Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Drobo 5D

M

Mindprey

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 8, 2013
44
0
What 4tb hard drives are recommended for the Drobo 5D? Right now I have 4 4tb Seagate ST4000DM000 drives in my media box, and was thinking of just inserting those into the Drobo, but someone said I needed to use a tyre NAS hard drive versus a desktop drive. This Drobo will function as my itunes media library, and a few miscellaneous backup files.

Recommendations are appreciated, but I am not on a budget where I can spend $1500 on hard drives. Thanks in advance.
 
I'd recommend a WD Red drive, they're specifically designed for such uses.
 
You say that you have a Drobo 5D, is this correct?

The Drobo 5D is the Direct Attached version and uses USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt. It has a faster interface than the 5N which is the Network version - so faster drives are better.

If you have a Drobo 5D I personally would use Western Digital Black drives, these are faster than the Red ones - a Drobo tech support agent recommended these.

However if you have the Drobo 5N, your limiting speed factor is the network interface and so Western Digital Red drives are more suitable - they are specifically designed for Network Attached Drives.

However in either case your current Seagate drives should also work fine. You can always upgrade at a later stage if needed.
 
Mindprey said:
Recommendations are appreciated, but I am not on a budget where I can spend $1500 on hard drives. Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

WD owns HGST, who make the HGST Deskstar NAS drives, which are faster then the WD Reds, and they work very well in RAID5 (that's how I have them configured) in an OWC Mercury Rack Pro, connected via eSATA to a Lacie Thunderbolt-eSATA hub.

http://www.amazon.com/HGST-Deskstar-3-5-Inch-Internal-0S03664/dp/B00HHAJRU0/ (NB: the Amazon price is on the sidebar $199.99)
 
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
Nemic said:
You say that you have a Drobo 5D, is this correct?

The Drobo 5D is the Direct Attached version and uses USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt. It has a faster interface than the 5N which is the Network version - so faster drives are better.

If you have a Drobo 5D I personally would use Western Digital Black drives, these are faster than the Red ones - a Drobo tech support agent recommended these.

However if you have the Drobo 5N, your limiting speed factor is the network interface and so Western Digital Red drives are more suitable - they are specifically designed for Network Attached Drives.

However in either case your current Seagate drives should also work fine. You can always upgrade at a later stage if needed.
Click to expand...

It is the 5D. Thank you for your advise. I might stick with my four 4tb Seagate Desktop drives now, then upgrade to the WD Black later on. Some additional research led me to believe that my Seagate Desktop drives will work fine in the Drobo 5D.
 
Mindprey said:
It is the 5D. Thank you for your advise. I might stick with my four 4tb Seagate Desktop drives now, then upgrade to the WD Black later on. Some additional research led me to believe that my Seagate Desktop drives will work fine in the Drobo 5D.
Click to expand...

Nice thing about the Drobo, is you can cycle in new drives as needed. I think you'll be fine with the Seagates for now, maybe not get quite the performance you would get with all new but no sense going to the expense of replacing perfectly good drives you already own for a few percentage points' increase in performance.
 
FreakinEurekan said:
Nice thing about the Drobo, is you can cycle in new drives as needed. I think you'll be fine with the Seagates for now, maybe not get quite the performance you would get with all new but no sense going to the expense of replacing perfectly good drives you already own for a few percentage points' increase in performance.
Click to expand...

Yeah, for Now I am going to use a Drobo 5D with 3 or 4 4tb drives as my main itunes library, then have a software RAID set up with 2 4tb drives in an enclosure for backup using Smart Backup. They are all the same drives, size and capacity.
 
There is no need whatsoever to use WD Black drives in a Drobo; the throughput of the drobo is abysmal compared to other options and won't come close to using the full speed of the Black drives.

Just about any drive will do in a Drobo, that's what it's made for. Shoot for reliability, not speed... Drobo's are not built to be a fast solution, just a flexible one.
 
David N said:
Shoot for reliability, not speed... Drobo's are not built to be a fast solution, just a flexible one.
Click to expand...

This is why I recommended the red drives, they provide a higher MTBF rating and are designed for such applications (DAS and NAS)
 
maflynn said:
This is why I recommended the red drives, they provide a higher MTBF rating and are designed for such applications (DAS and NAS)
Click to expand...

Yup. Three of the five drives in my 5D are Red and all four in my Mini are Red.

On a separate note, after having to RMA an enclosure to Drobo, I highly recommend avoiding anything Drobo. Speed is horrendous and support has been terrible to deal with when trying to get a dead unit replaced after only eight months... Once I eventually get my replacement unit I will be selling both of my Drobo's and replacing them with a couple Pegasus or Lacie units.
 
David N said:
Yup. Three of the five drives in my 5D are Red and all four in my Mini are Red.

On a separate note, after having to RMA an enclosure to Drobo, I highly recommend avoiding anything Drobo. Speed is horrendous and support has been terrible to deal with when trying to get a dead unit replaced after only eight months... Once I eventually get my replacement unit I will be selling both of my Drobo's and replacing them with a couple Pegasus or Lacie units.
Click to expand...

Personally, I found WD Caviar Reds to be slow compared to regular hard drives (I swapped in Toshiba 2TB drives to replace 4 Reds I had in an OWC Qx2).
 
David N said:
I highly recommend avoiding anything Drobo. Speed is horrendous and support has been terrible to deal with when trying to get a dead unit replaced after only eight months.
Click to expand...

feedback like this made me choose synology over drobo, but synology has it own share of issues. the support forums are lightly traffic'd, fine, but their own customer service has about a 5-7 day lag time. very problematic when trying to troubleshoot an issue having to wait almost a week between steps.
 
matreya said:
Personally, I found WD Caviar Reds to be slow compared to regular hard drives (I swapped in Toshiba 2TB drives to replace 4 Reds I had in an OWC Qx2).
Click to expand...

They are definitely marginally slower than many other drives because they run below 5900rpm. Regardless though, Drobo's should be much faster than they are regardless of the drives being WD Red or anything else... I've yet to see a 5D Break 300Mb/s. On a five drive array, that's pitiful...
 
HGST Drives, is a no-brainer, just search at google "hard drive reliability storage farm" watch the stats from some Storage farms, by faaaarrrrr the best are HGST (previously Hitachi)
 
So far both the Drobo 5D and my Seagate stm4000dm drives have been doing well. Transfer speeds have not been an issue and my media playback has been great.
 
Mindprey said:
What 4tb hard drives are recommended for the Drobo 5D? Right now I have 4 4tb Seagate ST4000DM000 drives in my media box, and was thinking of just inserting those into the Drobo, but someone said I needed to use a tyre NAS hard drive versus a desktop drive.
Click to expand...

I have five of these drives in my Drobo 5D and they've worked without issue. 4x the NAS version was the same price as 5x the desktop and as I use 2-drive redundancy and mirror to another enclosure, I am willing to take a bit more risk.

I had a Synology DS412+ before and I find the Drobo to be significantly faster over TB than the Synology was over GBE.
 
CWallace said:
I have five of these drives in my Drobo 5D and they've worked without issue. 4x the NAS version was the same price as 5x the desktop and as I use 2-drive redundancy and mirror to another enclosure, I am willing to take a bit more risk.

I had a Synology DS412+ before and I find the Drobo to be significantly faster over TB than the Synology was over GBE.
Click to expand...

Thank you for sharing. That makes me feel a little more comfortable.
 
David N said:
They are definitely marginally slower than many other drives because they run below 5900rpm. Regardless though, Drobo's should be much faster than they are regardless of the drives being WD Red or anything else... I've yet to see a 5D Break 300Mb/s. On a five drive array, that's pitiful...
Click to expand...

My bro-in-law just built a 5D with 5 4TB WD Blacks and a crucial msata. He sent me a screenshot from Blackmagic showing 500/500 r/w
 
That's pretty impressive. I've had mine for going on six months now, and I've had no issues with it. Very impressed by the performance all around.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back