Drobo FS - WHS?

[pioneer2000]

Excuse the ignorance but:

Which is actually "better" for sharing files over a network on? The Drobo's look ridiculously expensive for something with less features / expandiblity than a WHS box....

 

[PhillyDee]

The drobo is ease of use, lower power consumption (than a bog standard WHS build) and it looks nicer.

I would go WHS every time, although I haven't ever used a drobo.

 

[bigredshark]

I prefer the drobo approach (WHS take on data protection has never appealed to me) but I'm unsure what performance would be like (certainly the droboshare sleds were good but not great).

Off the two I'd take the drobo but if it was me I'd consider a PC running a ZFS storage pool under some unix variant too. Probably still the drobo though, ZFS is fantastic but I doubt I could be bothered playing around with it at home...

 

[alexx]

Ive got 4 Drobos at work under my control and I think there ace for hassle free out of the box product, throw in some 1.5tb drives and thats the hardest step complete.

Depends what you want to do with it, for home use I'd just build some cheap unraid system as it'd be more fun and less expensive

 

[AbsenceJam]

Drobos are nice and easy but you can get a lot more for your money with a self-build if you don't mind doing the work. unRAID, WHS (if you don't mind the only protection being selective mirroring), ZFS, mdadm etc.

 

[Tomsk]

I went from a Drobo (1st gen) to a WHS.
As others have said, a Drobo works out of the box. However it (my 1st gen) was slow.
I much prefer my WHS system.

 

[Mattitude]

i have a drobo, look on ebay. Some people even sell used ones with tb drives along with it for a good price. Sure they are expensive but they are so simple, hassle free and very good for protection. Mates one died due to a power surge from a power cut or something and drobo replaced it for him he had a v1 they gave him a brand new one with 5 drives drobo s so they are good with warranty and this had expired