Drobo Impressions.

[AppleDApp]

Am I understanding correctly that these three hard drives are what you would like to put inside a Drobo, or other DAS/NAS device? If that is the case, it is impossible to do so without losing all the data. These devices all reformat the drives and configure them to operate as a single drive. Also, Time Machine backups are tricky to migrate to new disks. It's not as simple as moving the sparsebundle file to the new drive. I've only changed TM drives twice, and both times wound up starting from scratch with a fresh backup.

Well the time machine backup is not an issue I don't mind restarting but I'm thinking I will need a USB SATA adapter so I can convert one 2tb drive to fat32 and transfer everything from my NTFS drive. Then I'll format the NTFS drive to HFS + and put it in the Drobo from there I would transfer everything from the Fat32 drive to the now HFS + drive in the drobo. Once that's done I'd format the fat32 drive to HFS +.

Is there an easier way to do this?

Quite a few reports of array failures with drobo. Personally I'd recommend a 4-bay Synology disk station in RAID5 mode. Faster than the drobo and reportedly more reliable.

Does anyone else agree with this post?

I have two.

One is a DROBO Pro with (8) 2TB Western Digital Green drives with 64MB cache on each drive.

The other is a DROBO S Second Gen with (5) 2TB Western Digital Green drives with 64MB cache on each drive.

The Pro is connected to my Mac Pro via iSCSI
The S is connected via ESATA

Both transfer data to and from the mac at around 90MB/sec.

Streaming multiple movies from the units via 802.11N is fine.

I'm very happy with the DROBO units and with DROBO support.

why do you need 26 TB of storage? I know some of that serves as a buffer but I find it hard to believe some users have more then say 5Tb to backup.

 

[Cynicalone]

I have two Drobos one is the 2nd Generation Drobo (4 Bay FW800) and the other is the DroboPro.

The Drobo will be 3 in October and has been problem free for 2 1/2 years. Sure it's not the fastest box, but it does it's job just fine.

The DroboPro is a little over a year old and has also been problem free.

Data Robotics has added 3TB+ drive support to nearly all the models, and will add it to the 2nd Generation Drobo soon.

 

[AppleDApp]

Data Robotics has added 3TB+ drive support to nearly all the models, and will add it to the 2nd Generation Drobo soon.

Great thanks I didn't know that the Drobo 2nd gen didn't support 3TB+ drives. Not that I will need one anytime soon.

 

[ugahairydawgs]

Got my Drobo and two 2TB drives yesterday.

How did everyone format theirs? Gives me the option to format up to 16GB even though I will only have 2TB of usable space. When I expand in the future I'm sure I'll only add a couple more 2TB drives. So should I format based on that? Or format it at 2TB and then create a new volume for additional drives added in the future? Or should I go ahead and format at a different capacity?

 

[timish]

Got my Drobo and two 2TB drives yesterday.

How did everyone format theirs? Gives me the option to format up to 16GB even though I will only have 2TB of usable space. When I expand in the future I'm sure I'll only add a couple more 2TB drives. So should I format based on that? Or format it at 2TB and then create a new volume for additional drives added in the future? Or should I go ahead and format at a different capacity?

No, format it out to 16TB.

This allows you to grow the volume out to 16TB as you add disks. (even though actual usable will be whatever capacity, minus Beyondraid protection you have in the unit)

If you only format the DROBO to 2TB you will then have to create another volume when you fill that one up.

FYI, the DROBO will get VERY slow as you get close to the actual, physical storage capacity of the unit. This is intentional and in addition to the indicator lights is a hint to add more physical drive capacity.

 

[Aidoneus]

No, format it out to 16TB.

This allows you to grow the volume out to 16TB as you add disks. (even though actual usable will be whatever capacity, minus Beyondraid protection you have in the unit)

If you only format the DROBO to 2TB you will then have to create another volume when you fill that one up.

FYI, the DROBO will get VERY slow as you get close to the actual, physical storage capacity of the unit. This is intentional and in addition to the indicator lights is a hint to add more physical drive capacity.

When does this start to manifest? I'm about to hit the 7th light on a 5TB Drobo, so is it worth filling the final drive slot?

(Currently 2TB + 1TB + 2TB with a potential third 2TB drive.)

 

[AppleDApp]

When does this start to manifest? I'm about to hit the 7th light on a 5TB Drobo, so is it worth filling the final drive slot?

(Currently 2TB + 1TB + 2TB with a potential third 2TB drive.)

or get a 3tb drive.

 

[timish]

When does this start to manifest? I'm about to hit the 7th light on a 5TB Drobo, so is it worth filling the final drive slot?

(Currently 2TB + 1TB + 2TB with a potential third 2TB drive.)

Are the indicator lights next to the drive slots still green?

I believe the unit slows down transfer wise when the lights turn yellow.

Dashboard should also warn you as well.

If you are 70% full (7 blue lights illuminated) I would add another drive.

 

[Cynicalone]

When does this start to manifest? I'm about to hit the 7th light on a 5TB Drobo, so is it worth filling the final drive slot?

(Currently 2TB + 1TB + 2TB with a potential third 2TB drive.)

Long before you get to that point the Drobo will begin to alert you that you need to add more space.

My four bay Drobo is always borderline full, I try to keep it below 90% because it begins to slow down and by 95% it is at a crawl.

I can't add more space yet, it is already full of 2TB Drives. I'm just waiting for the 3TB update and then I'll finally be able to expand it a bit.

 

[AppleDApp]

I can't add more space yet, it is already full of 2TB Drives. I'm just waiting for the 3TB update and then I'll finally be able to expand it a bit.

3tb drives are available.

 

[Cynicalone]

3tb drives are available.

The update from Data Robotics for the Drobo isn't out yet, that's what I was trying to say.

Once that's out then I can add the 3TB drives.

Right now the Drobo's maximum capacity is 5.4TB roughly, soon it will be expandable to 8.1TB's.

 

[h00ligan]

Are drobis more reliablethan they used to be?

They used to lock down their support forums unless you had a serial you couldn't view them (shady).

When was their last update?

Are the 'apps' still command line and have they improved?

 

[AppleDApp]

Are drobis more reliablethan they used to be?

They used to lock down their support forums unless you had a serial you couldn't view them (shady).

When was their last update?

Are the 'apps' still command line and have they improved?

from what I hear they are more reliable. The forums are still locked.

Beware I just found these articles.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1023&message=28874596

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=38936

 

[h00ligan]

Thanks for the links.

I just can't justify even taking a chance on a product of questionable reliability when they are hiding their support structure and the main place to see how reliability is.

I have just read too many horror stories.

Especially interesting you linked to two sites on my daily list and the main reason I need such a solution. Not a good omen!

 

[AppleDApp]

Thanks for the links.

I just can't justify even taking a chance on a product of questionable reliability when they are hiding their support structure and the main place to see how reliability is.

I have just read too many horror stories.

Especially interesting you linked to two sites on my daily list and the main reason I need such a solution. Not a good omen!

Yeah I was really pumped to get a drobo but now a synology NAS seems like the way to go if you want an external solution or build a small linux server depending on what you would use a NAS for.

 

[h00ligan]

Im using a (heresy) windows home server, an older one...haven't had any issues, but I do back up online jic. So I guess for now I I'll continue to use that.

I had previously used a couple of link sys linux based nas, they were awful.

 

[Gnome44]

Indexing...

Be searchable like a normal HD?

Yes, once it indexes it will be searchable through spotlight.​

I have a question about what you mention above. I am running a Drobo FS, and it's been set up for quite a while, so assume it has had time to index, yet remains unsearchable.

It shows up as a shared location in Finder rather than a drive.

Am I missing something?

 

[AlanShutko]

The question above was about a drobo connected by firewire. Spotlight indexes local drives. It does not index network drives.

By default that is. Doing some googling, it looks like you might be able to index it by doing


sudo mdutil -i on /Volume/network_volume

From the command line.

 

[turtle777]

No problems streaming content from the Drobo?

Nope, I stream movies from my Drobo via WLAN to my MBP, works.
The bottleneck would be the WLAN anyways.

-t