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Drobo + Drobo Share

toolbox

toolbox

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Oct 6, 2007
2,304
3
Australia (WA)
Hi all

the scenario - this past week my time capsule died. Upon opening it up the power supply has bulging caps. After replacing still dead.

Which means this is a perfect opportunity to by some new stuff! Does anyone here use a drobo + the drobo share component? Whether it be work / home use?.

What do you like / dislike about it?. I would like to use this again for my TC backups and also to store my media so i can stream these to my apple tv and over my lan.
 
Drobos get very mixed reviews on the several forums I visit regularly.

More negs than positives at last count...

How about a simple NAS drive?
 
Badger^2 said:
Drobos get very mixed reviews on the several forums I visit regularly.

More negs than positives at last count...

How about a simple NAS drive?
Click to expand...

True. Even on these forums numerous people have had trouble. I would love to purchase one but I just don't want to spend the time uploading data and have a very expensive (for me) machine become faulty. If you do go and purchase one, good luck and I hope all goes well.
 
I've had my drobo for well over a year, and I love it. Complete peace of mind. I use the FireWire 800 connection - perfect. I have not used the droboshare - no need for it here. Don't let too many people scare you away from the drobo - especially those who have never even used one.
 
redundancy

give the Drobo a shot. i seems like a great piece of gear, when it works as it should. I have read some negative reviews as well, which made me go with the OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 (4 drive RAID). I run mine in RAID 5 with 4 1.5 TB disks, for 4.5 GB "usable" space. I would loveto have it network-attached, but its not THAT important.

MY ADVICE: have a secondary backup of EVERYTHING on your Drobo/RAID. My OWC unit started acting up so I bought 2x2GB disks and a simple SATA to USB connection "dongle" for a redundant backup. I had to send my OWC unit in for service and they had to format the disks for a proper evaluation.
Not the ideal secondary backup solution, but the cheapest. Don't be in a situation where if you RAID or Drobo fails, you don't have you data.

Its a very expensive (for most of us) setup, to buy a RAID and then need to buy a backup for your backup, but its about all you can do.
 
The Drobo is fine, but the DroboShare is a POS; slow, buggy, expensive. If you do want a Drobo, I'd head for the Airport Extreme plus Drobo combination. Only drawback is you will not be able to access the Drobo Dashboard application via the Airport Extreme and Drobo combination (which is possible with the Drobo and DroboShare pairing).
 
rootsmaneuver said:
give the Drobo a shot. i seems like a great piece of gear, when it works as it should. I have read some negative reviews as well, which made me go with the OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 (4 drive RAID). I run mine in RAID 5 with 4 1.5 TB disks, for 4.5 GB "usable" space. I would loveto have it network-attached, but its not THAT important.
Click to expand...

How quiet is the OWC RAID box? I own several of their drives and am impressed at how quiet they are.
 
I have had my Drobo for a year now, and use it with Time Machine to backup two internal hard disks on my Mac Pro. It is connected via firewire 800 to the Mac Pro. I can still browse back to the 26th of Feb 2009 to restore any file I want, and the Mac Pro has been upgraded to Snow Leopard in between. While other people may have had problems, from my experience it has been 100% reliable. In December my primary hard disk failed, but using the Drobo and Time Machine I was able to recover everything.

Get an Airport Extreme and connect a Drobo to the USB port if you must have a wireless solution.
 
Sorry (not a personal attack, but...) I wouldn't recommend any hard drives from OWC. I've had three friends buy them and all three have had major problems. First friend bought an external drive (single drive) and it kept falling asleep on him for no reason. Second friend had a problem with the power supply, and a replacement all go bad on him. Third friend bought 2 new 4-drive eSATA RAID systems from them and they didn't work from day one. He was on the phone with tech support for hours and hours. They sent him replacement drives.....didn't work. They sent him replacement enclosures....didn't work. I haven't talked to him in a while, so I never heard what the final result was.

I been buying G-Tech stuff for many years now and haven't had issues with one of them (crossing my fingers). Just purchased two new G-SPEED ES Pro 8TB RAIDs. I haven't hooked them up yet, except to power them up and listen to the fans (VERY quiet). They are surprisingly small for how robust they are (internal power supplies!).

Also just bought a DroboPro for backup and it seems very robust. Fans aren't as quiet as the G-SPEED's but not bad. I haven't used it yet. Still waiting for Apple to release a new 12-core Mac Pro so we can buy one and hook everything together. (crossing my fingers for this month!)

Anyway, this has been my first hand experience over the years. (no I'm not affiliated with G-Tech in anyway) Good luck! :)
 
aricher said:
How quiet is the OWC RAID box? I own several of their drives and am impressed at how quiet they are.
Click to expand...

The OWC 4Drive RAID I have Is pretty quiet, for what it is. If its of any useful reference, its about as loud as my MBP Santa Rosa with fans running at 4000rpm, maybe a touch louder.
 
MitchLewis said:
Sorry (not a personal attack, but...) I wouldn't recommend any hard drives from OWC. I've had three friends buy them and all three have had major problems. First friend bought an external drive (single drive) and it kept falling asleep on him for no reason. Second friend had a problem with the power supply, and a replacement all go bad on him. Third friend bought 2 new 4-drive eSATA RAID systems from them and they didn't work from day one. He was on the phone with tech support for hours and hours. They sent him replacement drives.....didn't work. They sent him replacement enclosures....didn't work. I haven't talked to him in a while, so I never heard what the final result was.

I been buying G-Tech stuff for many years now and haven't had issues with one of them (crossing my fingers). Just purchased two new G-SPEED ES Pro 8TB RAIDs. I haven't hooked them up yet, except to power them up and listen to the fans (VERY quiet). They are surprisingly small for how robust they are (internal power supplies!).

Also just bought a DroboPro for backup and it seems very robust. Fans aren't as quiet as the G-SPEED's but not bad. I haven't used it yet. Still waiting for Apple to release a new 12-core Mac Pro so we can buy one and hook everything together. (crossing my fingers for this month!)

Anyway, this has been my first hand experience over the years. (no I'm not affiliated with G-Tech in anyway) Good luck! :)
Click to expand...

I've been buying from OWC for years without any issues until I got this RAID setup. I was getting some feedback from the LED's on the front that didn't match anything in the manual, so I called OWC. They had me send in the unit with the drives and ended up replacing the "board" in it. Works like a charm now and I have nearly 100 percent confidence in it. I still have a secondary backup solution, just incase.
 
The Drobo 2nd gen is honestly mediocre. It is slow, sometimes loud, and sometimes buggy.

With that said, I ran one for well over a year without any major issues.

My advice, if you want the Drobo, get it. Hook it up to the machine you want to backup and share from, share it out and skip the DroboShare.
 
I have several drobos and think there great. I have two drobos shared via a drobo share just for streaming and a pro which is used as my main backup. I can't fault them.

Yes the droboshare can be slow but with a wired network or pre-n I have had no issues and will be investing in a pair of drobo-s's in may.
 
Go drobo. You won't go back.

A lot of people talk about what they never use or don't know.

Had one now and it is really good.

Need to keep some free space to keep it happy.
 
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