@nateo200
Hey,
to directly answer your questions:
JBOD:
No. You will not be able to run a JBOD in this or any Drobo device. As priitv8 pointed out they are running their proprietary BeyondRaid. This also means that in case of a technical problem on the Drobo side you will not be able to access your files except you put the disks into a new Drobo - just to keep that in mind.
Yeah I know about the proprietary BeyondRAID but couldn't you theoretically by pass that and just use disk utility? I believe I read this somewhere...I saw someone doing just plain RAID 0 using disk utility without Drobo's software but I wouldn't do that since it seams sort of risky unless I bought another drive to use as a backup...Lady I work for just bought a Drobo (network type) and shes happy with it, pretty fast even over gigabit ethernet...
To your planned setup:
Check the
Capacity Calculator for insights on how much capacity you will end up with. I would not recommend the setup as you do not have control on how the data is distributed among the drives and therefore the speed might be limited by your platter and the capacity is limited by three 180GB solids ... worst of both world situation.
Either go speed (4 SSDs) or go big (4 HDDs). From my experience the former will not give you tremendously more performance than the latter in a Drobo. So I will always recommend to go big. Put in four 7k drives and you will get your >200 MB/s sustained read/write performance. It is important to note that you need to drive the Drobo with four drives to gain best performance.
Capacity is less of a concern for me, I checked the calcs and it seams HDD's would be better. I figure the HDD solution will work better, plus 4 Seagate Momentus 7200RPM 750GB drives for $300 is a deal (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicat...sp?page=1&Nav=|c:2676|&Sort=4&Recs=10)...just hoping they stay that cheap. How about an mSATA SSD? I know Drobo says you can use this as sort of a giant Cache, do you think its worth it? Either way I'll probably buy a 32 or 64GB mSATA drive just because but curious.
Price:
True these "Raids" aren't cheap but they provide you with a certain level of performance and comfort. The big plus for Drobo is the easy upgradeability which you will barely find in any other system. This and the flexibility to run with different drives within a setup makes it an investment for a hopefully long time.
If you need performance over everything the Drobo mini is probably not the right call. I kept mine because I get my >200MB/s sustained performance and I can upgrade to larger disks when they become available. And for the current price I think it is a good compromise device which can achieve satisfying speeds.
I mean performance is nice but capacity is important too. One thing that frustrates me is single drive set ups, out of the box from my LaCie drives I'm getting 120MB/s and about 80MB/s from other USB 3.0 drives but then that number falls to barely above 60MB/s as the drives either fill up, or get used more often...either way they slow down irreversably as time goes on and for my HDD that I store movies on thats perfectly fine, but for a drive I'm using to edit video off of I want speeds no less than 120MB/s, I don't edit 6 streams of uncompressed 4K full aperture so I don't think I'll need 500MB/s+ (but that WOULD be nice!), I mainly edit in 2K/1080p and some limited 4K editing (mostly sources that go into a 1080p timeline or a single camera 4K edit). One thing about RAID 0 HDD set ups over SSD(s) is that I shouldn't have to worry about write cycles in the long term right? I know I know SSD write cycles will take a LONG time before they wear a drive down but I'm the type to keep hard drives around for a long time for one use or another. I just watched a few more YouTube videos and with 4 Drives (Seagate Momentus seams to be popular) and people are getting 230+ on write and 270+ on read with no mSATA drive. Maybe in the future Drobo will update drivers, features, etc. to allow full performance? Who knows either way 200MB/s that won't decline as fast as a single is good for me. I would go with the SSD option but as you said it doesn't seam as though you'll break 300MB/s with that. I think at under $300 this is a deal as I don't know of other 4 bay or even 2 bay options, I researched it and the 2.5" 4 Drive bay choice seams like the coolest option since I have allot of 2.5" drives already.
Other things: I don't really care how loud the unit is, performance is more important that having your wittle ears hurt! I'm going to assume the thing sounds like a turboprop plane taking off with 4 7200RPM drives in it! I wonder what it would sound like with some 10K drives in! I believe WD makes a SATA non-SAS 10K drive!
- harly
