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Drobo vs. Synology/others
- Thread starter MacDann
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Drobo FS Follow-up
A couple of months with the Drobo FS and all is well. I started with four 1G Seagate drives and added a fifth shortly after. Easy to do and completely seamless.
I am running the "dual redundancy" feature which does take a lot of space, but right now I'm not in need of it. With nearly five gigs of storage I have about 2.75G available with dual redundancy and overhead.
I am between residences right now, so I am not using it for serving media, just as file storage/archiving and TimeMachine backups. The latter presented one particular weakness that has me befuddled:
If you have to restore a volume or machine using TimeMachine, you're going to have to mount the Drobo FS using the command line. While I can handle my own doing command line stuff, I have yet to figure out the correct string of commands and switches to get my Drobo FS mounted. There are a few references to this on the Web, but try as I might, I couldn't get them to work.
I see this as a serious flaw, especially for someone who has no experience in this area. Without the ability to mount the Drobo FS, you're pretty much dead in the water when it comes to restoring a TimeMachine backup on a trashed volume, or one that can only be started using an OS X boot disk or drive.
If anyone here can elaborate on this procedure, or wants to drop me a private note and walk me through it, I would be most appreciative.
All in all, I am happy with it. For someone who doesn't want to mess with having to set up and manage a RAID, the Drobo does a great job, IMHO.
MacDann
A couple of months with the Drobo FS and all is well. I started with four 1G Seagate drives and added a fifth shortly after. Easy to do and completely seamless.
I am running the "dual redundancy" feature which does take a lot of space, but right now I'm not in need of it. With nearly five gigs of storage I have about 2.75G available with dual redundancy and overhead.
I am between residences right now, so I am not using it for serving media, just as file storage/archiving and TimeMachine backups. The latter presented one particular weakness that has me befuddled:
If you have to restore a volume or machine using TimeMachine, you're going to have to mount the Drobo FS using the command line. While I can handle my own doing command line stuff, I have yet to figure out the correct string of commands and switches to get my Drobo FS mounted. There are a few references to this on the Web, but try as I might, I couldn't get them to work.
I see this as a serious flaw, especially for someone who has no experience in this area. Without the ability to mount the Drobo FS, you're pretty much dead in the water when it comes to restoring a TimeMachine backup on a trashed volume, or one that can only be started using an OS X boot disk or drive.
If anyone here can elaborate on this procedure, or wants to drop me a private note and walk me through it, I would be most appreciative.
All in all, I am happy with it. For someone who doesn't want to mess with having to set up and manage a RAID, the Drobo does a great job, IMHO.
MacDann
you shouldn't have to mount via command line, i've got a drobo, with 2 different time machine backups on it. an old one, and a current one. i Did a clean OS X install a few months back.
the current one will automatically mount as needed.
the old one, you just have to navigate to the share via finder. in that share there will be a .sparsebundle file just click on that, it will mount in finder. you can either then browse it normally, go to "latest" and you can see the most recent, or just click on the date you want, or "alt click" the time machine icon in either the task bar or the dock, and you can "browse other time machine disks" if you want to use the regular time machine interface.
you must access the mount via afp (apple's filesharing method) not samba (windows) or nfs. so unless you're doing something weird, it should just happen.
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although my drobo experience is not that great, i think for it to truly work well, it mush have downtime. i have torrents that pull from this drive, so normally have at least mild reading going on pretty much all the time. Some of my newer files, i'm doing good to get 5 MB/s read on them, but files that have been on a while, i'll get close to 40 MB/s.
the current one will automatically mount as needed.
the old one, you just have to navigate to the share via finder. in that share there will be a .sparsebundle file just click on that, it will mount in finder. you can either then browse it normally, go to "latest" and you can see the most recent, or just click on the date you want, or "alt click" the time machine icon in either the task bar or the dock, and you can "browse other time machine disks" if you want to use the regular time machine interface.
you must access the mount via afp (apple's filesharing method) not samba (windows) or nfs. so unless you're doing something weird, it should just happen.
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although my drobo experience is not that great, i think for it to truly work well, it mush have downtime. i have torrents that pull from this drive, so normally have at least mild reading going on pretty much all the time. Some of my newer files, i'm doing good to get 5 MB/s read on them, but files that have been on a while, i'll get close to 40 MB/s.
I think you may be misunderstanding what model I have. The thread is discussing a Drobo FS, which is an NAS, *not* a direct connected model, such as FW or USB.
As a result of this, you have to be able to mount the Drobo volume via afp using the command line- it will not be automatically recognized when the system boots using a boot disk or external drive.
MacDann
Very late to the party but actually I think he is referring to the FS. If I understand correctly you should be able to use Finder during a bare metal restore to point to the network volume and initiate a full TM restore that way.
I'm in a similar boat to the OP. I have a WHS solution which has quite good performance (I use it for TM as well as a media server to stream my high bitrate blu-ray rip MKV files) but I hate that I lose 50% of my disk space due to the disk duplication.
I am considering the Drobo FS, if they update it to support 3TB drives, of the Synology 1010+. The drawback on the Synology is it is a lot more expensive than the Drobo. On the other hand it is a LOT faster, has dual NIC support, more utilities available, etc.
Anyone have the Synology 1010+ in use on their network?
Unless I am missing something you cannot mount the FS from the Finder in a boot from a system CD. I have tried it.
You have to go to the console/command line and mount it using command line commands.
If this is not the case I would appreciate someone pointing out what I am missing. FWIW, Drobo refers to this process on their support site as well.
I had a hard drive failure with a TM backup, and I had to use the command line to get the FS mounted when I booted from an OSX install disk.
MacDann
You have to go to the console/command line and mount it using command line commands.
If this is not the case I would appreciate someone pointing out what I am missing. FWIW, Drobo refers to this process on their support site as well.
I had a hard drive failure with a TM backup, and I had to use the command line to get the FS mounted when I booted from an OSX install disk.
MacDann
You are probably correct but I thought for sure I had seen an article on Apple support about restoring network time machine volume from an airport, network connected time capsule or a networked Mac server which did not require manual mounting of the network disk.
Maybe just for SMB shares this needs to be done?
In any event I'm still hoping some Drobo vs. Synology discussion can still happen as I'm quite curious about the pros/cons between these two.
Maybe just for SMB shares this needs to be done?
In any event I'm still hoping some Drobo vs. Synology discussion can still happen as I'm quite curious about the pros/cons between these two.
I have had a Drobo FS for almost 3 years so far and it has always worked without any issues.
I have replaced a few of the drives over the years as my capacity needed increasing. The great thing about the Drobo is that it deals with all of this without any input required.
I have mine set for Dual Disk Redundancy. This means that if up to 2 out of the 5 drives fail at the same time then no data is lost. The Drobo lets you know which drives have failed and you simply slot new ones in. It also allows you to mix and match drive makes and capacities - so your storage can grow as you need it to.
The FS has recently been replaced with the 5N and it's supposed to be a lot faster.
They have a handy capacity calculator on their website:
http://www.drobo.co.uk/products/capacity-calculator/
I have replaced a few of the drives over the years as my capacity needed increasing. The great thing about the Drobo is that it deals with all of this without any input required.
I have mine set for Dual Disk Redundancy. This means that if up to 2 out of the 5 drives fail at the same time then no data is lost. The Drobo lets you know which drives have failed and you simply slot new ones in. It also allows you to mix and match drive makes and capacities - so your storage can grow as you need it to.
The FS has recently been replaced with the 5N and it's supposed to be a lot faster.
They have a handy capacity calculator on their website:
http://www.drobo.co.uk/products/capacity-calculator/
I've had ReadyNAS units for 6+ years. Solid and Fast with excellent forum. Works fine with OSX, Win and Unix.
Don't be put off by the Netgear name. ReadyNAS comes from the company Netgear purchased 5 years ago - Infrant. (Stora is the home grown Netgear NAS).
Available in 2bay, 4bay, 6bay versions. Easy drive add-in with realtime drive replacement/upgrade. Can provide 2 drive failure resilience as well as 1 drive resilience.
Don't be put off by the Netgear name. ReadyNAS comes from the company Netgear purchased 5 years ago - Infrant. (Stora is the home grown Netgear NAS).
Available in 2bay, 4bay, 6bay versions. Easy drive add-in with realtime drive replacement/upgrade. Can provide 2 drive failure resilience as well as 1 drive resilience.
Another vote for the ReadyNas. I have the 6 bay model and it's been working great for years as well. Started off with just 3 drives and have expanded it with 3 additional as needed over time. Was as simple as popping in the new drive. System automatically recognized it and performed the expansion (due to selecting X-Raid configuration upon setup years ago). It' worth a look as it have a few 3rd party apps that are useful as well. Example Plex Server. Supports TimeMachine and iTunes Server.