Why no FW800?
USB 3.0 is great for those who have the newest systems, but for the rest of us (2011 I7 iMac) the lack of FW 800 or Thunderbolt is a deal breaker. Sure it's their economy model ... but I'd buy one to replace my Gen 2 Drobo 4 drive unit to avail myself of the faster processor speed and (hopefully) higher thru-put. As is, I have two systems, the afore mentioned Gen 2 and a Drobo S FW 800 5 drive unit. My response to some of the criticisms posted here are:
1. Tech Support. I had two failing drives in my Gen 2 system that was exceedingly difficult to troubleshoot and correct. I did receive significant assistance from Drobo tech support and was able to resolve the problem. It took a while but patience paid off.
2. The criticism about 'proprietary' formats being undesirable is not a valid criticism. Firstly, I don't believe one can take a RAID set from a system using one manufacturer's controller and install it into another's and have it work. Secondly, the DROBO format is based on their technology that allows for mixing and matching various size drives so that even if there were a "standard" means of striping data across a RAID volume, DROBO would depart from that standard so as to allow mix-and-match drive sizes.
3. The "Drobo is slow" criticism is valid. I can not speak for the new (unreleased) system with the faster processor but my older DROBO S (Gen 2) over FW 800 loafs along at about 60 MB/s Read rate. Certainly no match for the 780MB/s Read and 360 MB/s write I see from my RAID 0 SSD. I would probably be well advised to go to a 5D over Thunderbolt ... but have yet to devise a reason why I need the added speed.
I use my DROBO for my iTunes library and it has sufficient speed to stream HD content and the capacity is huge (5 x 3 TB drives). I also am interested in the safety of the single or dual disk redundancy. So my reasons for buying may not be the same as others .. hence my satisfaction vs their dissatisfaction.
As in anything purchased over the internet "Caveat Emptor" certainly applies.
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Are you sure about the 150 mb/s? I would think that would be more like 150 MB/s as my Firewire 800 Drobo S runs at about 60 MB/s or 480 Mb/s.
USB 3.0 is great for those who have the newest systems, but for the rest of us (2011 I7 iMac) the lack of FW 800 or Thunderbolt is a deal breaker. Sure it's their economy model ... but I'd buy one to replace my Gen 2 Drobo 4 drive unit to avail myself of the faster processor speed and (hopefully) higher thru-put. As is, I have two systems, the afore mentioned Gen 2 and a Drobo S FW 800 5 drive unit. My response to some of the criticisms posted here are:
1. Tech Support. I had two failing drives in my Gen 2 system that was exceedingly difficult to troubleshoot and correct. I did receive significant assistance from Drobo tech support and was able to resolve the problem. It took a while but patience paid off.
2. The criticism about 'proprietary' formats being undesirable is not a valid criticism. Firstly, I don't believe one can take a RAID set from a system using one manufacturer's controller and install it into another's and have it work. Secondly, the DROBO format is based on their technology that allows for mixing and matching various size drives so that even if there were a "standard" means of striping data across a RAID volume, DROBO would depart from that standard so as to allow mix-and-match drive sizes.
3. The "Drobo is slow" criticism is valid. I can not speak for the new (unreleased) system with the faster processor but my older DROBO S (Gen 2) over FW 800 loafs along at about 60 MB/s Read rate. Certainly no match for the 780MB/s Read and 360 MB/s write I see from my RAID 0 SSD. I would probably be well advised to go to a 5D over Thunderbolt ... but have yet to devise a reason why I need the added speed.
I use my DROBO for my iTunes library and it has sufficient speed to stream HD content and the capacity is huge (5 x 3 TB drives). I also am interested in the safety of the single or dual disk redundancy. So my reasons for buying may not be the same as others .. hence my satisfaction vs their dissatisfaction.
As in anything purchased over the internet "Caveat Emptor" certainly applies.
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Are you sure about the 150 mb/s? I would think that would be more like 150 MB/s as my Firewire 800 Drobo S runs at about 60 MB/s or 480 Mb/s.
