iMac and storage.. what do you have?

Mine's been flawless since I got it.

Transfer speed via Gigabit ethernet (iSCSI) are lightning. Only thing it that it was pricy :(

However, I do keep a secondary backup of critical documents on the Time Capsule, and an offsite backup on iDisk.
 
The power cut thing doesn't sound good for me as we get them quite often with some problems on our power lines. I think I may go for one of the tranquil barebones systems and run it with windows home server.
 
I've read reviews (a lot!) where they tested the power-cut failures.

Suffice to say they couldn't get it to fail. It just reboots and resumes from where it left off. It does this by storing the data in a battery pack capable of lasting several hours.
 
EVH does your Drobo spin down the HDDs after 15 mins or so? I don't access the drive that often, and when I do I have to wait a few seconds for it to spin up again and its quite annoying.
 
keogh said:
EVH does your Drobo spin down the HDDs after 15 mins or so? I don't access the drive that often, and when I do I have to wait a few seconds for it to spin up again and its quite annoying.
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I've got the Drobo V2 and this is by far the most annoying feature. I use it, on average, about once every half an hour, so every single time I have to wait for it to spin up.

There is a DroboShare app which gets around it it (by reading a random sector every 14 minutes) but there's no way to genuinely keep the drives running.

I believe the Drobo Pro doesn't do this, as it's designed for SOHO/enterprise and constant use.
 
You can set it on the DroboPro, not sure if you can on a Drobo (I have the 'Pro).

Open the Drobo Dashboard, double click the graph and go to "Advanced" settings and there's an option under "Tools" to choose the spindown time.

I have mine set to 15 minutes as it's either streaming HD movie rips or it's off.





 
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1 TB Internal
1 TB MyBook for hourly Time Machine backups

I also do an additional weekly Time Machine backup to another 1 TB MyBook which I rotate with an identical offsite 1 TB MyBook.

I subscribe to the rule that your data ain't backed up unless it is 3 places (4 for me), 1 of which is offsite.
 
Will the 'Pro do NFTS discs in the same set?

I know NTFS is read only under SL but I'd like for it (at least in part) with my windows XP box.

My current storage:
MBP 120GB SSD
WD Studio 1TB 7200rpm via Firewire 800 (Time Machine and general offload).
Samsung 1.5TB 4500rpm via eSATA/USB secondary
2x 200GB unused

If all goes to plan jobwise I'm thinking of a Drobo'Pro but unsure if I should go NTFS attached to a small windows box or direct attach to a Mac Mini.
 
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I have it direct to Mac Mini via iSCSI (Gigabit ethernet RJ45)

You can format it to HFS+, FAT32, NTFS.. anything really. Up to 16 separate volumes, not sure if they can be mixed and matched.

I chose HFS+ because it's direct to a Mac Mini. I will then share the Mac Mini on the network and get the best of both worlds.
 
EVH said:
You can set it on the DroboPro, not sure if you can on a Drobo (I have the 'Pro).

Open the Drobo Dashboard, double click the graph and go to "Advanced" settings and there's an option under "Tools" to choose the spindown time.

I have mine set to 15 minutes as it's either streaming HD movie rips or it's off.
Click to expand...

Yeah the boggo Drobo doesn't have the menu. Must be an app out there that will write to the disk every x mins... not ideal, but might be the only way around it.

Thanks for the reply though!
 
I surprised by the number of Drobo users here actually, I'm tempted myself but they are rather expensive and I've heard less than stellar performance reported. Then again, easy to manage and upgrade. Hmm...
 
I think that the majority of users use them for just basic streaming so their priority is for storage, flexibility with enough performance to stream.

If you wanted a high performance direct attached storage then I would suggest RAID0 FW800 or eSATA if you have the connectors.

I still have my UPS too just to add that little more protection :D
 
EVH, sorry to keep bugging you but a few more questions..

1. Do each of the drives appear as separate volumes to the mac? If not do you have one 'bunch of discs' volume that you partition as you want?
2. Can you create a software RAID0 or RAID1 volume using DiscUtil as you can for normal attached drives?
3. Does the redundancy button just run block-level RAID1 or does it do file-level replication?

I'm just trying to get a feel for the flexibility.
 
1 - It appears as 1 drive in the Finder. Although you have the option to partition it in to 16 virtual drives (that expand as you add storage). Up to 255 with the DroboElite.

2 - Unsure, I just use it as a single large pool. By default it keeps the largest drive for redundancy.

3 - Have to excuse, i'm not clued up on file systems. You'd be better off contacting Drobo directly.

FYI: Those interested Drobo now have the DroboS with eSATA.
 
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