[m021478]

I am getting tired of buying 2 identical hard drives for every 1 drive I add to my storage mix (I've always used the 2nd drive as a backup/clone of the 1st drive - and for truly sensitive data, I often buy a 3rd drive for off-site storage backup)

I am searching for a single large storage device that I can use as my primary multimedia hard drive, to use for storing and serving (across my LAN) all of my videos ~ DVD rips, handbrake conversions, downloads, etc. ~ to my Mac-Mini Media Center (from which I plan to use Plex to playback my media on my living room plasma).

I was thinking about using something along the lines of the semi-newly released DroboPro, but I realize that this may in fact be overkill and it might wind up costing several thousand dollars more than some other perfectly viable options...not to mention that I am not even sure if it's possible share media stored on the DroboPro across my LAN while at the same time avoiding any skipping, stuttering, or lagging of the streaming media...)

The Big Picture:

• I need something with data redundancy (i.e. RAID protection)
• I need something with lots of storage space (something in the range of 8-12 Terabytes should tide me over for a couple years)
• Having something Rack Mounted in my 12U 19" Xrack Pro would be ideal (but I could also deal with something that is not rack mountable, if need be)

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated... Thanks!

[besson3c]

Have you thought about a computer with 4+ drive bays, and software RAID 5/10 + iSCSI?

[mduell]

DroboPro + 2TB drives is actually a pretty economical way of going about it. A faster alternative (Drobo isn't blazing) would be a ~15 drive eSATA enclosure (usually 3 banks of 5 drives) RAID10 with hot spares.

[besson3c]

I eventually may build myself an iSCSI setup. The problem I have with a more turnkey RAID setup like a Drobo is that once you run out of slots or drives, you either have to replace drives or get something else that provides more slots and give up on the old storage appliance. It seems like our data needs are constantly growing, so anything you buy along the lines of a Drobo is more or less a use and dispose sort of product much like an iMac.

It would seem to me that drive bays are easy to come by. The nice thing about iSCSI is that you can just keep adding to it providing you have some sort of hardware for plugging in new drives. I believe you can chain together sets of disks attached to different physical hardware. The more disks you have the more spread out your I/O.

[OreoCookie]

I'm not sure how fast the Drobo Pro is (benchmarks, anyone?), but for storage of movies, it's plenty fast. The only alternative which may or may not be cheaper is to build your own storage box: build a computer in a semi-large case (enough space for the 8+ drives you need) and put something like OpenSolaris or FreeBSD on it. Configure the drives via ZFS as RAIDZ or better, RAIDZ2.

This solution is probably cheaper, money-wise. However, you need to know how to build the system (so that it is made of high-quality parts and preferably also not too noisy, but well-cooled) and how to configure the OS as well as the RAIDZ. It's not really difficult, but it adds to the costs (your time = money). If there is a problem, you have to solve it on your own. Hardware problems of harddrives are not as easily indicated and solved as in case of a dedicated hardware RAID (again, no problem if you know your way around the command line, but with hardware RAIDs, it's as simple as popping out the bad drive and putting in a new one).

In terms of money, the Drobo Pro compares well to other cheap hardware RAIDs (such as Wiebetech towers). I'd say that unless you're familiar building your own system, the Drobo Pro seems like a reasonable solution.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

The problem I have with a more turnkey RAID setup like a Drobo is that once you run out of slots or drives, you either have to replace drives or get something else that provides more slots and give up on the old storage appliance.

As opposed to an ATX tower where you what? Also you could keep using the old storage appliance alongside the new storage system.

[m021478]

Update: I wound up going with a DroboPro, and I wound up filling it with 8 x 1.5TB Seagate drives (purchased for $100 each using this deal from techbargains.com)...

For under $2,000, I have a 9.36TB single volume of backed-up awesomeness!

I realize alternate versions of this sort of rig could have been made cheaper, but the warm cozy feeling I get in my gut when I look at this beast was worth the extra penny

(it's also worth noting that had I gone with the 2TB drives instead of the 1.5TB drives, I would have paid $2,000 on the drives instead of $800 ~ $1,200 extra for a measly 3TB of extra space)

[reader50]

That's a lot of drives. I've yet to hear if Seagate's 1.5s have settled down on reliability yet, so I'd be very interested in your failure rates over the next few months.

[OreoCookie]

Just out of curiosity, would you mind writing up your experiences on the DroboPro? The original Drobo, for instance, was (compared to external harddrives) rather slow (although for most of the applications, that wasn't a deal breaker). Can you run some benchmarks or so on it? How did the installation go?

[m021478]

Using Xbench to benchmark the DroboPro connected to my Mac-Mini, here is what it comes up with:



You can compare the results above with the results of the Hitachi HTS543232L9SA02 drive that came installed in the Mac-Mini (Intel - Early 2009):



While these results might not appear too stellar, I have been able to playback 16GB+ Matroska (MKV) files at 1080p with perfect playback on my 58"inch plasma (with the DroboPro connected to the Mac-Mini via Firewire 800)...

Make of it what you will, in the end, it works for me!!

[mduell]

Would you be willing to benchmark the Drobo Pro on USB? All of the Xbench (*gag*) numbers are well within the capability of USB2 aside from the large block uncached read.