Drobo Pro - unboxing, adding 8 x 2TB, 2-drive fail test

[ToyRail]

The drobo can survive 2 drive failures, and 0 drobo failures.

[TheOnshi]

Well, mine died with 10 TB of data in it. Of course, when you have 10 TB of data, that includes back-up's from other drives, but the 10 TB themselves are a tar baby at the time of backing THEM up... so you probably won't (unless you buy two drives).

I am still waiting for their Support to call (mine died yesterday), but based on my previous experience, I better not hold my breadth...

[Lasareath]

Wow you went through the connections in back so fast!!!!

Slow down!!!

[brt5470]

Is this also eSata, or USB 3.0? Once I get into some money, I'd love to buy one of these. I find myself always needing space.

[JacanaProductions]

Why sound I get this over Raid 6?? Trying to decide if we need to blow 5-8k vs this.

[SuperOwnJK]

What if you have 16TB worth of Data on your drobo (So its full) what if a drive fails then? would you just lose 2TBs worth of Data? Or would it be able to recover it?

[ezraphilipse]

@SuperOwnJK the 8 drives can total 16TB, but this is raw space, not usable. Setting the DP to "single redundancy" leaves you with +- 12,5TB usable, setting it to "double" leaves you with just over 10TB usable.

So whatever setting you choose, you can not lose date if 1 drive fails. If a 2nd fails at the same time, you will face data loss when you're at "signle redundancy", but no data loss when at "double"

[birdwingsvids]

@ezraphilipse What's the weight on the Drobo Pro with 8x 2TB drives?

(I have a 4 drive Drobo with 4x 2TB and I'm running out of space)

[davomrmac]

Thanks for this cool video. If a Drobo fails, can you pull a hard drive and stick it in a caddy or case and still access your data?

[ezraphilipse]

No, a failed hard drive is just failed (i.e. broken) and needs to be replaced. During that time you can keep accessing your data though.

If the Drobo enclosure fails (m-bord, power, etc), get a replacement Drobo and swap the entire disk set from one to the other. It'll work as if nothing changed.

[roger767]

what do you do when the drobo itself dies?

[ezraphilipse]

Call support, get an RMA organized. They'll send you a replacement you can keep, you send the faulty one back. The disks you stick in the new enclosure and off you go!

[FranckyB]

This thing is pointless, it's really slow a LaCie Raid is twice as fast for cheaper. And the Gspeed from g-technology is almost FOUR times faster. I never understood the love for the Drobo. The previous version was a joke at being USB only and this new one is uber slow, especially considering the price ?!

[w0smith]

Can you mix and match hard disks on the fly with a Lacie RAID? It might not be for everyone, but it does something normal RAIDs can't do, continue to expand capacity while online. It could save money in many situations because it allows you to add and swap unmatched drives one at a time. For a small business that needs a lot of storage but can't afford IT or the hassle of maintaining a proper file server, it's a pretty good solution. Speed is not critical in all applications.

[togize]

these drobo's are a real piece of art

[ezraphilipse]

Achieved on iSCSI 70MB/s sustained (transferring about 5GB in large files), so quite good if you consider normal Gbit won't get much higher than that anyway (on CIFS/windows)

[truthseeker308]

Can you give me a throughput number? How many MB/sec Read/Write?

[asphilipse]

What a nerd

[ezraphilipse]

takes one to know one ;)