would be! Not majorly loud, but makes a difference after you get used to the silence of the Mac Mini Server its connected to. Cant wait for longer TBolt cables so I can store the Drobo away!
Well for some reason (which is very worrying) my drobo was slightly corrupted. I had problems mounting the drive so after some quick feedback from tech support we found that the disk was corrupted.
It wasn't anything that disk utility couldn't solve in a minute but it's really worrying that such a new system was so easily corrupted.
Especially since I take such great care properly turning off the drobo.
Hope this is a one off problem!
It wasn't anything that disk utility couldn't solve in a minute but it's really worrying that such a new system was so easily corrupted.
Especially since I take such great care properly turning off the drobo.
Hope this is a one off problem!
I also properly turn mine off from the Drobo dashboard etc.
will keep a close eye on mine for a while - just transferred a lot of my data to it yesterday and will be doing more shortly!
I've had the Drobo 5D since it launched. I get close to 280 MB/sec.
You can't use that as a measure of speed. You need to account in terms of IOPS. (I/O per second) and how it reflects your usage. Copying small, random files, the Drobo 5D shines. But copying large files (movie files, disc images), there will be things that smoke it.
I had mine maxes out with a 3TB drives and a 128GB SSD Crucial. I am planning to upgrade to all 4TB. I have 8 4TB drives waiting to move over.
I'd give more info but the last time I posted a link to my review, it was pulled. You can see Amazon's review. Mine is the highest user's recommended. Or just look for my screen name elsewhere.
Mine did fail an entire array once. But that was due to me messing around; doing some testing.E.G. Seeing if it would mount on Windows via Thunderbolt. I was the first customer to complain it didn't work in Windows. The next day, they issued a FAQ.
I've read of horror stories of Drobo failing. Well, I work with RAIDS, fast RAIDS all day long and you should always have a second, third backup of your data, period. I back up everything 3 ways to Sunday so I am not worried.
I did have a drive fail and it did rebuild easily. The drive was RMA back to Seagate.
You can't use that as a measure of speed. You need to account in terms of IOPS. (I/O per second) and how it reflects your usage. Copying small, random files, the Drobo 5D shines. But copying large files (movie files, disc images), there will be things that smoke it.
I had mine maxes out with a 3TB drives and a 128GB SSD Crucial. I am planning to upgrade to all 4TB. I have 8 4TB drives waiting to move over.
I'd give more info but the last time I posted a link to my review, it was pulled. You can see Amazon's review. Mine is the highest user's recommended. Or just look for my screen name elsewhere.
Mine did fail an entire array once. But that was due to me messing around; doing some testing.E.G. Seeing if it would mount on Windows via Thunderbolt. I was the first customer to complain it didn't work in Windows. The next day, they issued a FAQ.
I've read of horror stories of Drobo failing. Well, I work with RAIDS, fast RAIDS all day long and you should always have a second, third backup of your data, period. I back up everything 3 ways to Sunday so I am not worried.
I did have a drive fail and it did rebuild easily. The drive was RMA back to Seagate.
I'm going to use a 5d strictly for time machine backups of my iMac with 3tb fusion drive.
Two questions:
Planning for filling the HD, what size storage and configuration would I need in the drobo for the time machine backup? I was going to start with 3 2tb red drives to back up the current 500+ gb of data I have now. I expect to grow into the 3tb over the next 2 yrs or so. Should I just start with the 3 2tb and add as needed? Or is there a better plan that would save money/heartache later. And I do want to do dual disk redundancy.
Since I'm only using it for time machine, is it really worth the extra cost to get the thunderbolt? Or would the 5n via Ethernet be sufficient?
Two questions:
Planning for filling the HD, what size storage and configuration would I need in the drobo for the time machine backup? I was going to start with 3 2tb red drives to back up the current 500+ gb of data I have now. I expect to grow into the 3tb over the next 2 yrs or so. Should I just start with the 3 2tb and add as needed? Or is there a better plan that would save money/heartache later. And I do want to do dual disk redundancy.
Since I'm only using it for time machine, is it really worth the extra cost to get the thunderbolt? Or would the 5n via Ethernet be sufficient?
Considering max volume size is 16TB, if you will with 5x4TB drives will you get the full 16TB, or thereabouts, since 1 drive is taken for redundancy?? Or is it 16TB BEFORE the redundancy etc?
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The 3x2TB would be more then enough, but I would be more inclined to go with 3TB drives - even if its 2x3TB drives for now. The cost of the 3TB drives makes them better value for money at the moment. That way you don't have to replace any drives, and can just add to them - that's my plan anyways.
Just correcting you here, Seagate only has 7200 rpm drives anymore. They did away with the 5900rpm drives well over a year ago (Feb 2012 to be exact).
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/seagate-barracuda-desktop-hdd-hard-drives,13880.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/4tb-3tb-hdd,3183-4.html
Paul, you'll be surprised to learn that the latest 4TB Desktop Drive from Seagate is 5900 RPM.
Here is the URL for Seagate's latest drive. You'll note that RPM is not listed in the data sheets, but the average latency is. Latency is directly correlated to RPM.
http://www.seagate.com/internal-hard-drives/desktop-hard-drives/desktop-hdd/?sku=ST4000DM000
More info here: http://www.storagenewsletter.com/news/disk/seagate-st4000dm000
I have the two of the latest 4TB Seagate barracudas and they are both 7200, and I have three of the latest 3TB Seagate barracudas and they are also all 7200. I have never seen a 4TB 5400.
Edit: I stand corrected, OWC is selling 5900rpm 4TBs. They do not seem to be Barracudas thought. Mine are definitely 7200.
I have been running my 5D with 4 Seagate 3TB 7200rpm drives for about 2 weeks now following the purchase of a new 27" iMac and I've been really pleased with it so far. Sure the 5D is not exactly silent but in comparison with my old Mac Pro/ATI 5770 its a whisper.
It's the whole mSATA thing confuses me though. Under my current configuration with dual drive redundancy I'm getting 175MB/s read and 135MB/s write which I'm quite happy with. Adding a 5th drive will hopefully improve this but what I'm not sure of is the mSATA part. I ordered then cancelled the 64GB Crucial M4 as the numbers just seem slow for an SSD but I'm not sure of the benefits of going for one of the 256GB much faster Crucial M4's would be in the 5D.
I read here the latest firmware allows the 5D to use bigger SSD drives but how?
If I edit a video in FCPX will all the footage be transferred to the SSD for quicker access or does it not work like that with the Drobo. The potential of a large SSD in the Drobo seems massive (Apple Fusion Drive?) but I'm not sure it works like I'm hoping it does.
Will I notice an improvement in real word (as Drobo put it) speed having a big fast SSD (256/512GB) over just a 64GB slower SSD drive? The Drobo web site looks nice but has no information regarding this subject (just meaningless marketing BS) and considering it a unique feature of the Drobo you'd think they would test the crap out of it, optimise to its full potential and tell us all about it. Relying on limited user reviews (some obviously sponsored) and ambiguous claims on Drobo's site is pathetic IMO.
It's the whole mSATA thing confuses me though. Under my current configuration with dual drive redundancy I'm getting 175MB/s read and 135MB/s write which I'm quite happy with. Adding a 5th drive will hopefully improve this but what I'm not sure of is the mSATA part. I ordered then cancelled the 64GB Crucial M4 as the numbers just seem slow for an SSD but I'm not sure of the benefits of going for one of the 256GB much faster Crucial M4's would be in the 5D.
I read here the latest firmware allows the 5D to use bigger SSD drives but how?
If I edit a video in FCPX will all the footage be transferred to the SSD for quicker access or does it not work like that with the Drobo. The potential of a large SSD in the Drobo seems massive (Apple Fusion Drive?) but I'm not sure it works like I'm hoping it does.
Will I notice an improvement in real word (as Drobo put it) speed having a big fast SSD (256/512GB) over just a 64GB slower SSD drive? The Drobo web site looks nice but has no information regarding this subject (just meaningless marketing BS) and considering it a unique feature of the Drobo you'd think they would test the crap out of it, optimise to its full potential and tell us all about it. Relying on limited user reviews (some obviously sponsored) and ambiguous claims on Drobo's site is pathetic IMO.
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The way I understood it was that the mSATA SSD was more for smaller files and thumbnails etc?
Its also used as a cache to store data as you move it around?