Drobo on the cheap!!!

[SHIVERINGGOAT]

Me Love You long Time...

Without Prejudice

I am planning to marry my Drobo (she's Firewire AND USB, I got her from Amazon UK no rebate)

Is there anyone near Central Park (commute in from Brooklyn etc?) that would be a Bridesmade/Witness to our union around mid November this year?

http://www.ultimateusaweddings.com are currently doing great deals for Drobo owners wanting to tie the knot. (they got us a suite in the Tribeca Grande for the price of a single room)

Western digital are sponsoring our special day so it should be amazing.

Thanks

 

[TRAG]

I can control my mini with my MacBook pretty simple to setup.

Can you explain how you do this?

 

[Chris Rogers]

Can you explain how you do this?

Through System Prefs > Sharing > screen sharing - set the permissions. Do this on the mini.

I see my mini in finder (on the MacBook) on my network. In the top right corner of the screen I can now see a button "Share screen" next to "Connect As" click and fill in the credentials and you're good to go.

 

[Flynnstone]

I've been thinking of a Drobo or RAID system.
I'd like to keep cost down, quiet (of course) and fast is good.
I have an iMac, Power Mac G5, a G4 mini and a MacBook.
I'd like to have them use Time Machine to backup to. (except the mini).
And I want to be able to do off site backups. Presently use a couple drives and switch over Time Machine to them.

Any recommendations?

 

[randy98mtu]

I was just on Amazon.com and now the Drobo is $349 minus $50 rebate for a $299 final price. The rebate is for orders placed before 8/31 and the price was $368 yesterday, so this price might not last long.

 

[srexy]

I was just on Amazon.com and now the Drobo is $349 minus $50 rebate for a $299 final price. The rebate is for orders placed before 8/31 and the price was $368 yesterday, so this price might not last long.

Newegg has had the $349 price + rebate for a while too. Wish I had the $$ right now!

 

[Chilz0r]

Get yourself an ONNTO DataTale, way better than any DROBO.

 

[srexy]

Get yourself an ONNTO DataTale, way better than any DROBO.

Looks interesting - cheap too.

How is the raid 5 configured? - web interface, discrete software or do you use the OS-X disk utility?

 

[mahen]

Newegg has had the $349 price + rebate for a while too. Wish I had the $$ right now!

Use Bing and order it through eBay from Beach Camera (Authorized Drobo Dealer). Bing gives 10% cashback if you buy through eBay's Buy it Now option and pay using Paypal. Drobo gives $50 via mail in rebate. Final Price is $271.67 (free shipping). If you sign up for eBay bucks you get back an additional 2% from eBay.
I ordered mine last week from BHPhotoVideo for $286 (including $50 rebate).

 

[Chilz0r]

Looks interesting - cheap too.

How is the raid 5 configured? - web interface, discrete software or do you use the OS-X disk utility?

It's all done through Disk Utility, once you've set the jumper switches.

 

[Alrescha]

Get yourself an ONNTO DataTale, way better than any DROBO.

I guess I wouldn't jump to quickly at one of those after reading this:

http://www.cooldrives.com/ra4xhddto133.html

"QCUSA has taken this issue very seriously and has decided that Onnto products will NO longer be sold by QCUSA in the United States, due to Failure by Onnto Corp. to support Onnto Manufactured and Designed DataWhale products."

A.

 

[Mhaddy]

Add me to the potential Drobo purchaser list. I'd like to do one of the following - are either possible?

1st Option
- Connect Drobo to my Mac Pro via FW800 so I am accessing it as quickly as possibly
- Connect Drobo via DroboShare so the rest of the computers in my house (Linux & Windows) can access it primarily for backup where they the degradation in speed wouldn't be as noticeable

2nd Option
- Connect Drobo to some other networkable hub that connects via FW800 or eSATA (does such a thing exist?)
- Access Drobo over the network

 

[pprior]

Add me to the potential Drobo purchaser list. I'd like to do one of the following - are either possible?

1st Option
- Connect Drobo to my Mac Pro via FW800 so I am accessing it as quickly as possibly
- Connect Drobo via DroboShare so the rest of the computers in my house (Linux & Windows) can access it primarily for backup where they the degradation in speed wouldn't be as noticeable

2nd Option
- Connect Drobo to some other networkable hub that connects via FW800 or eSATA (does such a thing exist?)
- Access Drobo over the network

1 - no
2 - no

The Real answer - it doesn't matter, because the drobo is slow. I own one and routinely get no more than 15mb/sec. That is slower than even plain jain USB, so hooking firewire or eSATA will make no difference whatsoever.

 

[hitekalex]

Add me to the potential Drobo purchaser list. I'd like to do one of the following - are either possible?

Neither is possible. And anyway, don't buy a Drobo - they are slow and unreliable.

 

[yg17]

How noisy?

I have a Drobo (the first USB only version) and the noise level ranges from can't even hear it to a 747 taking off in my bedroom. It just depends on the ambient temperature.

I do love my Drobo though, I've had a few hard drive failures in mine (**** you Seagate ) and each time, my data was all there, unharmed. It took 30 seconds to swap in a good drive and that was it. I've had it for over a year with no problems.

 

[hitekalex]

I do love my Drobo though, I've had a few hard drive failures in mine (**** you Seagate ) and each time, my data was all there, unharmed.

Did those drives really go bad, or did the Drobo just _declare_ them bad? Have you tested those drives separately from Drobo?

That's one thing the Drobo is known for - marking perfectly good drives as faulty. It did it to two of my 2 week old drives, which were perfectly good (drives passed full low-level diagnostics outside of Drobo). From my experience, the Drobo itself is less dependable than any modern drive.

 

[yg17]

Did those drives really go bad, or did the Drobo just _declare_ them bad? Have you tested those drives separately from Drobo?

That's one thing the Drobo is known for - marking perfectly good drives as faulty. It did it to two of my 2 week old drives, which were perfectly good (drives passed full low-level diagnostics outside of Drobo). From my experience, the Drobo itself is less dependable than any modern drive.

I didn't test them outside the Drobo, but they were part of a batch of drives that Seagate put out that were known for having issues, so I assumed that's what did them in. I have 1 Seagate, 2 Western Digital and 1 Samsung in my Drobo, and it's never given me any trobule over the WD or Samsung drives.

 

[Superman07]

Data Robotics just launched some new Drobo's.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/23/data-robotics-introduces-5-bay-drobo-s-enterprise-ready-droboel/

I'm still annoyed no integrated ethernet on the "consumer" models, specificailly the new S. If that doesn't have it I'm not convinced a revised standard unit would have it either. Plus it looks like the S is not designed to support the Share device.

 

[Bye Bye Baby]

Neither is possible. And anyway, don't buy a Drobo - they are slow and unreliable.

Can't agree with you on the reliability factor. My experience has been excellent. Not to say that you might have had a different one.

As for speed- depends on what you want to do. I have all my digital media on my drobo and with the WD caviar black drives it streams everything everywhere- imac, apple tv etc.

Can recommend

 

[GroundLoop]

Data Robotics just launched some new Drobo's.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/23/data-robotics-introduces-5-bay-drobo-s-enterprise-ready-droboel/

I'm still annoyed no integrated ethernet on the "consumer" models, specificailly the new S. If that doesn't have it I'm not convinced a revised standard unit would have it either. Plus it looks like the S is not designed to support the Share device.

I may have to get a new Drobo S. I have been waiting for an update to include e-sata and now I have it. This is now officially on my christmas list.

Hickman

 

[zedsdead]

I may have to get a new Drobo S. I have been waiting for an update to include e-sata and now I have it. This is now officially on my christmas list.

Hickman

I agree. They sped up the processor, which accounts for a 20-30% increase. It may now be fast enough for video editing, which would be perfect for what I need it to do.

 

[kenmarered]

I have two Drobos - a noisy original one and a quieter gen 2. I use them to back up my Mac Pro and the other to store my iTunes library. I wouldn't be without them and they have saved my bacon when internal drives have screwed up.

I see that Drobo have now released a 5-bay Drobo S.

 

[xPismo]

Well I went for it. I just purchased a fw800 4bay drobo. $349 from amazon. Should be here next week. I'll be attaching it to my AppleTV instead of using the share device.

Since it will be next to my TV in my studio apt I'm hoping the 30db or less average sound level drobo reports is accurate. Has anyone taken one apart? If it survives the first few weeks I and the noise in objectionable I might take a shot at dampening the casing.

We will see how the airflow is patterned.

 

[Chris Rogers]

I bought this in June/July (I forget) and I've been running my media on it right to my Mini. Somehow yesterday I ended up losing 109 movies plus countless TV shows(60+).

All I remember is turning on my media center and trying to access a file, via plex, which just wasn't there. I closed plex to make sure the drobo was still mounted and the Drobo Dashboard Alert said that a drive was missing(1 of 3, would 4 have prevented this whole problem?), I clicked the box and it said that the drive had reconnected(I have no idea which one). I opened the dashboard and it said my 3 drives were functioning just fine but the file I was trying to access just wasn't there. I figured I'd restart the computer since that usually solves 99% of computer problems. This time the Drobo wouldn't mount and I had to repair it in disk utility before it would mount again. After 2 tries, it worked. I went through folders to make sure everything was there. I didn't know what was missing but the total number of movie files, for example, was just less.

The only way to identify the missing movies was in plex, since it remembers the file location. This was a time consuming process. The weird thing is, if you alphabetized my movies, whole sections are missing, like most titles that start with D, E, N, S, & T.

2 of the hard drives are seagate barracuda 1TB 7200RMP (I traded for them in the MR market place last year)
1 WD (Maybe it's Green?) 1TB 7200RPM

I'm really not happy about this, especially since I don't know why this happened. Should I just get the 4th drive? Anyone else experience a problem like this before?

 

[prostuff1]

I bought this in June/July (I forget) and I've been running my media on it right to my Mini. Somehow yesterday I ended up losing 109 movies plus countless TV shows(60+).

All I remember is turning on my media center and trying to access a file, via plex, which just wasn't there. I closed plex to make sure the drobo was still mounted and the Drobo Dashboard Alert said that a drive was missing(1 of 3, would 4 have prevented this whole problem?), I clicked the box and it said that the drive had reconnected(I have no idea which one). I opened the dashboard and it said my 3 drives were functioning just fine but the file I was trying to access just wasn't there. I figured I'd restart the computer since that usually solves 99% of computer problems. This time the Drobo wouldn't mount and I had to repair it in disk utility before it would mount again. After 2 tries, it worked. I went through folders to make sure everything was there. I didn't know what was missing but the total number of movie files, for example, was just less.

The only way to identify the missing movies was in plex, since it remembers the file location. This was a time consuming process. The weird thing is, if you alphabetized my movies, whole sections are missing, like most titles that start with D, E, N, S, & T.

2 of the hard drives are seagate barracuda 1TB 7200RMP (I traded for them in the MR market place last year)
1 WD (Maybe it's Green?) 1TB 7200RPM

I'm really not happy about this, especially since I don't know why this happened. Should I just get the 4th drive? Anyone else experience a problem like this before?

You are probably better off asking this question over on the Drobo forum and see if they can help at all. From what it sounds like one of the drives decided to "hicup" for a little bit and that cause a problem for the Drobo (which from my understanding it should not). I'm not sure if it was a Drobo problem or a drive one, but in either case the Drobo should have been able to prevent the data loss that you are now seeing. The reason you probably lost certain sections of movies is because of the way the information was organized on the Drobo and which drive decided to go bye bye. There are stories about the Drobo systems being unreliable and it is one of the reasons I ended up going with unRAID.

Installing another drive right now probably will not help, but it could... I am not familiar enough with those systems to know for sure.