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Drobo tip

N

nofixedabode

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 8, 2010
4
0
I've just had a jolly time with a weird Drobo problem.

The device vanished from the device list in Finder. The Drobo dashboard said it was fine, Disk Utility found no problems - except that the partition was greyed out and wouldn't mount.

I did a whole combinations of repair, standby, reboots, and restarts.

Nothing changed it all looked fine - except that the partition was greyed out.

Fix: For the n'th time, I powered everything down, unplugged the Drobo USB from the Mac, powered up. Then I did something different: I plugged it into a different USB socket on the Mac.

Everything was as if nothing had ever gone wrong. So now the question is: Where do I backup my backup (3.5Tb).....
 
Get rid of Drobo. It's too expensive and too slow. It's something I'd buy for mom, but that's about it.
 
jcpb said:
Get rid of Drobo. It's too expensive and too slow. It's something I'd buy for mom, but that's about it.
Click to expand...

Wow, blanket statement alert. I have a DroboS with 20TB capacity feeding 1080P BluRay rips to my home theater and upstairs 55" LED TV simultaneously. No problems here.
 
PhoenixRising said:
Wow, blanket statement alert. I have a DroboS with 20TB capacity feeding 1080P BluRay rips to my home theater and upstairs 55" LED TV simultaneously. No problems here.
Click to expand...

1080p Blu-ray rips playback at 4-6 MB/s
USB2 can handle 20-30.

you could the same thing with external drives, and not pay the several hundred dollars up front. granted you loose the backup and other features, but streaming 2 blu-ray rips isn't jaw dropping fast.

I've got a sansdigital RAID box, can be had for around $250, and gives you the same basic features. I had a drobo, i was doing good to get 3 MB/s at times from it.

also a DroboS with 20TB?
4 drives (4 data + 1 backup = 5 total)
20TB / 4 drives = 5 TB a drive?
or you have 5 drives at 4TB, with a capicity of about 16 or a little less.
meaning you paid $800 for the drobo and 5 times $250 for the drives, minimum just over $2000

try this to see what actual speeds you get from the drobo
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/blackmagic-disk-speed-test/id425264550?mt=12
 
waw74 said:
1080p Blu-ray rips playback at 4-6 MB/s
USB2 can handle 20-30.

you could the same thing with external drives, and not pay the several hundred dollars up front. granted you loose the backup and other features, but streaming 2 blu-ray rips isn't jaw dropping fast.

I've got a sansdigital RAID box, can be had for around $250, and gives you the same basic features. I had a drobo, i was doing good to get 3 MB/s at times from it.

also a DroboS with 20TB?
4 drives (4 data + 1 backup = 5 total)
20TB / 4 drives = 5 TB a drive?
or you have 5 drives at 4TB, with a capicity of about 16 or a little less.
meaning you paid $800 for the drobo and 5 times $250 for the drives, minimum just over $2000

try this to see what actual speeds you get from the drobo
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/blackmagic-disk-speed-test/id425264550?mt=12
Click to expand...

Ok Sherlock. First off, I didn't pay $800 for the Drobo. I got the whole setup for under a thousand through CL. And yeah, 20TB inside, actual capacity may very as you've so politely pointed out. But your estimation that USB 2 can handle the BR rips is incorrect. I had a FW800 drobo and USB 2.0 would choke constantly, probably because my rips are 10-20GB each depending on the film. Maybe it's the CPU controller in the S vs. 2nd gen Drobo, but the S is much, much faster. Either way, I'll be moving up to a thunderbolt Drobo whenever they are released.

You got 5x4TB drives in that SansDigital box of yours?
 
I don't think the naysayer has seen the new tb drobo's either #

Personally I love my drobo!
 
I have a USB2 Drobo. Whatever speeds I'm getting from it are definately not USB2. My portable USB2 drives transfer data faster than the Drobo.

At the prices Data Robotics charge, you can get a lot better for the money with QNAP, Syncology and others.
 
Reposted removing profanities from original post...

There is already plenty of DROBO bashing going on in the "New DROBOs" product thread by people who've never owned one, or haven't used one since the original product. It would be nice to have ONE DROBO thread on this forum where owners can relay their experience without being called idiots and shills.

General thoughts
I own a DROBO S. It has been reliable and plenty fast for my photo editing and conversions. It is my primary storage device for my entire Lightroom catalog and 1.5TB iTunes library.

Performance
I have ripped my DVDs to the DROBO and compressed them with handbrake to the DROBO and the compressions go as fast as the Handbrake benchmarks for others with my computer. I've also run Blackmagic hard drive benchmark app and the DROBO benchmarks faster than my single drive Seagate GoFlex. This all indicates that I/O is fine. Its not SSD fast for cripes sake and its not hardware RAID which could also provide speed advantages with multiple drives (see next section).

RAID
The DROBO uses proprietary software RAID. Because of this, if the device itself goes out, you'd need another DROBO to access your data. The thing is, this the case for ALL propitiatory software RAID devices including those from QNAP, SYNOLOGY etc. If you're not using a STANDARD RAID level, you need the proprietary device to access the drives.

So people who buy this are idiots then right?

IMO, no. Because there are advantages with proprietary RAID, like expandable storage pools without having to migrate your data off the device and back. If you want the advantages of STANDARD RAID levels, I'm not aware of any that ALSO support building your pool slowly. I only have 3 drives in my DROBO right now. I am not aware of any STANDARD RAID topology that would let me get more space by adding a 4th drive without having to re-create the storage pool meaning formatting.

Conclusion
The fact is the DROBO is not perfect, but my argument is that nothing is. The DROBO detractors simply have different priorities than happy DROBO owners have. They expect a speed advantage for having multiple drives. That's fine but they must build their array with a standard RAID level using ALL the drives they want in the pool to start with then (I didn't want to do that). They expect an open standards so they can access the data on any RAID device. That's fine but AGAIN they must build out a standard array with all the drives in the pool from the start (I didn't want to do that).

If there is a product that does everything the DROBO does that are the reasons I bought (any disk, any brand, any size, added at any time) and is faster and cheaper (the common knocks on DROBO) post it!!!!
 
imahawki said:
RAID
The DROBO uses proprietary software RAID. Because of this, if the device itself goes out, you'd need another DROBO to access your data. The thing is, this the case for ALL propitiatory software RAID devices including those from QNAP, SYNOLOGY etc. If you're not using a STANDARD RAID level, you need the proprietary device to access the drives.
Click to expand...

Let me enlighten you - Synology's is not proprietary like Drobos http://forum.synology.com/enu/viewtopic.php?f=106&t=38814

If data is to be lost, data recovery is much easier through recovery services....

When my data died on my Drobo I was stuck paying for their drobo care or buying a new Drobo similar to Scott kelbys case here http://scottkelby.com/2012/im-done-with-drobo/

To anyone confused on proprietary - drobo is known for this and they know this well where you'll be stuck in their format. Buyer beware, dont get screwed like me and many others. Hope this clears things up and obviously... Do your research. I myself am unsure of what I will replace my Drobo with.
 
Last edited:
Let me enlighten you. If you want the same features I mentioned, you must use Synology SHR which is NOT a standard RAID level. Also even that doesn't have the same features a DROBO does.
When adding disks to the SHR Volume, what sized disks can be used?

When adding additional disks to the SHR Volume, the size of the new disks must be equal or greater in size then then the previously added disk.
Click to expand...


That limitation doesn't exist for DROBOs. So thanks for proving my point by ignoring the fact that I pointed out unique features to DROBO that despite the fact that YOU don't care for or need those features, other people DO.

Additionally the Synology is a NAS. I wanted direct attached storage.
 
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