Even the good folks at Drobo will tell you that you need to back up whatever Drobo solution you decide to go with. It's absolutely possible that you can lose all of your data given the right set of circumstances. I have a 10TB Drobo, but it's entirely replicated on a 12TB OWC RAID 5 box.

The expandability of the Drobo is very appealing, but you need to use their calculator to see that often you have to replace almost all the drives to make a meaningful difference capacity.

I was also mildly surprised that the Drobo S I purchased was NOT compatible with one of the most popular eSATA cards on the market. That may have been fixed in a subsequent firmware update, but it also forced me to buy a second card in the beginning.

now, what do you back up you 12TB OWC RAID 5 box with?

Good question. I'm using OWC enclosures but I don't use RAID. I'm using the cheap simple enclosures and keeping the drives independent and format them in the PC as basic drives with a primary partition as I don't trust dynamic drives. I use Hitachi enterprise-class drives and have three dual-drive enclosures with synced drives in each enclosure. My data volume needs are modest and my setup is nowhere near as convenient as a Drobo I know that. But if the worst happened I have two backups and if necessary could take any drive out of its enclosure pop it into a PC and it would work.

Peter Figen wrote:
Even the good folks at Drobo will tell you that you need to back up whatever Drobo solution you decide to go with. It's absolutely possible that you can lose all of your data given the right set of circumstances. I have a 10TB Drobo, but it's entirely replicated on a 12TB OWC RAID 5 box.

The expandability of the Drobo is very appealing, but you need to use their calculator to see that often you have to replace almost all the drives to make a meaningful difference capacity.

I was also mildly surprised that the Drobo S I purchased was NOT compatible with one of the most popular eSATA cards on the market. That may have been fixed in a subsequent firmware update, but it also forced me to buy a second card in the beginning.

The Drobo S is not compatible with many of the e-Sata cards on the market. The card must support port multiplier functionality to work. But Data Robotics have a list with 6-7 cards that they recommend on their website. You just can't buy any popular or common card for the Drobo S.

Does the Drobo 5D show up as just one large volume or does it show up as (5) volumes of X amount of terabytes?

One large volume (if you like that)

here it is visually

Lars Johnsson wrote:
Brit-007 wrote:
I have been using one for years and it is still running sweet. I now purchased a second one which is the network version. I use that as a secondry backup. I have gone through different drive sizes and it really is simple and easy to use. I have worked in IT so I do not worry about building but now, I just cannot be bothered to spend time on systems and therefore switched over to Mac's and using the Drobo.

They have numerous models but I think they really geared the product for media.

I don't belive you have been using a Drobo 5D for years The other Drobo's have I also been using for a few years

Lars, I purchased my first Drobo (3 drive unit) in 2008.

lukeb wrote:
Lars Johnsson wrote:
Brit-007 wrote:
I have been using one for years and it is still running sweet. I now purchased a second one which is the network version. I use that as a secondry backup. I have gone through different drive sizes and it really is simple and easy to use. I have worked in IT so I do not worry about building but now, I just cannot be bothered to spend time on systems and therefore switched over to Mac's and using the Drobo.

They have numerous models but I think they really geared the product for media.

I don't belive you have been using a Drobo 5D for years The other Drobo's have I also been using for a few years

Lars, I purchased my first Drobo (3 drive unit) in 2008.


Yes a lot of people have been using Drobo's a few years (including me) but not the Drobo 5D that we talked about

I know, I was just getting blinkered with DROBO and not the model. To confirm, I am happy with the system even though I had issues in the beginning. This was only related to my understanding on how to format the drive initially. I learnt quickly that you just use the standard settings and not read anything in to it. Do that and you will be fine.

I think the new portable might be interesting as well.

lukeb wrote:
Lars Johnsson wrote:
Brit-007 wrote:
I have been using one for years and it is still running sweet. I now purchased a second one which is the network version. I use that as a secondry backup. I have gone through different drive sizes and it really is simple and easy to use. I have worked in IT so I do not worry about building but now, I just cannot be bothered to spend time on systems and therefore switched over to Mac's and using the Drobo.

They have numerous models but I think they really geared the product for media.

I don't belive you have been using a Drobo 5D for years The other Drobo's have I also been using for a few years

Lars, I purchased my first Drobo (3 drive unit) in 2008.


i believe at minimum it would have to be a 4 bay unit as that is the minimum slot array. you could use 3 drives in it in the beginning but you would want 4 a full 4 array

sjms wrote:
lukeb wrote:
Lars Johnsson wrote:
Brit-007 wrote:
I have been using one for years and it is still running sweet. I now purchased a second one which is the network version. I use that as a secondry backup. I have gone through different drive sizes and it really is simple and easy to use. I have worked in IT so I do not worry about building but now, I just cannot be bothered to spend time on systems and therefore switched over to Mac's and using the Drobo.

They have numerous models but I think they really geared the product for media.

I don't belive you have been using a Drobo 5D for years The other Drobo's have I also been using for a few years

Lars, I purchased my first Drobo (3 drive unit) in 2008.


i believe at minimum it would have to be a 4 bay unit as that is the minimum slot array. you could use 3 drives in it in the beginning but you would want 4 a full 4 array


Yes the smallest Drobo was 4 bay unit even among the old Drobo's

Anyone using the 5D yet? If yes how is it working? I'm on a MAC and plan to use it with TB

Have it, temporarily running via TB on macbook Air (waiting to order the new iMac) which is where the 5D will reside. So far, just experimenting but it works well. Quite fast when compared to my Drobo-S hooked via eSata to a PC.

schlotz wrote:
Have it, temporarily running via TB on macbook Air (waiting to order the new iMac) which is where the 5D will reside. So far, just experimenting but it works well. Quite fast when compared to my Drobo-S hooked via eSata to a PC.

Cool, I just picked up a refurb iMac, I couldn't wait any longer. I figure I'll buy the new one next year after they get a serious performance upgrade. Let me know if you have any issues with that drobo 5D.

Peter Figen wrote:
Even the good folks at Drobo will tell you that you need to back up whatever Drobo solution you decide to go with. It's absolutely possible that you can lose all of your data given the right set of circumstances.

Good advice. I had a second-generation Drobo that crashed on me and took all of my data with it. I finally went with a 4-drive RAID 5 that doesn't use Drobo's proprietary formatting system. Seems to work better and faster with Time Machine.

Just ordered the 10TB Drobo 5d kit from B&H - not sure when it will ship but Amazon has them in stock so I hope it won't be too long - my current back-up drive is full. Something to consider - I was going to get the 256 GB Flash Drive but found some notes on the drobo web site that says after 64 GB you don't get that much more benefit . . . So, I got the 128GB as a compromise. The kit includes WD Caviar Blacks - one of the few non-commercial drives around with a 5-year warranty and 7200 rpm speed.

For those who can not use drobo, there is Synology, which offers similar features

I am personally very happy with my Synology 1812+ which is an 8 bay unit (8x WD RED 3TB). I am getting 100-120mb/s over Gigabit network. It would be nice to have 10GB but not yet.

Henrik

PS: I wasn't a fan of the earlier Drobo's they were very slow - but over NIC as well as Firewire and USB - YMMV

tived wrote:
For those who can not use drobo, there is Synology, which offers similar features

I am personally very happy with my Synology 1812+ which is an 8 bay unit (8x WD RED 3TB). I am getting 100-120mb/s over Gigabit network. It would be nice to have 10GB but not yet.

Henrik

PS: I wasn't a fan of the earlier Drobo's they were very slow - but over NIC as well as Firewire and USB - YMMV

And whom are you refering to ? that can't use Drobo ?

Drobo's comes with these interfaces: USB 2, USB 3, Firewire 400, Firewire 800, e-Sata, Thunderbolt, Gigabit Ethernet, 3 x Gigabit Ethernet for iSCSI.

And they have 4, 5, 8 & 12 bays units

Lars,

Who can not use a Drobo, Alan123 mentioned that he could not use one, due to the OSX version he was using. So I mention Synology as an Alternative - should i have started a new thread for Alan?

If you like Drobo thats good for you, my limited experience have not been so good.

you can go to www.synology.com for options

All the best

Henrik