Data Robotics Drobo Storage Robot Enclosure

[gsus787]

they RECOMMEND things for a reason... they say to have all disk the same ammount so if you have 4(3TB) hard drives, you would have a 6 TB disk(not 12TB) cuz the other 6 TB are for backup... if u fill it up with 4 different drives you are not following the purpose of this toaster (lol) its ment to keep your data safe not to have a huge ass RAID drive....

[klexkavark]

@gsus787 so what should i get instead if i wanted a huge ass RAID drive?

[gsus787]

@klexkavark u need to have twice the TB u want... if u want to have 8tb drive then u need 16 TB 8 for the ammount u want the drive and 8 more to backup that 8tb drive... it is ment to have a backup system automatically not to brag about how big it is... if u dont care about backups then just get a huge as drive or a server not a raid

[klexkavark]

@gsus787 well im not looking to brag about size i just need a hdd with huge capicty. I record alot of High Videos and already have 8 external 2tbs connected to my computer and im running out of outlets to plug them in as well as usb ports. So should i look into a server? i dont need to backup i just need space.

[gsus787]

@klexkavark u could buy a raid.. or a drobo or what ever u want just remeber that if just 1 of the drives fail then u could loose data at random because you could have one folder with 5 video files and each of thos files could be in any drive not just the one that failed

[AGC828]

Haven't bought a hard drive in decades. Do HD come formatted today? If not can u still use the DROBO to format the new drive?

[inacrysis]

So what happens when I take a 150 out to replace and there is data there since it makes every drive one drive? Basically its a waste as the date will still be on the drive you took out worthless folks

[kitakits]

What never loose my data...? that's cool but what about against some natural disaster or something... " kidding.."

[crouchingtiger1000]

i what one

[sensibilita]

EDIMAX needs help, alright! Complaining about 'rubbish', he should learn how to spell .. 'wont' is different from 'want' ... and steaming dim-sims may be ok, but computers? Nah .... "server steaming" ....

[intlogre]

How does it not loose your data when you remove a drive? I thought it was funny how he doesn't answer questions and just craps out the product specs.

[left4deadgod]

imagen having 4 1.5TB lol :P

[UniSkibum]

@left4deadgod or four 3tb drives

[FreeForAllGamerz]

@left4deadgod imagine haveing 4 4tb lol :P

[EDIMAXNEEDHELP]

When is some one going to do a video that is of use to people on here all we are getting is more and more rubbish.

I wont to know how to set up server steaming for macs and appletv , what sort of file formats do I use ect.

[jaymeez]

Hello, I purchased a drobo & can't figure out how to put my itunes & iphoto in there. Can you make a video explaining how to do this on a mac? I don't want to use drobo as back up just external hard drive to free up my internal drive which is filling up very quickly. Thanks...

[DeeJayBounce]

Then why did you get a Drobo. -_- Just stick the hard-disk in your PC, or get a conventional external harddisk.

[jaymeez]

Okay obviously you didn't read my full comment cause I don't have a pc I got a mac, & I got the drobo because it's scalable. Let me know if you need me to elaborate this for you....

[ajmernone]

Drobo was designed for macs.

[dackjaniels555]

Watch the video/read the desctiption... FUCKING IDIOT.

[jaworskij]

This is how RAID and LVM works ... You just add and delete drives as you need more capacity and as your drives fail.

But you really should supplement this with a backup tape device for longer term storage.

[y6w6]

Piece of crap, since it runs over USB 2 which is slow like hell.

[kevin15man]

well better then nothing not every pc has firewire

[BoY860]

hard drives starting to crap the bed can some one tell me if i have the input for sata do i need to use an adapter to use it and will it work without using raid???

[seamuswarren]

Lets say one of the smaller and older drives is full and needs replacing. How do you move the data from the smaller and older drive before replacing it with a large fresh hard disk?

[pvonk46]

Data is not stored on one drive, it's scattered about the various drives. If you remove one (old) drive, the data on it is also stored on the other drives, so just insert a new, larger drive, and drobo will configure it, rebuilding the data and using that drive from some data.

[seamuswarren]

Thanks pvonk. :)

You must be the same pvonk on the drobo forum? I posted a response to your response, hehe, there too.

Thanks heaps for taking the time to help. I will get a couple of NexStar 3 external cases now because dummy that I am didn't realise the two old 80GB disks are ATAs. D'oh!...

[seamuswarren]

...In time I'll get a drobo plus a couple of new hard disks but right now I need access to those two 80GB ATA disks because they have my music and photos and a website on 'em - stuff I need to access frequently.

Thanks again. :)

[djbis]

or much worse, say my Drobo is 90% full. what if I have (3) 150 GB drives, (1) 1TB drive. The big 1TB drive has a red flashing light (fails) and must be replaced. Since there was a HUGE amount of data on the drive that failed, should I expect to lose a lot of data? how can 3 150GB drives rebuild the data that was stored on a 1TB drive?

[pvonk46]

When the 1 TB drive was first added, part of that drive was reserved for redundancy, in this scenario, a large part. So you won't get 1TB of storage space out of it. So if it fails, the other three drives will maintain the data. But if you later add another 1TB drive to replace the 150GB, say, that you'll gain a lot more space.

[djbis]

Ahah!!! so there is a drawback!!! LOL

I guess the idea is to keep drives of similar sizes always, this minimizes the problem. But I guess for every gig that you have you will need another gig for redundancy, so if I stick 4 terabytes worth of drives in the unit I will only get 2 terabytes of real usable storage (+ the peace of mind I guess...)

The unit is still cool either way! Wonder if a unit with eSATA output connection will be developed soon??

[pvonk46]

You'll have 3TB of usable space with 4 drives of 1 TB each. Here's an explanation from the drobo forum:

You have four drives. I'm going to write a different number to three drives, and then write the sum of those numbers to the fourth drive: Drive 1: 3 Drive 2: 6 Drive 3: 2 Drive 4: (3+6+2) = 11 Now, if I remove any one of those drives, I can figure out what was missing from it. (IE, if we remove drive 2, we take 11 - 2 - 3 = 6, so we know the missing drive was storing the number 6).

[djbis]

Cool

[speckyprick]

@djbis Don't be such a complete noob and have majorly different sizes of HDD.

[djbis]

@speckyprick hey 2 years ago, when that post was made, 1TB drives were not cheap! LOL

[speckyprick]

@djbis Funny you should say that. I got an email newsletter this morning an I thought wow how cheap are 1Tb drives now!

[djbis]

@speckyprick yeah, prices are going down very fast. The same way we felt about HD's in 2008 is the way we are going to feel about SSD's in 2012 probably. :0)

[rayray5340]

@djbis GOOD QUESTION. HOWEVER I PURCHASED A DROBO AND SETUP YOUR SCENARIO AND SOME HOW IT WORKS. I DONT KNOW HOW BUT IT DOES. I CANT BELIEVE IT.

[zzzontag]

HAHAHAHAHAHA!

OK. Give me a 600 bucks, I'll BUILD you one. Any color you want and with your picture on it. Deal?

LOL

A box with a usb cord and a RAID controller =$600 NiCe! Oh, sorry! I forgot! It has a bunch of bulbs too! LMAO LMAO LMAO

[anon69]

It's not $600. A hardware RAID controller like a 4-channel 3ware costs almost as much, but the form factor and ease of use is not even close. This is more flexible than regular RAID because it switches automatically between mirroring, striping with parity and non-redundancy for maximum efficiency. If you can do all this cheaper, prove it.

[zzzontag]

No, I can't. I guess you're right. But in this video they don't talk about actual benefits in technical terms. It's more like: "So what does it do?" - "Oh, it takes care of your backups for you." - "And what else does it do?" - "Well it's very easy to use." You know what I mean? So I was like: "Good. But why is it so damn expensive if it's all it does?" :)

[manguz2000]

well you might want to check on the site and check out the little video he shows, plus with your 600 raid box that your planing to build, would i be able to have different size drives and still have it back up my data if the drive fails, i think not.

[mikerr]

Limited to 2TB volumes

[pvonk46]

But if your actual size exceeds 2GB, you get multiple volumes at 2GB max each. This is a limitation of USB.

[manguz2000]

actually 2TB not GB. Just clarifying.

[pvonk46]

Right!  And, with the new firmware, the 2 TB limit is now history.

[manguz2000]

well that only applies if you star out with an empty Drobo. I have one that has stuff in it and I can't change it to the new 16TB max(if im not mistaken) without re-formatting it.

[GermanPornMaster]

That thing is very useful, just don't have 2 drives fail too close in time else you're screwed. It does NTFS (Windows) and HFS (Mac OSX) has quick/write. Use it as your main drive, not backup.

[jwrezz]

Maybe quick, but not for A/V production. Great for backing up that stuff tho.

[seamuswarren]

droby cannot protect against fire 'n' theft either so for some of us a backup of the backup - stored remotely - will be necessary. So in my case I would probably still have to make DVDs of my personal photos unless I want to get a second drobo and hide it after backing up the backup. :)

[liermam]

Downside? Try the worst file fragmentation in the history of hard disk computing. This would slaughter the read and seek times of any drive by simple fragmenting files like hell.

[JohnChivez]

Really? I thought it had a defrag built in. How often did you have to defrag?

[seamuswarren]

Yeah, I think it says on the drobo website something about the disks are managed by drobo, which includes things like redundcancy and defragmenting the disks. All we have to do is insert a bigger hard disk when drobo gets hungry. :)

[ferhordlingrads]

No downsides, I'm so sure that's true.

[MPT77]

wow, coolioshis