anyone familiar with (drobo)

[randy]

an actual 5 disk array storage robot for under $500.00
its own software monitors and maintains the mirrors.
i came across this by a photography studio enquiring if
i sold this unit. alot of small business could use such a device.
what u think.

[gunslinger]

I have seen the Drobo in action, and it is impressive. I think its a bit pricy for what you get. You have to factor in the cost of hard drives and it adds up quick.

[Blues]

I vaguely reember some things about it and it is nice but I think I found better options atleast for my personal needs but it might be simpler then what I would use. Its a matter of cost, simplicity, and capactiy when it comes to storage solutions for customers. When we do things for ourselves it just boils down to price and preformance we don't care how simple it is as we can handle complex.

[mortisult]

I have one here at home that I use mainly for backups and I love it.

A couple things to mention:
1. It's a 4 drive unit, not 5.
2. It is not the quickest thing in the world, especially for writing data to it. I think if I remember correctly I can write about 2mbit/s to it on average. This is due to the fact that as soon as you write data, it is automatically duplicating that data on other drives.
3. Even though you can use varying sized drives, it's best to keep them as similar as possible. For example, you wouldn't want 2 500gb drives and 2 20gb drives in the unit.
4. Reading data and streaming files (mp3, movies, etc) works fine.

[Simmy]

Originally Posted by mortisult

2. It is not the quickest thing in the world, especially for writing data to it. I think if I remember correctly I can write about 2mbit/s to it on average. This is due to the fact that as soon as you write data, it is automatically duplicating that data on other drives.

That can't be right, can it? Either that's not setup correctly or the drobo is rubbish! Or you mean 2MB/s or 20MB/s?

How is it connected to your computer?

[randy]

So its hooked up via usb, although the web site obviously makes
this thing sound and look fantastic, i'm just wondering if it is a
solution for photographers to keep there photos which are priceless
in there minds safe. or is it more to use a a file server for web to
deliver out to the media. like a networks raid file server.

i no i can just keep reading at there web site but real world experiences
with this thing are best.

[mortisult]

sorry, my bad

2MB/sec... just did a transfer and it varies between 1.0MB/s and 3.0MB/sec.

And it only has a usb connection. Supposedly there's a network adapter available, but i assume it still connects via usb to that stand alone network adapter.

~jim

Edit: upon further inspection it looks like i should be getting much better transfer rates... the 2MB/sec i'm seeing is over a network, so i'll need to do some tests on the local machine and get back to you.

[mortisult]

hooked up drobo to a good server and not just an old backup machine.

what I'm seeing is local disk copies to the drobo at about 7-10MB/sec.

I'm using Teracopy to watch the realtime transfer rates. Is there a better tool to measure real time disk copy transfers?

I have 2 400gb and 2 750gb drives in the drobo. I believe they are all 7200rpm drives. Although, I'm not pulling them out to check.

[IcedFalcon]

I haven seen the drobo featured on tekzilla (revision3.com/tekzilla) and it seems like a nice stand alone if your going the multiple drives of different sizes route. With simple lights telling you about bad drives and the ability to hot swap I would really like to see one in action.

[htsource]

Well, I have one of these:

http://thermaltakeusa.com/product/St...LN/n0001ln.asp

File transfer is not so good, peak at around 8MB/s write. Although for what I use it for, it's working fine - streaming HDTV multimedia files. I think other than Thecus, all the NAS boxes don't perform very well.

But it's much simplier than say, a Windows based file server. I was thinking of a Windows File Server made by HP, but after I heard about file corruption, no thanks. But the price is not bad for the transfer speed.