Drobo Announces New Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 Storage Devices

[Yahooligan]

for speed maybe but it doesn't do anything for redundancy. Raid 5 is better for redundancy, slower than 1 but safer.

Depends on what you consider safer.

6-disk RAID10 won't suffer from the RAID5 write performance penalty and can have half the disks fail without losing data as long as you don't lose 2 disks in the same mirror.

RAID5 you can lose one disk. Period. Lose 2 and your data is gone. Not sure how this is safer.

So, maybe we have a different opinion about safety. RAID10 wins in terms of performance and handling failed disks, the downside is you have less usable space than RAID5.

 

[nuckinfutz]

So, maybe we have a different opinion about safety. RAID10 wins in terms of performance and handling failed disks, the downside is you have less usable space than RAID5.

This is really the thing that makes people shy away from RAID-10 (as well as not as much devices support it)

I think today there are few people that would trust RAID-5 over 10. Like you say if you lose one drive...fine. Rebuild the array and have it stripe parity across the new drive ...but this process will likely take many hours and if another drive fails. BOOM.

Eventually I hope to get a 8-Bay box and run RAID-10

 

[thederby]

Depends on what you consider safer.

6-disk RAID10 won't suffer from the RAID5 write performance penalty and can have half the disks fail without losing data as long as you don't lose 2 disks in the same mirror.

RAID5 you can lose one disk. Period. Lose 2 and your data is gone. Not sure how this is safer.

So, maybe we have a different opinion about safety. RAID10 wins in terms of performance and handling failed disks, the downside is you have less usable space than RAID5.

i think it's important to note that "performance penalty" is only incurred on writes. reads between RAID10 and RAID5 should be the same.

This is really the thing that makes people shy away from RAID-10 (as well as not as much devices support it)

I think today there are few people that would trust RAID-5 over 10. Like you say if you lose one drive...fine. Rebuild the array and have it stripe parity across the new drive ...but this process will likely take many hours and if another drive fails. BOOM.

Eventually I hope to get a 8-Bay box and run RAID-10

i've always been fine with RAID5 (the write penalty isn't a deal breaker for me), but i'd go RAID6 before i gave up half my capacity in a RAID10, especially in an 8-disk array.

again, i also have off-site backups (crashplan+) so, in the event i lose an array, it's merely inconvenient instead of catastrophic.

 

[Yahooligan]

Depends on what you consider safer.

6-disk RAID10 won't suffer from the RAID5 write performance penalty and can have half the disks fail without losing data as long as you don't lose 2 disks in the same mirror.

RAID5 you can lose one disk. Period. Lose 2 and your data is gone. Not sure how this is safer.

So, maybe we have a different opinion about safety. RAID10 wins in terms of performance and handling failed disks, the downside is you have less usable space than RAID5.

i think it's important to note that "performance penalty" is only incurred on writes. reads between RAID10 and RAID5 should be the same.

Yes, I did say it was a write penalty.

i've always been fine with RAID5 (the write penalty isn't a deal breaker for me), but i'd go RAID6 before i gave up half my capacity in a RAID10, especially in an 8-disk array.

again, i also have off-site backups (crashplan+) so, in the event i lose an array, it's merely inconvenient instead of catastrophic.

Agreed, it's not a deal breaker for me either (Obviously, since I'm using a 5-disk Synology NAS. ) I just wanted to point out some major differences between RAID5 and 10 that may have been overlooked by the previous poster who thought RAID5 was safer (For some reason, I don't know since they haven't come back to explain their reasoning. ).

There's no single "best" RAID config that would apply to everyone, folks have to evaluate their needs and what they can accomplish with the hardware they have (Or are considering). I'd love to have RAID10, but the expense of having to basically buy double the storage is one I can't justify for home use.

 

[smithrh]

Against my better judgement, I'm going to wade back into this thread a bit, hopefully just one last time. I was away on business so I got to miss all the fun, poor me...

So, just like when I spec things for work, I actually think about requirements before buying something - shocking, I know. I figure out what's got to be there, what's nice and what's noise. I then balance that against performance and price.

My requirements for redundant storage were pretty simple:

* Use the native OS without any extra software (required or "nice to have")

* Non-proprietary recovery of a failed single disk or array

* Reasonable performance (read/write)

Drobo doesn't pass muster on the first two items, and it raised eyebrows on the third. It's unsettling to hear more than a few reports of slow Drobo units. Sure, there are counter-examples of fast units, but what makes one fast and another slow? I didn't want to have to deal with chance or even worse, change my workflow to accommodate a storage unit.

Another non-starter (or showstopper, if you will) was the inability to self-recover a failed drive. Here, I'm referring to repairing or recovering a drive that failed within the set after it was replaced. With the configuration I went with, I still have a chance of fixing the drive if I so choose to do so, with off the shelf software. Worst case, I can send that one disk to a disk recovery company, but that's worst case.

That alone was enough to force me to look away from the Drobo unit. But the thing that stuck with me was the fact that there's a non-zero risk of losing all data with a Drobo - it's happened before and it's documented. Hell, the whole reason you're going to redundant disks is to de-risk - now you're going the opposite way by using a Drobo. You put ALL of your data on a Drobo at some non-zero level of risk, and when that happens you are absolutely dependent on Drobo the company to save your ass. All of your disks then have to go to Drobo and you lose physical control of everything you have while you wait for them to (try to) recover it, for a fee.

That's the definition of proprietary. Not sure where you kids hail from, but single-source isn't approved around here - not from a smaller company like Drobo.

Things clearer now? I did like the personal attacks, that was humorous for people that don't know me to ass*u*me that I was some clueless idiot, then post the same. I *especially* liked the "automagic" defense of the Drobo box. Yeah, no.

 

[firestarter]

Nice summary Smithrh - and I completely agree with your three requirements.

 

[Bartman01]

Against my better judgement, I'm going to wade back into this thread a bit, hopefully just one last time. I was away on business so I got to miss all the fun, poor me...

So, just like when I spec things for work, I actually think about requirements before buying something - shocking, I know. I figure out what's got to be there, what's nice and what's noise. I then balance that against performance and price.

My requirements for redundant storage were pretty simple:

* Use the native OS without any extra software (required or "nice to have")

* Non-proprietary recovery of a failed single disk or array

* Reasonable performance (read/write)

Drobo doesn't pass muster on the first two items, and it raised eyebrows on the third. It's unsettling to hear more than a few reports of slow Drobo units. Sure, there are counter-examples of fast units, but what makes one fast and another slow? I didn't want to have to deal with chance or even worse, change my workflow to accommodate a storage unit.

Another non-starter (or showstopper, if you will) was the inability to self-recover a failed drive. Here, I'm referring to repairing or recovering a drive that failed within the set after it was replaced. With the configuration I went with, I still have a chance of fixing the drive if I so choose to do so, with off the shelf software. Worst case, I can send that one disk to a disk recovery company, but that's worst case.

That alone was enough to force me to look away from the Drobo unit. But the thing that stuck with me was the fact that there's a non-zero risk of losing all data with a Drobo - it's happened before and it's documented. Hell, the whole reason you're going to redundant disks is to de-risk - now you're going the opposite way by using a Drobo. You put ALL of your data on a Drobo at some non-zero level of risk, and when that happens you are absolutely dependent on Drobo the company to save your ass. All of your disks then have to go to Drobo and you lose physical control of everything you have while you wait for them to (try to) recover it, for a fee.

That's the definition of proprietary. Not sure where you kids hail from, but single-source isn't approved around here - not from a smaller company like Drobo.

Things clearer now? I did like the personal attacks, that was humorous for people that don't know me to ass*u*me that I was some clueless idiot, then post the same. I *especially* liked the "automagic" defense of the Drobo box. Yeah, no.

Just looks like a rehash of the 'I hate Drobo' arguments, most of which can and have been used against the other solutions out there.

Bottom line:
RAID = redundancy, not backup. It allows for minimal downtime for specific failure scenarios or for maximum performance with no redundancy. If you HAVE found an absolute zero-risk way to store your data with only one copy on a single device, please share it with the group. Many of us would love to have that security.

RAID failures are never pretty. You are ALWAYS better off going to a backup copy of the data as opposed to trying to recover the data. If you are trying to recover data from a failed array, something else has gone very wrong somewhere. And you don't HAVE to go to Drobo, the independent data recovery experts work with Drobo's too. I've looked at many different RAID solutions I can't recall ever seeing one with no documented cases of lost data including entire arrays.

To your three points:
No extra software: Just look for a solution that has the software embedded in the hardware. Have to have a software interface somewhere, just not necessarily on your machine.

Non-proprietary recovery. Most all RAID solutions are proprietary (unless I am missing something), so I am not sure what you are looking for. Is there a solution like the Synology or the Drobo with expandable RAID that is non-proprietary and can be bought off the shelf?

Speed. Pretty simple here. The performance is based on the model of Drobo, not some wild variation within a single model run. Older Drobos were unusably slow for most anything other than offline storage. The newer Drobos are no speed demons, but (at least in the case of the current eSATA/USB3 Drobo S) are fast enough for online storage and media streaming. The mixed reports are due to people with different versions chiming in. I understand people having moved on and not wanting to look back, but telling current buyers that they are 'slower than a floppy drive, so don't buy one' is just not true.

Is Drobo perfect? Not by a long stretch, but no 'out of the box' solution at it's price point is. The current Synology devices look better to me overall (except for the larger footprint), but there are tons of people reporting hardware issues with at least some recent batches out there.

 

[smithrh]

unless I am missing something

You most certainly are. I'll leave it to you to figure out.

Peace...

 

[polaris20]

You most certainly are. I'll leave it to you to figure out.

Peace...

Which NAS box in the same league as Drobo, Synology, QNAP, etc. can you just pop the drive out of a RAID 1, and attach to a Mac/PC for recovery?

 

[Vermillion9494]

The point is that when Drobo's fail, due to the proprietary storage and poor support, you are often left with little to no recoverable data and little to no help from support.

I've had this happen twice after a brief flicker of the power in my house. All my other external FW hard drives were fine. The Drobo? Lost. Couldn't read the library/directory structure. Called support and was told to spend another $100 to buy Disk Warrior.

All the data stored on my two $30 FW enclosures from ebay were fine. data on my Mac was fine. Only the Drobo lost data.

Sold the Drobo as soon as I could...

Have you ever heard of a Uninterruptible Power Supply? I'm not sure why you expect devices to work when they don't have power. And just because your FireWire drive survived the power outage/brown out doesn't mean that they didn't suffer SILENT data corruption.

Do yourself a favor and get an UPS already.