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Has Anyone Used A Drobo?
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I’ve been investigating my ideal mediacentre setup, and I’ve pretty much concluded that it involves a Mac mini connected to an HDTV. Storage, however, remains a problem — specifically finding enough space to keep everything on, preferably on a ‘single’ volume. I’d like to keep everything on one volume for simplicity’s sake, and so that it can all be held in a single iTunes library. Unfortunately, my collection of music and video is way more than a terabyte, thus ruling out a single hard-disk for the forseeable future.
As such, some kind of RAIDed NAS/external HD would seem to be the answer. The only problem with that is that I’ve never set up a RAID array in my life, and I really crave something simple that requires minimal setup and maintenance. About the only thing that really meets these requirements is the Drobo ( especially now that it has Firewire).
It’ll be a while before I can get together all the required pieces (due to cashflow), but I thought I’d ask now: how have people found the Drobo in day-to-day use? Any and all comments — on both the Drobo and my proposed setup — are most welcome.
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I've read good things about the Drobo, but it's loud loud loud. So you probably don't want it in the same room with your TV. Put it and the Mac Mini somewhere away from people and stream wirelessly to an Apple TV.
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Seagate has announced a 1.5 TB drive, and other vendors are sure to follow with announcements of their own. Not shipping yet - I expect we'll see the drives in the next couple months, at premium prices.
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while I realize you are going for simplicity, paying that sort of price for NAS after you've paid the premium for an HDTV and a mac mini seems a bit over the top. does the base Drobo even come with storage? (I can't really tell from quickly browsing the site)
why not look at this?
seems as if you'll get more bang for your buck with a Lacie product, unless you absolutely really definitely critically want NAS.
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also, I'd recommend a keyspan remote and remote buddy for your mediacenter. total cost for those two things will be around $60 and with Remote Buddy you get the option of having an AJAX remote if you just so happen to have an ipod touch/iphone by the time you assemble all this.
the main aspects of my media center are:
mac mini
keyspan remote
remote buddy
remote buddy also supports a virtual mouse/keyboard just in case something ****s up and need access to a mouse or keyboard
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The Drobo is much more capable than the LaCie BigDisk RAID, it's a more flexible version of a RAID5 that can be reconfigured at run time without loss of data (unless you are trying to). It's definitely a consumer product with a focus on ease-of-use.
Positives
- It protects your data against hardware failure.
- You can reconfigure it at run-time (plug in new harddrives if you need additional storage; the storage is available immediately -- both of this is not possible with professional RAID5 systems).
- It is very easy to use.
- It is portable (it's not a software RAID, it appears as an external harddrive).
Negatives
- The USB version is not very fast (but fast enough for media storage (iTunes, videos) and possibly backups). (I don't know whether the new FireWire version should be faster, the website claims it contains a faster processor (the processor was limiting throughput in the old model).)
- It is not silent (what is and isn't loud depends on the person, I'm very sensitive to noise).
- 2 TB per volume limit for the USB version (this is a limitation of USB). If you want more storage, you have to break it up into several volumes. (The new FireWire version has a 16 TB/volume limit -- a theoretical limit, considering the capacity of even the latest harddrives).
- You may build something cheaper that is faster, but with different drawbacks (no run-time reconfiguration, you need eSATA ports -- which excludes the Mac mini).
If you want to get some testimony from (what I think) is the Drobo's target audience, have a look at the thread here in the Aperture Pro User Network. Some of the points may be obsolete since the release of the FireWire 800 version, though.
So in essence, in my opinion it's a good product for the target audience the company has in mind. (I don't own one, though, I'm not speaking from personal experience here.) For the application you have in mind, I think it's plenty fast and if you put it away from your TV in a cabinet or so, the noise can be managed, too.
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Adding to what the others mentioned, you'll have to weigh in on the other features aside from cost and simplicity. These include expandability and reliability (RAID type). Aside from the Drobo, the ReadyNAS line of products from Netgear/Infrant have also been highly rated.
Most NAS products are limited in expandability. Once configured, it can be difficult in expanding it (such as going from 1TB to 2TB if needed). Also, most only come with RAID-1 support for redundancy. However, they are the cheapest of the bunch, and usually dead simple to configure and get going.
You might want to check out the NAS reader reports from Macintouch to hear from other Mac users as well. Some companies, while making decent performing products, have rather lackluster Mac support (e.g. Synology, Buffalo).
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The Drobo v2 improves on performance marginally (mostly from an upgraded processor), but it still has some significant downsides.
For home media storage I'd suggest a NAS box; this way you can access it from anywhere on the network without depending on the mini being awake. The four boxes here are the popular competitors for home NAS (with more than 2 bays); read the reviews for each to see which best meets your preferences. AFP performance is generally poor, so I'd suggest using something with more mature implementations (NFS or SMB).
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What's the big deal with keeping the Mini awake 24/7?
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Is the performance of the NAS boxes better than that of the Drobo? I thought many of them offer comparable performance …
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I should think so as well (though the Drobo comes in different interfaces: USB2, Firewire, Firewire 800. Thing with NAS appliances is that some of them tend to bog down when you involve multiple users (e.g. simultaneous read/writes). The D-Link DNS-323 seems to hold well on streaming multiple media files to 2-4 users at any time (good enough for a small home setup). Since the Drobo is a DAS, the host it's attached to should see the best performance. Sharing it over the network should then make it comparable to other NAS boxes.
Helios LanTest is a good way to benchmark the setup.
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For my Mini/Media server, I chose a Lacie Bigger Disk (two 500's together in one case using RAID 0 internally to look like 1TB). Yes, it's tight quarters and I'll likely over flow it soon. The point of the story is that I began to worry about that RAID 0 and it's possibility of failure. So I popped for a second, identical disk, with fond hopes of making a RAID 1 mirror of the two.
Oops. Disk Utility took one look at them and turned up it's nose. Maybe some software out there can convert one of these drives into a Mirror, without erasing the content, and allow a second copy to be added, but it was beyond me and my Disk Utility skills.
However, the other side of my brain is quite happy with command line unix, so I just set up a cron job to:
#!/bin/sh
rsync -avz --delete /Volumes/Media1/* /Volumes/Media1b
keep Media1b a copy of Media1. It's not an instantaneous RAID mirror, but it works just fine.
Then, not more than a couple of months later, one of the LaCie's fried. The company sent me a new one easily enough, but I shudder to think what would have happened if I hadn't set up that poor-man's mirror.
Don't trust RAID 0 solutions. Not without a backup.
(
Last edited by HenryMelton; Jul 22, 2008 at 05:26 PM.
Reason: simple typo)
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RAID-0 is striping, which means any one disk means a failure through the entire array. It's used mostly for performance reasons (e.g. temporary cache/scratch disk). Doing a RAID-0+1 (RAID 1 over RAID-0) only gives you a little bit of protection. Needless to say, RAID is not a replacement for backups. It only helps to guarantee availability.
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Originally Posted by HenryMelton
However, the other side of my brain is quite happy with command line unix, so I just set up a cron job to:
#!/bin/sh
rsync -avz --delete /Volumes/Media1/* /Volumes/Media1b
keep Media1b a copy of Media1. It's not an instantaneous RAID mirror, but it works just fine.
Looks good. On a Mac I would however suggest adding -E to the rsync command to make sure you retain extended attributes and resource forks.
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Any thoughts of rsync over a WAN / ssh connection?
e.g. how well does it handle not so stable connections?
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It works fairly well enough, although be prepared to wait if you're on a slow line. As for intermittent connections, you can script rsync to reattempt the transfer if it exits with a non-zero value (see EXIT VALUES from man page). It's smart enough to resume from where it left off, though this can be very time consuming on large (multi-GB) files.
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I've got a drobo running at home, loaded with two 1TB drives. It's set up as an AirDisk, holding, amongst other things, our entire mp3 library. It's not the fastest solution, but perfect for us. I use it with Aperture, iTunes and as a server for pretty much all of my work documents.
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How does it work when there are multiple people using it at one time?
eg. stream iTunes and someone else is watching a movie and then a 3rd party is uploading documents.
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Anyone have the new drobo?
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There's a new one? what's so much better about it spec wise?
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Originally Posted by chichow
There's a new one? what's so much better about it spec wise?
Better internal processor and a new I/O option (Firewire).
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Originally Posted by chabig
What's the big deal with keeping the Mini awake 24/7?
Power consumption?
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which is still like nothing...
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So how fast is the new Drobo?
I’ve seen benchmarks of the old version loaded with four 10000 rpm WD Raptor drives and it topped out at 10 MB/s write and 15 MB/s read which is quite pathetic in my eyes.
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"The road to success is dotted with the most tempting parking spaces."
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Originally Posted by moep
So how fast is the new Drobo?
I’ve seen benchmarks of the old version loaded with four 10000 rpm WD Raptor drives and it topped out at 10 MB/s write and 15 MB/s read which is quite pathetic in my eyes.
Per CNET: For starters, the addition of FireWire 800 didn't help the performance. The device's USB 2.0 connection was actually faster on our write test at 133.6Mbps (compared with 97.8Mbps for FireWire 800). On our read test, the scores were reversed but still far below other external drives, with the FireWire 800 connection registering 104Mbps and the USB 2.0 clocking in at 73.6Mbps.
So about 9-17MBps for CNET; per Engadget, the new Drobo is 10-33% faster depending on the benchmark.
It doesn't matter what drives you put in it or which interface you use, the internal processor is what's holding it back.
Originally Posted by pmolettiere
I've used Drobo for several months, and the main thing to keep in mind is that the unit IS NOT A BACKUP SOLUTION. You MUST keep a separate copy of all the data you store on the unit, because it can and will fail.
Mine died after only three or four months of usage. The data robotics support was completely useless, and slow to boot.
This is the biggest problem with Drobo, IMO, moreso than the performance. It "just works" to set it up, and then it "just fails" a few months later.
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Originally Posted by abbaZaba
the main aspects of my media center are:
mac mini
keyspan remote
remote buddy
Thanks for pointing that out to me; I didn’t even know that Remote Buddy existed. Looking at the video on their site, and a bit of background googling, it seems pretty much perfect for what I have in mind for my media centre. I imagine I’ll have the iPhone long before I have the rest of it, so the AJAX remote functionality would also be really handy.
Originally Posted by OreoCookie
If you want to get some testimony from (what I think) is the Drobo's target audience, have a look at the thread here in the Aperture Pro User Network. Some of the points may be obsolete since the release of the FireWire 800 version, though.
So in essence, in my opinion it's a good product for the target audience the company has in mind. (I don't own one, though, I'm not speaking from personal experience here.) For the application you have in mind, I think it's plenty fast and if you put it away from your TV in a cabinet or so, the noise can be managed, too.
Thanks for the link to that Apeture website; it was really good to read opinions from people who’ve used them, and people who — as you say — are in the target market. And I think you’re right about speed: the Drobo would not be written to a huge amount, and the amounts of data being pulled off it at any one time would be pretty low, so I think it should be adequate as is.
Originally Posted by pmolettiere
I've used Drobo for several months, and the main thing to keep in mind is that the unit IS NOT A BACKUP SOLUTION. You MUST keep a separate copy of all the data you store on the unit, because it can and will fail.
Mine died after only three or four months of usage. The data robotics support was completely useless, and slow to boot.
Can you be a bit more specific? Did it die as in it kept killing hard-disks, they all failed simultaneously, or did the Drobo itself die? I’m keen to hear the experiences of Drobo users, both positive and negative.
Originally Posted by mduell
This is the biggest problem with Drobo, IMO, moreso than the performance. It "just works" to set it up, and then it "just fails" a few months later.
How common is the failure rate and — perhaps more importantly — what kind of failure are we talking here? There’s a big difference between it occasionally killing drives (which is most certainly not desirable behaviour) and it catastrophically failing and taking everything down with it.
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GUys interested in DROBO, My brand new DROBO DRO4DD10 with FW800 just arrived by courier from OWC in us&a 30mins ago. I signed, unpacked it and turned it on. Then slapped 4 x 500GB SATA2 DDMS in it. Whilst it powered up i read the manual (all 7 pages of it) and installed the DROBO dashboard software. Within 5 minutes I had started copying 900GB form my internal disk RAID. (I have a MACPRO 8 core)
What do I see about the DROBO?:
• extremely simply and easy to set up and use
• long think FW800 cable (not the flimsy kind you get with other risk enclosures). at least 1M long
• FW800 data rates look like no more than 28MBsec/29MBs on the 8core MAC PRO whilst this copy is going on. (kind of very slow I think.. certainly not the 700Mbs (megabits) I thought I might see... lol!
• of the 2TB (4 x 500GB DDMs) capacity in this enclosure, DROBO "ADVANCED CONTROLS" U.I.app tells me that 2.23GB (overhead)+ 469.15GB (used for protection) +1,35TB available for data).. hmm that was a surprise.. well I guess it is it's way of providing some protection.
so far so good.
I am augmenting this with that QUANTUM Ultrium LTO4 tape drive soon.. and completely discarding 4TB pf le cie external big disks .. these are terribly unreliable due to power supplies.
post any questions for the DROBO if you need.
w
Hong Kong
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Originally Posted by warwickt
• FW800 data rates look like no more than 28MBsec/29MBs on the 8core MAC PRO whilst this copy is going on. (kind of very slow I think.. certainly not the 700Mbs (megabits) I thought I might see... lol!
That's because the bottleneck of the Drobo is not the bus, but the Drobo's controller. At that maximum throughput USB2 would have been sufficient. At the same time it's more available than FW800 and cheaper. I'll file this one under marketing.
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Originally Posted by mduell
This is the biggest problem with Drobo, IMO, moreso than the performance. It "just works" to set it up, and then it "just fails" a few months later.
That is a completely unsubstantiated statement. My Drobo, for instance, continues to work just fine. Anecdotal evidence is not proof - i.e just because one Drobo fails doesn't mean all will.
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Originally Posted by pmolettiere
That's like saying if your Macbook breaks down there's no reason to use it. Machines break. Fact of life. Backups, to be completely safe, need to be multiple, ideally with some being off-site.
Your Drobo stopped working. That, I'd imagine, sucked and I am genuinely sorry to hear it. But that doesn't mean that all of them will fail.
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It is supposed to be able to function as a backup solution.
time machine on it, and if one drive fails, replacing it should permit it to rebuild data.
The real scary part is your experience with their customer (no) service.
How long ago did it die? what have you done with it since?
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I think Mastrap's point is that with one failure, he cannot generalize (e. g. by making a statistic that would prove the Drobo is less reliable than competitive product A).
Other RAIDs or RAID-like systems usually all have single points of failure, be it the RAID controller, the cable linking the RAID tower to the computer or such. Of course, you can get more (or even fully redundant) systems, but these are enterprise-class solutions way beyond anything we're discussing here.
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Originally Posted by vmarks
It is supposed to be able to function as a backup solution.
time machine on it, and if one drive fails, replacing it should permit it to rebuild data.
Absolutely. My point is that stuff happens. Controllers fail. Houses burn down. Drives die. Data gets corrupted. If you want to be as safe as possible you backup your backup. Ideally off-site.
But anecdotal evidence is not a substitute for statistical observation.
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Question...
Would you buy the USB 2.0 version for $349 or buy the FireWire 800 version for $499?
I am really debating on buying one.
My current setup is 4 separate 500GB hard drives in USB2 cases.
1 for time machine
1 for home movies
1 for superduper backup
1 for backup of macbook and my parents computer.
The setup that I am trying to do is this.
1 500GB HD for critical data kept offsite (photos, finances, music)
1 DROBO w/4 1TB Drives for iMovie files and iTunes Music, Podcasts, Movies
1 500GB HD for Time Machine.
My main concern is the DROBO reliability for this setup.
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2.33 White iMac | 2GB Ram | 500GB HD
2.2 BlackBook | 2GB Ram | 120GB HD
16GB Touch | 80GB Classic | 10GB Classic | 8GB Pink | 40GB Apple TV
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Originally Posted by REVBCO
My main concern is the DROBO reliability for this setup.
Neither Drobo nor any other RAID-like product is a replacement for backups. There's always the risk of controller caused corruption hosing your entire volume.
Also even the FW800 Drobo may be a bit slow for holding iMovie files you're working with; it offers at best about a quarter the performance of a single drive.
The $499 version is also a faster USB2 drive than the $349 version, thanks to the upgraded internal processor.
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A RAID/the Drobo protect you against harddrive failure. Putting your data on a RAID/on the Drobo is not a backup, because the most likely cause of data loss is the user or a software error.
So while you can put your backups on a Drobo, for example, putting your data (not the backup, but the real data) on the Drobo is not a backup.
Quite a few photographers put their Aperture vaults on a Drobo, because it can be part of a backup solution and speed isn't that much of an issue with backups (as long as the backups finish in time). Have a look here for a detailed user experience. I couldn't find figures on the reliability (however, usually people post when they have problems).
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