Anyone have experience with a drobo?

I suppose it all depends what you're looking for. 2.5" drives are more expensive. They're generally use a bit less power, meaning cooler, and produce less vibrations, also meaning quieter. In theory they should last longer. Though in practice I haven't seen any significant difference. And if you want speed 4 SSD drives in that chassis should do you well.

Synology just came out with a DS411slim NAS. It's a 2.5" drives again. It has a 1.6Ghz processor. It serves up FTP, HTTP, and has an iTunes Server. Pricing isn't announced but should be in the $400-$450 area. Their older model takes 3.5" drives and I believe does PHP and MySQL. Not sure if the newer one does.
 
faethor said:
Synology just came out with a DS411slim NAS. It's a 2.5" drives again. It has a 1.6Ghz processor. It serves up FTP, HTTP, and has an iTunes Server. Pricing isn't announced but should be in the $400-$450 area. Their older model takes 3.5" drives and I believe does PHP and MySQL. Not sure if the newer one does.
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Link you bastard! Link!! (joking)

Wayne
 
Wayne said:
faethor said:
Synology just came out with a DS411slim NAS. It's a 2.5" drives again. It has a 1.6Ghz processor. It serves up FTP, HTTP, and has an iTunes Server. Pricing isn't announced but should be in the $400-$450 area. Their older model takes 3.5" drives and I believe does PHP and MySQL. Not sure if the newer one does.
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Link you bastard! Link!! (joking)
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DS411slim price is $370. DS411J is $350 plus is 3.5" drives. The minus is a bit more power consumption with a slower processor and 1/2 the memory. And, IMO, not as nice looking.

DS411j review Also starts with a link to the Drobo FS review.
 
Wayne I've officallly branded you as evil. Cuz now I have to spend money.

I've been looking at the Small home NAS devices for a while and haven't bought. It think this pushed me over the edge. Our new TV is DLNA, the new Blu-Ray is DLNA, the Media PC is DLNA, the 360 and PS3 are DLNA. Backups are a mess we have three harddrives each doing different backups and it's a headache to keep it all organized. I think it's making sense for our network to move towards a NAS solution. I've decided to dig deeper into reviews to figure out which $400-$500 device would likely be the best performance for our needs. I know we'll want at least 2 streams at once.

So thank you!
 
faethor said:
Wayne I've officallly branded you as evil. Cuz now I have to spend money.

I've been looking at the Small home NAS devices for a while and haven't bought. It think this pushed me over the edge. Our new TV is DLNA, the new Blu-Ray is DLNA, the Media PC is DLNA, the 360 and PS3 are DLNA. Backups are a mess we have three harddrives each doing different backups and it's a headache to keep it all organized. I think it's making sense for our network to move towards a NAS solution. I've decided to dig deeper into reviews to figure out which $400-$500 device would likely be the best performance for our needs. I know we'll want at least 2 streams at once.

So thank you!
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You're welcome. Glad to help spread the insanity.

Looked at the DS-411j, but reading reviews, it seems rather slow by comparison (44MB/s).

If I had the money (and a job) right now, I'd really lean towards the drobo FS if for no other reason than the ease of configuration, installation, and use. Hell, if I had the money, I'd look at a DroboPro (8-bay) for when 2tb drives are down around $49, which appears to be as soon as 3tb drives hit strong..

As good as the one you sent appears to be, I just grant a LOT of wiggle-room for the drobo's "just push the drive in to connect and let it figure it all out" nature and 8-bay versus 5, if I can find it on sale, is all that much more appealing. Run a cable, sit it in the closet and forget about it.. :)

Wayne
 
44Mb/s does seem slow so that's why I'm doing more research. Though comparing the Drobo FS, generally in the 9-20Mb/s range in reviews, the DS411j is fast. There's a 4 disc QNAP TS419 that is good for speed, around 60Mb/s but it comes with a 50% higher cost than the DS411j.
 
This may be too late for you Wayne, but it's interesting none the less: The Drobo FS in-depth, Part 1: what it is, how it works
I recently got my hands on a Drobo FS from Data Robotics, and I've been using it intensively for some time now. If you're interested in the Drobo, then this two-part review is perhaps the longest and most thorough look at the device you'll find anywhere. Indeed, it's more than just a review—In Part 1 I dig into Data Robotics patent filings so I can explain how the device works. In Part 2, I'll describe how the Drobo functions in day-to-day use.
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Haven't seen pt2 posted yet, but hope it'll be out some time today.
 
faethor said:
ArsTechnica on Drobo, Part 2
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Thanks for the links. Unfortunately both time and money (and a bit of commons) are intruding right now. Right now, I've got 2x 2TB running in RAID 0 config for a total of 4TB usable. No redundancy, but usable nonetheless. The 4-bay unit, even with 4x 2TB drives loaded only gives me 5TB and change, meaning it's an awfully big investment for little return.

That has me wanting an 8-bay or bigger unit, but that my dears, comes long after I have a stable job environment and can afford a replacement vehicle in the future. :)

Wayne
 
Just to let everyone know, I finally bought a Drobo. Should be coming in tomorrow. Long, roundabout way to get there, but 12TB should -- Good Lord willing -- be operational soon.

Sunday for a short time, Amazon was running WD Elements external, 3TB drives for an incredibly cheap price. As I'm officially out of space on my 4TB RAID, I bought 4 of them thinking to simply create a secondary USB RAID array out of the new drives.

Unfortunately, even though these beasties are running WD 3.0 TB SATA drives, there's apparently something with the external housing which prohibits RAID configuration.. Sucky, but typical WD. Spent an hour on the phone with them trying to get support only to make it to 2nd level support to be told essentially "The iMac can't do RAID"... Sigh..

As much as I an hesitant to spend the money, I do need a couple of tax deductions, so I popped on the web and did a little price searching. Turns out JR.com had the newer Drobo unit for the 2nd cheapest price (by 3 bucks) and their cheapest shipping is only a day away from me.. Matter of fact, if I had ordered at noon yesterday rather than 6pm, it'd already be on my desk instead of tomorrow.

I disassembled one of the external WD Element hard drives (took screwdriver and 3 minutes) and -- if anyone needs them -- I should have 4 external 3.5" SATA USB drive boxes available tomorrow.

Will let everyone know what I find out.
 
Well this kinda bleeping sucks.

Reading jr.com's web site (and 99% of others), it claims that the 4-bay drobo unit I bought from them supports "up to 16TB array", meaning 4 x 4TB, right? I get the unit in, strip the external WD Element drives out of their boxes (voiding the returnability, not to mention warranty), then put the drives into the unit.

All four drives report "dead drive, replace". WTF?

So, I pull a drive out, rebuild the box, plug it in, it works fine. Rip the box apart again, put it back in the drobo. Dead.

Next, I call Drobo directly. According to their first and second-level support people (the highest they would allow me to go), the unit I got (despite being new and the current generation) only supports 2TB drives. Shit. So. Ok.

(Paraphrased as accurately as possible considering the hour-long merry-go-round type conversation).

"Do you have an upgrade to the firmware?"
- Drobo: "we will have an upgrade sometime in the future to support up to 5 TB drives".

"When?"
- Drobo (Jeff): "We have no idea".

"Can I get a beta release or sign up for beta testing?"
- Drobo (Jeff): "No, sorry".

"What can we do to resolve this?"
- Drobo (Jeff): Pretty much nothing. I can maybe get a return direct through us but no idea.

"I need a solution, can I send this one to you and get an upgrade, even if it's a refurb?"
- Drobo (Jeff): We might be able to do a return and let you buy the next model up, but it's $700 which is double the price you paid.

"So I'm screwed, and I have no guarantee you'll EVER make this unit support 3TB drives?
- Drobo (Jeff): "Pretty much" (again highly paraphrased to cut out the tech support "admit no wrong" mantra)

So I'm sitting here on -- I don't want to admit how much of an -- investment in drives and unit, which might as well be dead to me, with no way to return the drives because I was told that the Drobo supported them so I removed them from the sealed cases. No idea when, or if ever, the thing will be useful for it's intended purpose, and pretty much thinking of throwing the whole blessed thing through the window just to make myself feel better.

That, in a nutshell is my experience with Drobo so far...
 
Wayne said:
Well this kinda bleeping sucks.

Reading jr.com's web site (and 99% of others), it claims that the 4-bay drobo unit I bought from them supports "up to 16TB array", meaning 4 x 4TB, right?
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Write jr.com and the others and tell them about your experience. A few inquiries from sites like that might get management to take a look at support (which is usually there to protect management from people like you). If they are going to run interference for the higher-ups then they should at least have correct information but if the information they have IS correct then there is another issue going on like maybe someone "exaggerated" to the press. If that's the case then embarrassing publicity is in order until they do something about it.
 
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