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Drobo Review

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Willis

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INTRODUCTION:

As I mentioned in a previous post, I've decided to purchase a Drobo to use as a central media hub for my home set up. Previously I had used an External hard drive, but a power source failure was enough to scare me into getting something a little more secure. See my "Backup Solution" thread for more on that.

I'll preface this by saying the obvious: Drobo is not a backup solution. It's much better than an external hard drive in that it will protect you from a single drive failure, but its still a single device, and if the drobo fails and goes all Sara Palin on your data (Going Rogue), then its not going to be pretty. Hard drives are inherently the weakest link in the computer chain, so some protection is better than none. A true backup solution involves storing the data on a different device in a different location.

So if its not a backup solution, why drop $320 (after $30 rebate) after on a diskless drobo? Because hard drive failures happen. I've had pretty good luck on my own computers, but I'm on my third drive in 6 years at work. It's not a question of If... its a question of when. With a drobo, if that drive fails like... let's say immediately after a well paying shoot (for my lady... nobody will pay me for my photography... yet). I can still access and use my data. Running it as an air disk on my airport extreme, I can access the same photos from any computer in my house (wired and wireless). Presumably this will solve my problem of having duplicate data all over the place and free up some gigs on my hard drives. More on that to come.

Drobo also allows you to install apps that allow you to do things like create a centralized iTunes repository, and there's also one for remote access over the web, which will let me get to my files at work or on my phone. I'll update this thread as I get more experience with that.

Posted 3 years ago #
Willis

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SET-UP:

Set up went amazingly fast. I timed it just for kicks. Beginning after I cut the tape on the box, I was able to unpack the Drobo, install two 1TB hard drives, connect the power and firewire cable to my computer in about 4 min.

Within 15 min, I had the software installed, formatted the disks to HFS, and was ready to start transferring files to the Drobo.

One of my biggest concerns about purchasing the drobo was the lack of built in Ethernet support. I'm fortuneate to have a very nice Apple Air Port Extreme, which allows me to connect hard drives via USB, but I was concerned that USB would bottle neck the performance. This concern proved to be unfounded. USB 2.0, aparently, is faster than Gigabit Ethernet (which I'm still confused about as the rated speed is much higher. I think it has to do with packet size).

I tested the various options with my 130 gig movie folder. Connected via Firewire 800 directly to the computer, the 130 gig file would have taken a little less than an hour. I was averaging about 1 gig every 20 seconds. Connected directly via USB 2.0, the same files would have taken about 2 hours according to my mac... but probably closer to 1 hr. 30 min.

Going through my airport extreme, the same files are transferring a little more slowly I get about 1 gig every 75 seconds or so... about 3 hours according to my mac. For kicks, I unplugged my Ethernet cable from my mac to see how long the transfer times took. This slowed things down considerably. The transfer now indicated that it would take 6 hours for the 130 gig folder.

All of that is to say that as long as performance isn't your number one goal, I expect this will be a suitable solution for most photo related tasks. If anyone's interested, I also streamed some video from my Drobo back to my mac while I'm waiting on the transfer, and it seems to work perfectly well... no skipping.

That's it for now. Next up will be a write up on Apps, and how well it works for photo processing purposes.

Posted 3 years ago #
NikoDoby

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Um pictures? Of your Drobo I mean.

Posted 3 years ago #
Willis

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It's a black box Niko... What do you want out of me? Well ok. No review iscomplete without a propper unboxing. But my lady has the 105 macro on assignment right now. So go out to engadget and imagine the same photos only with mail and photo gear strewn all over the place. I'll post some when I get some time.

Posted 3 years ago #
nau

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Niko:
http://www.drobo.com/products/index.php
---

pretty pricey for what it is :-\

Posted 3 years ago #
NikoDoby

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I know what it is and I've seen one before guys. It's just that Willis always makes fun of engadet's crappy review photos so now I'm calling him out on it. Let's go Willis, show us some awesome unboxing/review photos to go with your write up :^)

And your cheating if you tell your girl to do it for you!

I agree with you on the price Nau.

Posted 3 years ago #
Willis

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At $500 it's too much. At $320 it's still to much if you have to shell out another $190 for network connectivity. If you already have a router that can put it on your network, then I defy you to show me a cheaper option that will allow you to create a redundant non attached storage solution that doesn't require alot of technical knowledge / time.

The only thing that comes close is a windows media server, which does more but also costs more. Considering you are going to pay
$120 you are lookig at $240 for a redundant set up vs. $450 for an automated redundant set up. That's about what you'll pay for low end windows home server. Even the windows server is going to take you some time tosort out... Enough to eat into the savings.

Posted 3 years ago #
nau

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just did quick pricing
$ 390 AUSTRALIAN dollars (exchange is pretty close this days so its about 360 US)
can get you

AMD x2 Dual Core 240 2.80Ghz
1GB DDR2 800 Memory (AMD Approved)
Gigabyte M61PME-S2P DDR2 All-In-One
(2xDDR2, 1xPCI-E, 2xPCI, 1xIDE, 1xFDD, Upto 8xUSB, 4xSATA Support Raid 0, 1)
High Definition Audio CODEC 6 Channel Sound (Integrated)
DVD writer 22x
10/100 Fast Network Card (Integrated)
1TB 7200rpm SATA Hard Disk
some sort of a small case

card reader $+15Aus
windows7 HomePrimium +$110Aus (or just use Ubuntu-linux for free)
wireleess keyboard and mouse +$35Aus

so for about $400 US you can get something with a lot more functionality aka little media center \ with card reader \ dvd player \ torrent stand along box \ media center \ can chk email and post http://nikonrumors.com/ sitting on yr a55 infront of the TV : )
even if you put windows7 on it its still under $500US

Posted 3 years ago #
Willis

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Nau... nice work, but the whole point is to get REDUNDANT storage. So at the very least you need to tack another $100 onto the price. And then you've got to add the time to put it all together... At which point the comparison isn't even close.

The drobo was up and running in 15 min. It would take me that long just to unpack everything on your list.

As it turns out, I'm the sort of person who considers time spent tooling around with tech to be recreation... but if somebody were paying me to shoot, I expect fooling around w/ storage would be low on my priority list.

Posted 3 years ago #
Willis

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Cool!

Now that all my movies are on my Drobo, I can watch them wirelesly on my lap-top without using a bit of storage. I've probably always been able to do this, but now that I can access the file directly (my old library wasn't shared) I can watch movies anywhere that there is WiFi.

Posted 3 years ago #
nau

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"It would take me that long just to unpack everything on your list."
its unpacked and already together in DA case :) and if u get windows they install it for ya as well : )

so its a matter of configuring windows7 : ) .....

anyway I see your point, I don't share it but its a fair point

Posted 3 years ago #
Willis

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Hardware:

This is a short section of the review, but important. The drobo only has two hardware decisions to make: Network Connectivity, and Hard Drives

For network connectivity, you have two options. You can connect through your router, or you can buy a $200 Drobo Share. Honestly, for $200 you could buy a dedicated Airport Extreme, so you'd be hard pressed to explain to me why I'd ever want a Drobo share. That said, you should consider the following: The Drobo dashboard won't work over an airport extreme, so you'll have to use the dedicated lights on the front to know how much space is left on your drobo. Using DroboShare, the drobo can go to sleep when not in use. Connected via Airport, the disk stays awake. The disks themselves still go to sleep (they are not continuously spinning).

Hard drives are a little less intuitive of a decision. The best advice I can give you is to decide how much space you need and then go to the web page to figure out the most cost effective way to reach your desired storage level. Because of the redundancy, Drobo does some weird stuff. For instance, three 1TB drives and one 2TB drive won't give you any more space than four 1TB drives. As a rule of thumb, you should ignore the capacity of the largest drive and add up the capacity of the remaining drives.

Operating system is another important consideration. If you are using Windows XP to connect to your Drobo, you should be aware that it can only recognize volumes smaller than 2TB. If you have excess capacity then you can format it as a separate volume. OS X, Vista, and Windows 7 all recognize larger volumes. You'll also want to consider the OS when choosing a file system. The HFS works better for Mac's and plays nice with time machine, but won't work with windows (It seems to do OK through the Ethernet, but runs a little more slowly).

Posted 3 years ago #
mb

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What I use and recommend is WD My Book Mirror Edition ...
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=466
Not too expensive, has two drives in mirror setup so it is redundant enough.

Posted 3 years ago #
adamz

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although it's another price league, but did some of You used WD ShareSpace?

Posted 3 years ago #
Willis

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Mb - I actually looked at that product. Its priced really nicely, but I really wish it had Firewire (Liscencing firewire must be a huge pain, because everybody seems to charge a $80 premium for it). Moving a TB of data across USB is painful. I wound up settleing on the Drobo because I liked the idea of being able to expand the capacity on the fly. With RAID, you have to use two drives of the same size which means upgrading it is a no-go.

I also like all the extras that the drobo can do via the apps... but that part of the review isn't ready yet.

Posted 3 years ago #
nau

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ok question: doesnt look like it got HDMI out put... this days that makes it kinda useless for media purpose

I swapped my perfectly fine CRT for LSD just so I can watch my photos in a good rez : )

re: My Book Mirror Edition
I think its a great product BUT 2 of my mates who had it both had issues ... 1 end up taking it back for swap...

Posted 3 years ago #
NikoDoby

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nau said:
I swapped my perfectly fine CRT for LSD just so I can watch my photos in a good rez : )

You traded your CRT for drugs? Wow, I wouldn't share that around here with everyone nau they might get the wrong impression of you :^)

Posted 3 years ago #
Willis

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It wouldn't be any good for Hooking it up directly to a tv. It does stream to my laptop flawlessly over wifi. I haven't tested it with my apple tv yet, but I expect it to be similarly excellent. I'll add a section on streaming when I get more time with it.

On a side note, I'm bummed because I don't think it's going to work as I intended it to. My plan was to use it as a centralized lightroom repository. It works beautifully on my mac, but my xp desktop runs slow. I think it's because I formatted it with HFS whichdoesnt play very nice with windows. If I go with the windows file system then I can't use time machine. I'll have to set up a seperate partition or something.

Posted 3 years ago #
NikoDoby

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Willis at what resolution are you watching your movies wirelessly at? Are you getting any lag or stuttering?

Posted 3 years ago #
adamz

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niko, I sometimes stream my videos from my main itunes library over to apple tv via wi-fi and it works w/o any problems - HD quality movies from itunes store

Posted 3 years ago #
NikoDoby

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oh yeah your right adamz. I was just wondering how Willis views his.

Posted 3 years ago #
Willis

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I know the apple tv plays back at 720 p. The movies I rip are at standard def DVD quality. About 2.5 gigs per 2 hours.

I've rented movies in HD from iTunes that play back just fine. I think 80211.n would probably choke on full 1080 without a few min of buffering

if you think about wifi, you are going to do a gig every min or two... Childs play against a 2 gig 1 .5 hour DVD. A 20 gig blue Ray film is a little tougher.

Posted 3 years ago #
NikoDoby

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Thanks Willis that's exactly what I wanted to know. My wife bought an LCD projector and some Bose speakers. So now we're watching movies just like at the movie theaters. I'm even wearing those stupid 3D glasses. Seriously.

Posted 3 years ago #
mb

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Willis said:
Mb - I actually looked at that product. Its priced really nicely, but I really wish it had Firewire (Liscencing firewire must be a huge pain, because everybody seems to charge a $80 premium for it). Moving a TB of data across USB is painful. I wound up settleing on the Drobo because I liked the idea of being able to expand the capacity on the fly. With RAID, you have to use two drives of the same size which means upgrading it is a no-go.

I also like all the extras that the drobo can do via the apps... but that part of the review isn't ready yet.

USB is actually a bit faster then older implementations of FireWire and is much cheaper to implement:
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/resources/DriveCompatibilityguide.asp#external
Anyway I am currently looking for an affordable and big enough eSATA solution, should be very fast and I could put all my drives in it.

Posted 3 years ago #
adamz

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mb - AFAIR USB is 480 and Firewire 400Mbit/s, while FW800 is 800Mbit/s, while e-sata gives You 3000Mbit/s - that's a big difference, can't wait when apple decides to implement it in macbooks

Posted 3 years ago #

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