Are drobos worth the money ?

Adrianr · 6 Jan 2010 at 13:54

bigredshark said:
Actually it's perfect for a home user or a self employed 'creative' type. You buy one, feed it disks and forget about, it protects your data without you even needing to know what RAID is. Run out of space, pull out a disk and feed it a bigger one. No pressing buttons, no configuring, no understanding needed.

It's the best consumer storage product I've yet seen, it's obscenely simple!

This seems to sum up the product from what I've read. I think I may have to take the plunge.

MADMAN · 6 Jan 2010 at 14:02

Correct me if I am mistaken but in the RAID setup you need to wipe all your hdds before use. In respect to Drobo, if you had a hard disk that contained data and you inserted it into the unit. Would the unit transfer the data from the hdd onto the other drives installed or wipe the disk?

Q6600 ¦ 8GB DDR 6400 RAM ¦ Abit P35 MB ¦ EVGA 8800GTX OC 768MB GPU ¦ Creative SB X-Fi ¦ 3x Samsung 1TB HD103UJ ¦ 2x Samsung 1.5TB HD154UI ¦ HL-DT-ST-BD-RE GGW-H20L ¦

bigredshark · 6 Jan 2010 at 14:47

Just wipes it if you insert a disk with data on it, that's one technical downside, I believe the data format is proprietary so if it fails you can't recover it in a PC or anything.

Euphoria · 6 Jan 2010 at 15:13

i am not sure why people would use a drobo in an enterprise or business area, the performance and stability of these things are terrible compared to HP/ Dell systems. Why not tell us your requirements rather than tell us what you are looking to go for and we can look at something for you around the same price.

Also how do you plan to sustain this in terms of long term support / maintenance and what levels are you looking at going for?

mikeh501 · 6 Jan 2010 at 17:28

Euphoria said:
i am not sure why people would use a drobo in an enterprise or business area, the performance and stability of these things are terrible compared to HP/ Dell systems. Why not tell us your requirements rather than tell us what you are looking to go for and we can look at something for you around the same price.

Also how do you plan to sustain this in terms of long term support / maintenance and what levels are you looking at going for?

i doubt people do use them in enterprise environments... there for v/small sme's and individuals. Comparing one of these to a SAN/NAS from either of those vendors is apples and oranges. You wouldnt even buy the disks from dell for the price of one of these.

Ev0 · 6 Jan 2010 at 18:16

mikeh501 said:
You wouldnt even buy the disks from dell for the price of one of these.

The disks for our dell san are relatively pricey, and we only get the 'cheap' ones as well!

MADMAN · 6 Jan 2010 at 18:19

Looking around the Drobo Pro or Drobo S would be on comparsion value or better than what Netgear has to offer as to price wise.

For example

Drobo Pro £972 (8 Drives)
Drobo S £532 (5 Drives)

Netgear

ReadyNAS NV+ (4 Drives) £379
NETGEAR ReadyNAS NVX Pioneer (4 Drives) £585
ReadyNAS Pro (6 Drives) £2028

As to comparsion in performance, that is the question?

Euphoria · 6 Jan 2010 at 18:32

Do drobos have business support and can it be extended?

MADMAN · 6 Jan 2010 at 19:02

On the Drobo website there is a service called DroboCare which looks like it used for business user.

bigredshark · 6 Jan 2010 at 19:20

MADMAN said:
Looking around the Drobo Pro or Drobo S would be on comparsion value or better than what Netgear has to offer as to price wise.

For example

Drobo Pro £972 (8 Drives)
Drobo S £532 (5 Drives)

Netgear

ReadyNAS NV+ (4 Drives) £379
NETGEAR ReadyNAS NVX Pioneer (4 Drives) £585
ReadyNAS Pro (6 Drives) £2028

As to comparsion in performance, that is the question?

Standard drobo (4 bay) is cheaper still but looses eSATA. It's not a great comparison though, all the netgear devices are NAS devices - one of the big Lacie multi disk DAS units or similar would be the most direct comparison I think

MADMAN · 6 Jan 2010 at 20:32

Then you come to issue of the brand of hard disk in a NAS or Drobo setup.

As seagate is normally the brand of choice for the Netgear ReadyNAS I am Reluctant to purchase this unit as to past experience with Seagate 2TB hard disks.

Maybe it was just unlucky, but purchasing 2x2TB LS hard disks and both failing within 10 working days isnt great news to anyone.

A question needs to be posed concerning what other branded hard disks can the ReadyNAS unit can handle?

As from what I have read from a number of reviews, the Drobo has no issues whatever size and branding hard disk the user inserts into the unit.

bigredshark · 6 Jan 2010 at 20:38

I know people running Readynas units with seagate low power drives and no problems, I'd probably get those or Western Digital green power drives. But the drobo doesn't care what you use really...

HighlandeR · 7 Jan 2010 at 07:53

Has anyone seen this :

http://www.lime-technology.com/joomla/index.php

unraid server

sounds similar too Raid and drobo features but DIY and a lot cheaper

to quote

"True Incremental Storage

Unlike other RAID systems, unRAID Server supports true incremental storage expansion. You can add capacity by adding more hard drives or by upgrading existing hard drives. This is a great way to make use of older, smaller hard drives you might have laying around.

For example, you might start out by installing one or two new high capacity hard drives along with some number of smaller hard drives you already own. Later, you might decide to replace one of the smaller drives, and unRAID Server will restore the data of the smaller drive onto the new drive, and then expand the file system to incorporate the full size of the new drive"

Wondered if thats perhaps a cheaper alternative too drobo/netgear nas ?

GiB · 7 Jan 2010 at 11:21

I ve just picked up a drobo pro, nice bit of kit but still muddling my way through, the iscsi speeds have been impressive connected up to a vitrual machine on esxi, around 127mbps each way. I have to say the main reason I got this was so that I could create a large HD ie 16TB and then add the hard drives when i need them! It can be a bit fiddley at first when your setting up but all in all I like them. Thumbs up from me even if it is a little pricey.

MADMAN · 7 Jan 2010 at 20:13

'GIB' - What drives are you using in the Drobo Pro ?

GiB · 8 Jan 2010 at 08:26

Currently only have 4 1tb Samsung F1's prob not the best choice for the device as some green drives might of been a better option, but so far so good.

iaind · 8 Jan 2010 at 18:33

bigredshark said:
Actually it's perfect for a home user or a self employed 'creative' type. You buy one, feed it disks and forget about, it protects your data without you even needing to know what RAID is. Run out of space, pull out a disk and feed it a bigger one. No pressing buttons, no configuring, no understanding needed.

It's the best consumer storage product I've yet seen, it's obscenely simple!

That was my understanding of the normal Drobo, but they're talking about the Drobo "pro", which is iSCSI.... surely theres only so simple you can make iSCSI?

bigredshark · 8 Jan 2010 at 19:49

iaind said:
That was my understanding of the normal Drobo, but they're talking about the Drobo "pro", which is iSCSI.... surely theres only so simple you can make iSCSI?

Well to an extent, it also has fw800 so it can still be used as DAS like the smaller units and I've heard there is a zero config iSCSI app included to get a host machine connected to the drobo. The old drobo pro only allowed one iSCSI host anyway, there's a new version now which allows multiple connections.

I agree it makes less sense in the iSCSI multi host sense but there's not really a product to compare it to out there...