Not Drobo

[Matthew Mann]

I'm looking for long term drive backup and archiving. At first Drobo looked incredibly appealing because of its scalable/modular setup. Essentially for my budget it makes a lot of sense to add drives as I need them and let my archiving system grow as I do. I also liked the fact that Drobos seem to be able to function both as an external RAID system as well as SAN storage. I would like to have system like this that can start as a standard external RAID system and grow into a SAN when we get a switch and server system. So that said, Drobo was looking pretty good.. until I saw how popular it is on RED USER!

So I get Drobo=bad. Do you guys know of any modular storage systems that functions the way Drobo is advertised to? I'm hoping to find something like this (that works as this is advertised):
http://www.drobo.com/products/business/b1200i/index.php

[Graeme Nattress]

For personal business use I've been working with: http://www.synology.com/us/products/DS1511+/index.php and I've found it very good, reliable and incredibly easy to use. I have multiple units set so that they clone themselves for backup purposes, and to me, that's a very valuable feature.

Graeme

[Ralph B.]

I think the real issue is that some people have tried to use the Drobo as an editing drive, which it is simply not up to the task for on the pro level, and perhaps not optimal for any editing task that doesn't keep the whole project in memory (although I have not used the B1200i). However, for a back up that is a easy safe place to put stuff that requires little to no thinking I think it is great. If you have to get back up and editing right now after a crash then you need another solution, but if you need a vault for your data I still love it.

My 2¢.

[Graeme Nattress]

For a NAS even I found the Drobo slow and un-reliable. That you have to use their sw to access it was a pain. That the Synology NAS's have their controls on a web browser and are really fast in operation as a NAS sold them to me, and that they have cool features like the audio playout to a USB DAC are wonderful in a mixed office / home environment.

Graeme

[Matt Gottshalk]

Drives aren't for long term ANYTHING, period.

I went and bought the Cache-A LTO-5 for that.

[Barry Bishop]

Drobo is great for a backup, horrid for scratch R3D editing. If you are just backing up and scaling to a SAS then Drobo is great. If you want to scratch edit and SAS from it then maybe checkout a system like this
http://www.amazon.com/Sans-Digital-MS8X6HA-Enclosure-Expansion/dp/B005N2Z366

Graeme there is another option for Drobo's gui software. Just call support, i did, and they should point you where to download it.

[Martin Weiss]

Drobo has a sub-average customer support (and I am based in Europe!). They drop promises, make you upgrade, shift their policies. Good idea, sub-optimal execution. You're better off getting a cheap, used LTO drive for long-term storage and backup and some cheap USB drives for short term.

[Matthew Mann]

For personal business use I've been working with: http://www.synology.com/us/products/DS1511+/index.php and I've found it very good, reliable and incredibly easy to use. I have multiple units set so that they clone themselves for backup purposes, and to me, that's a very valuable feature.

Graeme

Thanks Graeme, I'll look into this.



Drives aren't for long term ANYTHING, period.

I went and bought the Cache-A LTO-5 for that.

I agree. We're looking into a long-term LTO backup for the near future, but for now we need an active system that we can archive and easily access our R3Ds and backup to. I'll look into the Cache-A. Thanks!

[Tony Lorentzen]

For personal business use I've been working with: http://www.synology.com/us/products/DS1511+/index.php and I've found it very good, reliable and incredibly easy to use. I have multiple units set so that they clone themselves for backup purposes, and to me, that's a very valuable feature.

Second that. I own a DS1511+ too and is extremely happy with my purchase. I put 5 Hitachi 3TB drives in it with Synology's own RAID 5 variant which gives me around 12 TB of storage with one drive fail-safe. It even expands with two more enclosures if you need more storage. It's pretty fast too (for a NAS) and has some killer features. I does take forever to initialise 5 x 3 TB drives, though :-) But that's not Synology's fault :-)

Drobo is NOT suited for professional work.

[Martin Weiss]

I imagine that unlike for the Drobo, in the DS1511+ you'd have to match all drives by size, right?

When you expand the DS1511+ with a DX510, does that have to use the same disk sizes, or can you use different ones?

[Barry Bishop]

I haven't had any issues with Drobo, but I would second the LTO-5 route.

[Imran Farouk]

Drobo Pro failed on me, 2 x Drobo 4 Bay fail...

I seriously have no clue why the hell I kept buying their products, I figured it wouldn't happen and damn me to hell it did...

Guess my next route is Synology... though I am hoping cheaper thunderbolt raids will come out in the future, really craving a Promise Thunderbolt 6 bay

[Tom.Wong]

I had a client hand a drobo to me as one of the backup drives. Turned it on, wouldn't mount.

esata, fw800, usb. didn't wanna mount. told them to return it and used g drives instead. It's junk.

[Ben McCarthy]

I'd also go with the Synology great unit for backup

Cheaper and smaller drives config, and more "tinker able" is the HP

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/me/en/sm/WF06b/15351-15351-4237916-4237917-4237917-4248009-5163346.html?dnr=1

[Justin Harrison]

So the Drobo at work just died :(

It had been running really slow the past few weeks and would be on again off again for awhile, and now it's dead.

Luckily I had time to back it all up, but just another warning!

[Paul S.]

Yeah Drobo sucks, i found out two units along.I'm still hoping for that red raid that Jarred hinted might be in the pipeline. I'm pretty sure there's a world of improvement possible, both on the NLE performance side and also home 4k friendly video servers.

[William Albertini]

I have had 2 four bay Drobos for the past 3 years or so and I find them great for their purpose: backup. They are slow even on fw800 and have never been intended (I am only talking about 4 bay) as a high speed video solution. Some people see the label "raid" and miss the fact there are many different flavors.

[Christopher Barrett]

I've had a Drobo Pro for a couple years. It's been fine. Now that my expansion chassis is coming, though, I'm adding eSATA back to the tower, which Drobo seems to be conflicting with and crashy. What sucks is, to unload it, I'll totally fill the new RAID tower I'm getting. Damn-it-to-hell!!!

[Trevor Meeks]

Never had any issues with Drobo not working. I had a 4-bay FW800 unit that I stored iTunes content on for a couple of years before selling it. I now have a DroboProFS (network-attached 16TB) and use it to store all of my iTunes content and backup the RAID0 that I edit off of. Drobo support was great about the only issue I had with it - a noisy cooling fan - and promptly send me a replacement unit to swap my drives into. As long as you understand the limits of the system, it works like a charm. I won't edit from the thing (it's too slow, especially with the WD Caviar Green drives I put in mine) but otherwise it serves up the media and software files that I keep on it just fine, and has been a steady backup platform for the large files on my RAID.

[Sergio Perez]

I'm using Lacie 4big Quadra. No issues so far. Have hard many horror stories with Lacie, but have been using their drives for more than 7 years and none failed until now (about 30+ D2 drives and counting). The only occasional problem I had was with their AC adapters and connecting pins.

[Graeme Nattress]

I imagine that unlike for the Drobo, in the DS1511+ you'd have to match all drives by size, right?

When you expand the DS1511+ with a DX510, does that have to use the same disk sizes, or can you use different ones?

No, you don't have to match drive sizes and yes you can expand things quite nicely: http://forum.synology.com/wiki/index.php/What_is_Synology_Hybrid_RAID%3F

Graeme