Imac 2013 & Drobo 2nd generation

[Ieziebie]

Hi,

I'm looking into some storage options for my new Imac. Anything thunderbolt related is quite expensive at the moment.

The main purpose is to store my movies/music/etc.... on there. I could get me second generation Drobo for cheap. Does anyone have this hooked up to an Imac through a Thunderbolt>FW800 adapter? How's performance and stability? Any other (better, faster, cheaper) options?

Thanks....

 

[Attonine]

I have a 2nd gen drobo, hooked up to a 2006 iMac. The Drobo is used to store my iTunes media. I'm currently looking at replacing this for a 4 bay Synology NAS. My Drobo has worked well, and indeed is still working well, but it's getting old now, I've had it for 6 years or so and am looking at replacing it before it fails due to age.

The 2nd gen drobos are pretty old now. I would recommend looking at Synology or QNAP or similar NAS boxes. They are only a touch more expensive new, but have a lot more to offer, feature wise.

 

[willgreene99]

I went with a QNAP TS-419P II. I installed four 3TB Seagate drives and set it up as Raid 5. So far this is working well for iTunes media along with file storage for my family. This config gives me almost 9TB of space. So far, the speed is good enough to provide several streams of movies to my kids i-devices.

 

[Sparky9292]

I have a 2nd gen drobo, hooked up to a 2006 iMac. The Drobo is used to store my iTunes media. I'm currently looking at replacing this for a 4 bay Synology NAS. My Drobo has worked well, and indeed is still working well, but it's getting old now, I've had it for 6 years or so and am looking at replacing it before it fails due to age.

The 2nd gen drobos are pretty old now.

The 2nd gen 4-bay drobos go for around $200 on ebay. The current replacement for it is the 5D model. Well they are selling a 4 bay drobo mini but that can't use your drives from the old 4-bay model.

My 2nd gen drobo fan was making a horrible sound, so I replaced it for about $10.

My big complaint with this old drobo is that it is sloooooww. I put my iPhoto library and iTunes libraries on it and we'll often get the beachball having to wait for the drobo to populate the data.

I put my torrent folder in on the drobo and transmission will often freeze up waiting for the drobo to complete it's operation.

The iMac does have a firewire 800 port, so that works great with the 2nd gen Drobo. However, there's no way that the drobo actually transmits data at FW800 speeds.

I'm pondering the new 5D drobo but it's around $700 on amazon! Thunderbolt would be nice but that's a $500 difference between selling my old one on Ebay and buying a new one.

 

[Bear]

You have a late 2012 iMac. There is no 2013 model yet.