Drobo for Final Cut

[erifneerg]

I'm just wondering if using a Drobo unit as a RAID unit with Final Cut as external drive (or whatever it's called) to store projects/tec.

 

[hooksster]

As long as your not working with a format that requires a faster data rate than FW youll be ok. now if you are going to expand in the near future to a higher format, then i would suggest looking into other Raid solutions, either by creating your own, or looking into the companies out there that offer raid solutions like Caldigits. Either way my advice to you is, you get what you pay for, so make sure you dont buy something that you will out grow in 6 months and end up having to spend more money on top of what you already bought.

In case you where wondering, my set up is a enhanced tech 8 bay enclosure with 8 1tb hitachi HDDs set up as a Raid 5, connected to a highpoint tech card in a G5 tower that is set aside as strictly a server. We have our network set up over Gigabit Ethernet to 2 dual quad 3.0 mac pros and 3 3.06 imacs. We work with P2 footage and have no problems with dropped frames. I personally wouldnt recommend highpoint tech as a card but it what we have so i make it work.

 

[ChemiosMurphy]

NO!
Drobo is USB 2.0 only. USB absolutely sucks for editing. FW400, FW800 or eSata for video. I've seen people get away with DV and HDV, but if you are doing anything hardcore like ProRes422 it's going to screech to a halt.

What kind of Raid are you shooting for? Speed or Backup?

Here's my setup.

Mac Pro Internal Drives..
Bay1: 750 GB OSX Drive
Bay2: 750 GB CLONE of OSX Drive
Bay3: 640 GB Raid Stripe (0) of Suicide Raid
Bay4: 640 GB Raid Stripe (0) of Suicide Raid

HDDs on PCIe eSata card
Slot1: 640 GB Raid Stripe (0) Clone of Suicide Raid
Slot2: 640 GB Raid Stripe (0) Clone of Suicide Raid.

Each HDD is cloned incase of disaster. The Esata card has the drives in external enclosures so i can take them to my university, and just clone them back to the internal drives. So it's somewhat portable. I just use the OSX software raid, and it works fine for me.

But yeah, no Drobo since it's USB. and a total rip off. Just go to Newegg and checkout enclosures. eSata interface.

 

[Gymnut]

The latest iteration of drive setups offered by Data Robotics feature Firewire 800 as well:

http://www.drobo.com/

 

[-DH]

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1575402&tstart=0

-DH

 

[erifneerg]

The latest iteration of drive setups offered by Data Robotics feature Firewire 800 as well:

http://www.drobo.com/

yea, that's the only reason why i was thinking of using it. It was for my macbook pro and I don't really plan to do anything even that complex but some small jobs i get here and there. I mostly do web dev and i was thinking of getting a drobo as backup device. I later thought of the idea of using it as an external drive for FCP.

 

[NeoMayhem]

NO!
Drobo is USB 2.0 only. USB absolutely sucks for editing. FW400, FW800 or eSata for video. I've seen people get away with DV and HDV, but if you are doing anything hardcore like ProRes422 it's going to screech to a halt.

The new drobo has Firewire!

 

[ChemiosMurphy]

Quote:
Originally Posted by ChemiosMurphy
NO!
Drobo is USB 2.0 only. USB absolutely sucks for editing. FW400, FW800 or eSata for video. I've seen people get away with DV and HDV, but if you are doing anything hardcore like ProRes422 it's going to screech to a halt.
The new drobo has Firewire!

Crap, sorry for the messed up initial post then. I remember the previous version didn't and I didn't know they updated it. But based on Shane West's post on the Apple forums, i still say no.