So I thought about how I should get another drive and RAID them in case this happens again.
But then I remembered how we have a Drobo Pro at work and how well it's worked. Not many problems besides a drive or two failing, but I blame that on the drives themselves. So I added Drobo to my want list. To my surprise, there seems to be some unhappy customers mostly saying that it's slow.
So now I'm asking myself (and the community) if I should purchase one. I need a way to make sure this situation never happens again. Carbonite (or similar services) sounds like a good idea, but my upload speed is less than 1Mb. Any responses would be appreciated.
Oh, one other question, are you able to use a Drobo as NAS?
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My 1.5TB hard drive just failed on me. I've been slowly recovering all my data for the past two days now. It's been a real pain.
I have two of the second gen Drobos. The read/write speed is not something you are going to want to try to do video editing on but if you are going to use it to as a backup drive for your data it will be just fine for speed.
I use mine on my file server to hold all of the media for the network centrally and the second one is plugged into my Disaster Recovery machine. I use Crashplan+ on all of my machines to back up my data. Important files get sent off site to the Crashplan servers to keep my uploads under control but all my data 3+tb on the media server then all the laptops and desktops backup all data to the DR machine using the second Drobo. The choke point is the internet connection at that point as I keep it off site at a family member's house.
I have not had the data loss issues that other Drobo users have reported on various blogs but those reports are from a few users of the many Drobos that have been sold.
My only complaint with the 2nd Gen Drobo right now is they have not released a firmware update to deal with 3tb drives. This is annoying as in the original marketing they were claiming that you could have up to a 16tb volume.... but they didn't have a way to do that until they wrote some new code to support it. It has been 6 months now that we have been waiting for that update that is supposed to be out Q2 of 2011.
I use mine on my file server to hold all of the media for the network centrally and the second one is plugged into my Disaster Recovery machine. I use Crashplan+ on all of my machines to back up my data. Important files get sent off site to the Crashplan servers to keep my uploads under control but all my data 3+tb on the media server then all the laptops and desktops backup all data to the DR machine using the second Drobo. The choke point is the internet connection at that point as I keep it off site at a family member's house.
I have not had the data loss issues that other Drobo users have reported on various blogs but those reports are from a few users of the many Drobos that have been sold.
My only complaint with the 2nd Gen Drobo right now is they have not released a firmware update to deal with 3tb drives. This is annoying as in the original marketing they were claiming that you could have up to a 16tb volume.... but they didn't have a way to do that until they wrote some new code to support it. It has been 6 months now that we have been waiting for that update that is supposed to be out Q2 of 2011.
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I currently have two Drobos - a Drobo 2nd-gen and a Drobo FS and I have been happy with both of them. Transfer speeds on the Drobo have been so-so, but it hasn't really been an issue for me. The most stress I ever gave it was streaming media (audio and video) and I never had any issues doing so. You can use the Drobo as a NAS, but you have to buy an add-on for it and even then I'm not sure they make it anymore. Even then, the performance for that add-on wasn't that impressive based on the reviews (I considered getting the add-on at one point, but the reviews for it just turned me off).
If you really are interested in getting a Drobo and want to utilize it as a NAS you should really look at the Drobo FS. The performance is a lot better than the Drobo over USB.
If you really are interested in getting a Drobo and want to utilize it as a NAS you should really look at the Drobo FS. The performance is a lot better than the Drobo over USB.
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RAID certainly has it's uses but it's not a backup system. It's more for speed and realibility/up-time. You still need actual backups.
I use a bare external drive with the kick-ass Thermaltake BlacX. I have the one with eSATA so I get internal drive speed, hot-swap, and yet I can power it off 99% of time to keep my backup data safe from things like accidental deletion, viruses, etc. Only costs about $30 + drive and no monthly fees.
I use a bare external drive with the kick-ass Thermaltake BlacX. I have the one with eSATA so I get internal drive speed, hot-swap, and yet I can power it off 99% of time to keep my backup data safe from things like accidental deletion, viruses, etc. Only costs about $30 + drive and no monthly fees.
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My Drobo, a second gen, has been rock solid. I recommend them to everyone I meet based on their resilience, and extreme ease of use.
That being said, you're Ruhr about the speeds, you'll be lucky to get half of the throughput from whatever port you're using it on (though I've heard the newer ones are much faster). That being said, my Drobo has served me fine. I use it as a media storage device, I just pointed iTunes at it and haven't thought about it since, it streams fine to my apple TV and syncs with my external devices well. The only time I've seen it choke is when I'm copying a large file to it (a podcast or movie) while trying to stream from it at the same time, it seems to have difficulty reading and writing at the same time, though it does multiple reads just fine.
TLDR: it's great as a storage locker highly recommended. But I wouldn't recommend the non-pro versions if you're going to be doing a lot of editing on it, especially video.
I believe the Drobo FS is a very customizable NAS, and the older versions can be converted into a NAS via a hardware addon. If your router can use a hard drive as a NAS the Drobo will work through that as well.
That being said, you're Ruhr about the speeds, you'll be lucky to get half of the throughput from whatever port you're using it on (though I've heard the newer ones are much faster). That being said, my Drobo has served me fine. I use it as a media storage device, I just pointed iTunes at it and haven't thought about it since, it streams fine to my apple TV and syncs with my external devices well. The only time I've seen it choke is when I'm copying a large file to it (a podcast or movie) while trying to stream from it at the same time, it seems to have difficulty reading and writing at the same time, though it does multiple reads just fine.
TLDR: it's great as a storage locker highly recommended. But I wouldn't recommend the non-pro versions if you're going to be doing a lot of editing on it, especially video.
I believe the Drobo FS is a very customizable NAS, and the older versions can be converted into a NAS via a hardware addon. If your router can use a hard drive as a NAS the Drobo will work through that as well.
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