Comments on: Drobo: The Ultimate Network Peripheral?

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 05:05:38 +0000

I have a Drobo second gen with FW800…

I bought it with all 1TB drives.
Worked ok but a bit slow, THEN, one day when switching drives it got stuck in what tech support called an “infinite loop”….
I tried repeatedly with tech support to get this fixed. All they kept telling me was reboot, let it run, etc…
I went for 6 months on and off stuck in this loop praying my data was ok….

3TB of pictures and HD video lost of my newborn son….

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 20:04:36 +0000

The lights DON’T blink! The green indicate there is a drive present and the blue lights are a capacity status indicator.

How can you slam when you don’t even know what you are talking about?

By: Jamie Jones

Jamie Jones — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 11:21:43 +0000

If you get a Drobo which is reliable, great. But I didn’t. The device has lost its formatting a number of times and has had to be wiped. It also has Firewire port issues. data robotics, the makers of Drobo have not been very good on the Tech Support front, it should be replace able under warranty which you have to pay for and you also have to pay to ship it across Europe because that don’t have a repair center in the UK. A full review is here http://web.me.com/jamie_jones/Drobo-Review/index.html because it would take up to much space on this website. I also suggest other options.

By: Shami

Shami — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 19:11:28 +0000

I am working in Public Sector and we needed to have a space where staff can store their multimedia content. I am using 4 Drobo Pro with 16TB on each with two drive redundancy option. I am using two Drobo for network share and two Drobo Pro as an backup. Which I am doing every night. I am using iSCSI to connect my Drobo with Server 2008. And I shared the Drives on Network with the DFS path. Since past 2 months I did not have any problem. It is looking good uptill now.

I only had a problem when I updated my DROBO Dashbaord and it mess up with the settings. So do not go for newer version of Drobo dashboard as it has not been tested throughly.

The only problem I have seen it copy's the data very slow when we are moving the data like lets suppose 40GB from other network drive to Drobo. Sometime it takes hours, usually 3 to 4 hours.

But I am pretty much sure this solution will work really good.

The cost is really low as compare with other solutions available in the market.

By: dutyguy

dutyguy — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:43:18 +0000

I’ve had the Drobo for about 2 months (2 2TD HDs). Nothing bad has happened. I have a medium sized network (2 iMacs, MacBook, Apple TV, and 1 PC – eeww). My solution was to store all of our media (movies, music, videos, and photos) on our Drobo so we can access it from one place instead of having everything in several different places (e.g. 2 different itunes, 4 different computers, 3 different iphotos, etc.). Having a wife that habitually drops external HDs we thought it would be prudent to get a big storage unit that she can’t touch.

To address the issue of not having everything in one place: a few smaller externals to use for time machine backups seems prudent. Then I just store the externals and pull them out for backups when needed.

By: gabriel

gabriel — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 09:56:20 +0000

“As for video, I use it to stream video from my rather large itunes video library to my apple tv in another room with no slow down are hiccups. It works great to video streaming.”

hey brian,
i’m looking to set up the same system, just that i don’t want to add a mac mini in between but connect the drobo(share) directly to the appletv.
drobo -> (droboshare ->) appletv

do you have an insights? works fine? streaming quality?

thx for the help

By: BRIAN MASON

BRIAN MASON — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 16:26:21 +0000

I’ve had my second gen firewire drobo unit for about three months now. I have it attached to an intel mac mini that I use as a home server. The drobo is connected to the mini via firewire 800 to 400 cable. The drobo has four 1Tera. Wd green drives in it.
So far the drobo has been performing flawlessly. I have had no problems.

As for video, I use it to stream video from my rather large itunes video library to my apple tv in another room with no slow down are hiccups. It works great to video streaming.

Again, Drobo version 2 from “data robotics, inc.” is a snap to set up, very versatile, fast and an easy to manage. I’ve had zero problems with this fantastic device. Remove a drive whilst streaming video and it continues to work. The way this thing works is nothing short of magic.

I did my research before I purchase the Drobo and found that most of the problems people were having, especially with Drobo version 1, was due to the firmware update. This is why you should always take a wait and see approach to firmware and software updates. Wait a month or two and do some internet research of people who have installed the update and observe if they are having any difficulties and if so, is there any working solutions.

Also. I find that the use of seagates 1.5 Tera. drives were causing problems when used with the drobo unit.

By: Ashley Grayson

Ashley Grayson — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:36:54 +0000

The Drobo has become almost iPod-like iconic in its space and made approaching RAID technology friendly for consumers. Despite its ease of use, we must keep in mind that is offers more the illusion of data reliability than actual reliability. What it does do is provide the convenience of data availability with little management required. First, RAID is not backup. RAID 0 (striping) spreads data over multiple slower disks to create the effect of a bigger faster disk. If any one disk fails, all data is lost. RAID 1 (mirroring) duplicates data on separate disks and protects against single drive failure, but if the data is corrupted by a software flaw or controller failure, you have instantly created two bad copies. Only a real backup copy can recover from these events. The Drobo’s BeyondRAID adds attractive features on top of RAID 5′s ability to recover from a single drive failure but still doesn’t provide backup. You still need a duplicate copy of the data on another drive, optical disk or tape to recover from 1) a computer system error, 2) failure of the Drobo controller or its power supply (there’s only one of each), or 3) failure of multiple drives. To simply protect data on a Mac, running Time Machine to an external drive on a separate UPS, is the simplest and cheapest solution.

By: eatmytag

eatmytag — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 14:43:40 +0000

I do not have a Drobo myself, but I have been looking at it since the first version was announced. The main reason why to go Drobo rather than a single disk or even a RAID system, is the flexibility.

A RAID needs disks that are of the same size (to use them effectively). A Drobo on the other hand, you just feed with whatever disks you have. Upgrading the capacity of the Drobo is SOOO much easier than upgrading a RAID system. Single disk system? One disk crashes, and your data is lost. The price however is the reason why I have not bought a Drobo yet, cut the price by 50%, and I will by one. Or at least cut the price by 25% and include the NAS-module.

By: Yacko

Yacko — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 09:38:33 +0000

One major difference between Drobo and most NAS (and Windows server) is the fact you can format HFS+ (Journaled) which keeps it within Mac norms. You should be able to use something like Diskwarrior on it if you get directory corruption (as opposed to disk failure). Whether there is some translation used, ie, some internal format that is translated to a normal directory, I don’t know, but the fact that it calls Disk Utility when doing the initial format, seems to indicate this is not so. Can you put a RAID to sleep? From OSX system prefs? I’ve just started using FW800 Drobo with 4 1TB WD green drives, putting it through its paces. It wakes and sleeps perfectly along with the computer. Shows on the desktop like a normal Mac drive. Barely warm when running, as cool as the room when sleeping. The fan has not seemed to either kick on or rev to high speed. It is Mac silent and uses little electricity either awake or asleep. I’ve got an iMac, a Newer Tech box with a Carbon copy clone, and the Drobo – and sitting at my music workstation, they are silent. I have Drobo set for 16GB, because if and when a drive goes, I will be putting in 2TB (and perhaps by then 4TB) replacements and should be able to do so without a hassle. Data Robotics notes that this will increase Drobo bootup times, but since I have it sleep and not shut down, and reboot the computer every month or so, this will not be an issue. One should be able to buy a Drobo for 10% off list. I give it thumbs up.

By: Craig

Craig — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 04:12:20 +0000

Take a look at the Intel-branded NAS boxes…. the SS4200-E is the current one, which replaced the SS4000. I’ve had a couple of each. They support up to 4 SATA drives in RAID 0/1/0+1/5 configuration, have Gigabit Ethernet, and function as a uPnP streaming server on your home network. Both models have been rock solid reliable for me, and the throughput is very good. I think the SS4200 is only about $350 now….

By: George

George — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 18:06:28 +0000

Whoops, I should have written “removed from their ‘RAID’”.

By: George

George — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 18:05:18 +0000

Having researched Drobo for a client I was concerned with its proprietary filing system where a drive removed their ‘RAID’ can’t be mounted and read by OS X.

By: Murphy Mac

Murphy Mac — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 21:28:11 +0000

The Drobo has crashed on me once (that I saw) and was fine after it rebooted itself. I think it’ll be another few month before there’s enough user experience to truly know how reliable Drobo is. From what I’ve read the second gen units are more reliable.

One thing I DON’T like – after the first year you have to buy a plan to get firmware updates. Not appropriate.

People need to realize they shouldn’t store critical data on a Drobo without a separate backup. The Drobo protects from a single disk failure. But that doesn’t mean the Drobo won’t suddenly be unable to read any of the data it holds if it had some other kind of failure.

That said, my FW800 Drobo was a piece of cake to set up. It’s connected to a G5 and feeds my Apple TV. I also have an EyeTV connected that writes video directly to the Drobo.

I picked Drobo because you can increase your storage without ANY hassles. Pop a drive out, pop a bigger one in. Drobo works away, taking advantage of the new space. Staying online the entire time.

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 20:18:45 +0000

I'm using Boxee on my AppleTV to stream video from my server, which not only doesn't require iTunes, but also supports many more video formats (i.e., more that the 1 that AppleTV supports). With this setup, you just set up a network share and point Boxee at it, so I don't see why this wouldn't work with Drobo (or a Time Capsule, or any NAS). Boxee's got a little way to go before it's got the polish of an Apple product, but it's functional.

By: Arvin

Arvin — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 20:15:19 +0000

@Ben, If you dump your entire iTunes library (including videos) as a file share on the drobo, and have your iTunes library pull from it, you can sync your Apple TV to your iTunes… and therefor have your video content now sharing on it. It seems like a weird process, and I don’t know how well it’d function streaming across multiple devices like that. But it’s an idea.