I'm interested in getting a 5 bay Drobo but the reviews on NE and other seller's sites are terrible.

I have the 5 bay drobo, only problem I've had with mine is that the ethernet port has gotten blown out a few times. Drobo replaced it under warranty, but now I leave it off the network until I can figure out what it was.

The more I look at Drobos, the more I want to build a FreeNAS machine. It's less money, better hardware, I can repair/upgrade it, expand it, reconfigure it, etc. I rarely come across a Drobo owner that hasn't had some sort of issue that required a lot of support or a complete replacement.

I have a 4 bay and 5 bay unit. The 4 bay is several years old and has been running constantly throughout it's life with no problems. The only thing I have done is to upgrade drives which were hot swappable and the unit was still working all the time.

The second unit is a 5 bay which is on the network. Have been running for a year now and again without issues. As a professional, I would not touch anything else. A friend of mine who is also a professional has had his units longer than mine and has had no issues either. They are simple to setup and use and very little maintenance.

I gave Drobo a miss after seeing the performance at other Photogs, but the 4, 5 and 8 bay versions

instead I went with Synology 1812+ and have been very happy with it (6mth), there is a couple of versions up from this

Have both a Drobo S and the new 5D. Using thunderbolt via the 5D and it is significantly faster. Got the "S" model when it came out, good unit no real problems, just plain works for what I want it for. No special effort, want more space, take out a small drive and put in a bigger one. It does the rest in the background and while that's happening you can still use it to access all your files. Like most products, read enough and you will find diverging opinions to the point of making your head spin. At the end, decide on what you want and how you want to deal with it in your daily workflow and go with it. All products mentioned up to this point can do the job.

I've purchased the original 4 bay drobo when it first came out. rocked that for years, then purchased a second 4 bay drobo. no problems. i have my newer 4 bay working and my older as backup. i try and keep them at separate locations.

bottom line no personal issues...

I second or third the now problems. Had mine for 2 or three years. Runs 24/7 and only problems have been drive related. Planning on getting another one.

John

it's not so much the issue you have during the purchase and operation of these units, it's when you have an issue. Recovery is not stable and the company itself has shown time after time that it's level of commitment to a problem or issue only goes as far as you PUSH THEM, or pay for..

Their CEO Tom is not really a man of his word, I can attest to that personally.

That's unfortunate to hear, that was an option I was considering. Guess I'll be looking at more reviews before making a decision.

John, That is the scenario that I'm afraid of: having a problem and not getting support. I take most online reviews with a grain of salt but reading hundreds of reviews citing Drobo's lack of support is a deal breaker. I ended up building a FreeNAS box running a ZFS RaidZ2 (similar to Raid 6, can withstand 2 simultaneous drive failures). It was reallllly cheap to build, incredibly easy to configure, uses all readily available pc hardware, user serviceable, and there are a hundred forums that can help me with support if needed. It's also very expandable. I highly recommend it as an option for someone looking for a large volume of storage space.

I'm afraid it's true. The people at Drobo just don't care.

Even after the huge slam Scott Kelby placed on his blog about 'being finished with Drobo', and the hundreds of letters they compiled just because of that blog post. It's quite apparent to me that Drobo will continue to suffer from lack of organizational skills and keep passing the buck down the big black complaint hole that is...DROBO.

It's been 4 days since my last mail to them regarding my replacement issue. And although they were all over my issue in the (get this) first 6 months, I guess the time factor has played enough with them, and they have abandoned the idea of replacing my unit (as Tom the CEO said he would in our half hour phone call) and so I'm left with nothing but a nice chat with a guy who clearly can't keep his word.

They'll not see another dime from us I can assure you that. And not as though I'm soliciting a place to drop comments, but if these types of threads pop up, I'm going to have my say in it. I don't want anyone else to be sucked down this never ending Hover and be stuck like we were once.

I hear you. I expect some kind of problem with almost anything at some point. I also expect with gear that isn't user serviceable, the company had better stand behind it in a big hurry if they want my money. PCB is the ultimate example of standing behind your product. Is their stuff perfect? No, but their service is.

sits there quietly and does its job

I've go two Drobo "S" arrays and a couple of new 5D's. Been running Drobo tests for a year or so. I had one corruption problem and they were right on it. Tech help even contacted me several times after the problem was solved to see if there was anything else I needed. My corruption problem was due to a power interruption before I hooked it up to battery back up. I ended up reformatting it and it's been running like a top ever since.

I'm phasing out my LaCie big fours and big fives over the next year if the Drobo's continue to be relatively trouble free. My current storage is 130 TB x three locations.

I have 3 drobo's and love all 3. I know about 50 photographers that use drobos and love them too. I know an IT department for a local company that has 100 drobos in their system and all run and work perfect.
Not sure why everyone here hates on drobo.

I also have 3 Drobo's. They work perfect, and have done that since I bought them. I reallt love them and they are perfect for all my photo's

Three running beautifully - two originals and one five bay FS. I've upgraded multiple drives with no problems. Questions to service have been answered quickly and politely. Very happy customer.

I got the Drobo 5D about a month ago and so far it has been great - five 2 TB drives, plenty of room. I have an older MBP so it is connected via USB 2.0. I hope to upgrade to a newer mac soon take advantage of either USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt - the Drobo 5D has connections for both.
I am also waiting on a 256 GB SSD/flash drive. It's not slow but adding that SSD will supposedly make it even faster.
Before, I was using a G-Drive with two striped drives connected via firewire. The drobo appears to be just as fast.
I shoot sports for a local online paper so I will regularly download 300-400 photos a night and process through Aperture. It seems to take a couple of minutes per 100 raw files (from 5DIII and 1DIBV) to load from a firewire connected CF card reader. By the way, I now use the G-Drive as my offsite backup.

Very happy so far with the drobo - I did a lot of research before buying and I found the consensus to be that this was the best for non-networked storage. I have a giga-bit ethernet network and though about getting an NAS - Synology seemed to be the best for that route, but I think network attached storage is just not nearly as fast as a directly attached drive.

I should have added that even before I chose Drobo, I first had my plan for regular off-site back-up in place. I think you would be asking for trouble regardless of the platform if you didn't have some back-up solution in place. Get that part worked out and don't worry so much about your-day-day storage. I also upload my "best" shots to my Zenfolio site same day. Worst case, I might lose 5-days of photos (I don't shoot everyday) and likely I would still have my best selections online at Zenfolio.

Andy