gdgt

Are you asking what's the best way to backup an Lion machine TO a Drobo? Or do you mean how to backup all the data on your Drobo (which is connected to your mac) to something else? I'm assuming it's the latter, in which case I'd recommend Crashplan. (www.crashplan.com) They allow you to backup an unlimited amount of data and their prices are pretty reasonable. It's cross-platform too, so you just install it on your mac, select the folders you want backed up (including the drobo) and away you go.

If you have geeky friends that run 24/7 machines with lots of storage, you can all install Crashplan and backup to each other for free. (this is really one of the unsung features of crashplan)

Not sure about answer 1. I am trying to backup my Drobo set up for 8TB although I only have 4 installed (1 @ 2TB and 2@ 1TB drives with one bay open, for a usable 1.8TB). Crashplan starts scanning my Drobo and continues up to over 6 million files at over 900GB although there is only 196GB of files on it. Crashplan apparently doesn't process the Drobo as a drive. What to do, what to do? I am running OSX 10.7.3 and backing up to a friend.