Drobo Review

[DarrylStevens]

Frobo.

[jh3835]

is this fire resistant 

[McIvor67]

Hey Jared, its been a few months since you've had the Drobo S. Any issues? Any new revelations? if you HAD to say something it could do better, what would it be?

[JaredPolin]

@McIvor67 still running next to me on the desk. Its doing its thing knock on wood!!! I wish i had two just in case, I really need to do a 3tb backup offsite of all my everything just to feel better. Id really like another backup.

[ToyRail]

eSata's max speed is faster than Firewire 800's max speed, but firewire 800 is way faster than the Drobo's max speed. Connecting the Drobo via eSata is not going to make it faster. You can ride your bike on the Autobahn, but that does not mean your going to ride at 200mph. Your 20GB in 9 minutes is a great example. I can transfer 20GB from my G-raid via FW 800 in 4 minutes. The limiting factor for both is the drive.

[deformator2]

Hey Jarred, how does Drobo smell like?

[TeddyImSuff]

@Mas7erChief117 sure, but its about failure of drives or do you think jared minds the bit of energy when he pays $1800 for his drobo? ^^

[photovlog]

jared, i shoot 22mb RAW files with the 60D, but i have only 2 drives with total space of 100GB, i never got into a situation when i dont have enough space, im on a really low budget , got a 2001 pc, 18" screen and my pc makes a noise louder than a van, so im not saying the drobo is a bad thing, its grate, but i dont think, from my experience, i dont need it,i just manage my files,so if i got the budget for a camera, the heberew-trinity(i got the canon 18-55 kit), a mac and some more drives.....

[deformator2]

@photovlog Are you amateur or pro, I mean does somebody pay for your photos? How will you manage your photos on your 100GB after year or two? Good luck.

[photovlog]

@deformator2 well, nobody pays for my pictures because im still in school, now im working with these 100 GB for three years now, when i'll have the time to do it full time, after i finish school, sure ill get better lenses and a new computer and stuff, what im saying is that you don't have to get all these things to get good results, the same idea as the d3000 project, but im talking about all your gear,

[deformator2]

@photovlog

You dont understand, it is about how valuable are your photos. Does not matter, you are pro or not. If you have not enough money for this Drobo dream-machine :) (I don't) you should consider another way to backup your photos, maybe on DVD DL, 100GB / 8.5GB = 12 disc. If your HD will fails, believe me you'll regret, mate.

[photovlog]

@deformator2 well i have 2 drives, thats what i can afford after buying the 60D, there was a point that i had 32 GB on my SD and 29GB on my computerXD,(the total space of my first drive before i got the 79 GB) so im not saying that my photos aren't valuable, i just cant invest any more, and im doing fine ^^

[ttljournal]

I personally went with Synology DiskStation.

[bkushner2]

Yep you need to lock down the meter on that baby!

[noahsoskha118]

jared... the D7000 can capture on 1080+?

there's an option for Original quality

[JogBird]

The video quality of this one seems to be worse than usual. Are you using a new camera? The audio is bad too, compared to your other videos.

[staticro19]

Hey Jared, you talked so much of disk fails on the Drobo. But can hard drives fails anytime just while being put to run altogether?...and what if a disk fail, are all data on the disk which failed collated to the other data on the other disks?...

[JaredPolin]

@staticro19 the data is spread out on all the discs i guess i didnt do the best job of explaining that. So each disk has info from all the other discs that if one or two fails you can replace the disks and be safe.

[Mas7erChief117]

@staticro19 when moving the data, it ads 1 extra bit (a 1 or 0) to every 1 byte (8 bits) for algorithms that can recover the data using the extra bits it put on the bytes. its hard to explain, wikipedia could do it better than i could explain. and no im not trollin

[veterejl]

@staticro19 If this helps any more....I run a RAID array and do tech work so I have a pretty good understanding of how a RAID works. I'll explain it as if it was a 4 drive since I'm not 100% on how they work in the 5th drive. Files are split in half and a half goes to each drive. The other 2 drives are mirror images. If a drive dies the mirror image one is put into it's place. Drobo has it's way of doing it, but it's the same concept.

[ZedsFotos]

@veterejl Your description is a little inaccurate. The dual redundancy in the DROBO can be compared to that in a RAID 6 setup, if you want to label the DROBO as RAID. The best thing about these DROBO units are that they can use any size drives. You do not need to have drives be the same size as is not the case in a standard RAID environment.

[veterejl]

@ZedsFotos ah! ok.  I've mostly gotten hands on with 0, 1, or 0+1. I was pretty sure it was based off one of the standard RAID setups with some proprietary flavor thrown in there. Key thing is that it's made to be easily setup and used by anyone. I also like the fact that Jared really stresses the fact that you need to have a backup plan and redundancy, most of my work I do now is on home systems and I have seen people in tears over drive failures when they had no backup of their stuff.

[ZedsFotos]

@veterejl Simple? Yeah, you can't get more simple as far as setup goes. :-) I rolled out two of the 8 bay iSCSI DROBO's for a VMWare environment last year and they're wonderful to work with. The only concern I've ever been faced with is not drive failures, as you know drives will & are going to fail so plan accordingly. But, my concern has always been the backplain or chassis failure, which I have dealt with and can be no fun. Archival, backup & redundancy is absolutely critical.

[veterejl]

@staticro19 if talking running it as just one big drive, there are companies out there that specialize in data recovery from dead drives. I would suggest contacting the makers of the Drobo with that question. Their marketing of it makes it sound a bit on the proprietary side so it may handle the drives slightly different.

[markc20001]

do you use time machine to backup your hard drive or does the drobo software do this? thx

[1986Chaitanya]

I would personally recommend buying a NAS box rather than a standalone drive as you can keep those drives connected to the network and access from anywhere.

[aarondkeogh]

What happens if you have a fire in your house and the Drobo burns?

[TheCritters78]

What happens if there is a fire or it is stolen? I run DropBox to auto copy files to "the cloud" then files I save at home are copied to my work PC before I even walk out the door.

[nwarken]

which 2TB-units did you buy?

[JaredPolin]

@nwarken the WD green

[thebjgj2]

You need a mac pro I can put up to 12tb in it and a little more if i want a solid state 

[Velli1987]

Pogoplug is a great alternative if the drobo is out of the price range. I can access the drive from anywhere(NAS) and I have it set to automatically back up files on my laptop no matter where i'm at. And like Jared said, this is not the end all, be all of data backups. Always have multiple drives just in case; no matter which setup you're using

[deadkennedys909]

Off topic but I don't care, did you not put the settings of the camera right when making this video? Or did you use a new camera to do this video? Looks a little dark but not as good quality as your other video even at 1080p

[JaredPolin]

@deadkennedys909 i had an issue with the d7000 reading the screen it was my fault for not putting it into manual like I do with the D3s.

[speckyprick]

I researched all these NAS drives and can't remember why but the Drobo wasn't the best. In the end I chose the Synology DS410. Now that IS a NAS with more features than you could ever need and it wasn't the most expensive. Fast and reliable :D

[TeddyImSuff]

hey jared, working in IT i can tell you that stopping and starting disks is worse then just letting them spin in idle mode. when you put them to sleep you risk that your drives may fail. its just the other way round then you think!

[Mas7erChief117]

@TeddyImSuff but it is more energy efficient to stop them and thats y he set it to spin down after an hour, not 5 seconds. its not that big of an issue

[MediaUnlocked]

GREAT vid I WANT ONE JUST OUT OF MY PRICE RANGE RIGHT NOW

[ExportAli]

I hope you're getting your $1800 worth ;) Seems really secure

[Alfeetoe]

When is part two of the 60D tutorial coming? I'm actually really interested to see what kind of settings you recommend, both for photo and video.

[19hundert92]

great review!

[jinktown1]

Hey Jared, do you backup your files on the drobo using time machine ? or just using the drobo software?

[JaredPolin]

@jinktown1 drobo software i have time machine for something else.

[JogBird]

This is cool, but, probably overkill for a lot of people.

[max7164]

@JogBird check out Chase Jarvis's workflow ;)

[ForSquirrel]

10Tb.. man I'm getting old. I remember my first HDD was only 40Mb minus the OS.

[indieFilmFanatic91]

@ForSquirrel Thats crazy. I remember my uncle talking to me about that when i first told him I a 1tb hdd.

[AETrainingDavid97]

@ForSquirrel I'm young.

My first XP I had was around 72GB.

My sister's current iPod has 160GB.

Times change so quickly...

[7721oopsthatsmypin]

I have no idea...

[jhosejhose]

Why do people say FIRST!?