Drobo Beyond Raid 4-Bay USB 2.0/FireWire 800 SATA 6GB/S Storage Array with Drobo PC Backup
Price: $999.99
Product Feature
- FireWire 800 (FireWire 400 compatible)
- Enhanced USB 2.0 performance
- Redundant data protection
- Hot expandable up to 16TB
- Mix n match drive capacities
Product Description
The safe, expandable Drobo storage solution protects your data against a hard drive crash, yet can expand dynamically at any time in just seconds. With nothing to configure or manage, Drobo is now the ideal solution for primary storage as well as backup.Drobo Beyond Raid 4-Bay USB 2.0/FireWire 800 SATA 6GB/S Storage Array with Drobo PC Backup Review
Normally I don't write reviews for all of the products I buy, but based on the bad reviews that people have given the drobo, I felt I needed to offset some of the unfair & misleading comments.I have had this drobo for about a month. I have had very little interaction with the drobo itself. That is becouse once it is set up you forget it. That is wonderful for this kind of storage device.
It really is as simple as putting the drives in, install the software, and begin using it. I first saw this at Macworld in January 2008, but held out for the firewire version. I am using on a mixed environment network with no compatibility problems. It is very fast, and very easy. I am using mine for all of my videos streamed to our TVs. IT ABSOLUTELY WORKS WONDERFULLY! It can simultaniously stream mp4 videos to 2 TVs while having data copied to it.... all without any hiccups. That is impressive for a device like this.
For those of you have have read (or are about to read) some of the negative reviews here, allow me to comment on them:
First complaint: Add (4) 1TB Drives - only get 2.7TB of useable data space. There are two reasons why. First the equivalent of the largest drive is being used incase or drive failure or to be able to do drive expansion.
Second, the device says that you can put up to 16tb of storage in it. This means that WHEN 4tb drives are available, you can put up to 4 of them in this device. Does that mean that you will have 16tb of useable storage. NO. Why? Becouse hard drives are sold based on an inaccurate counting system.
While EVERY SINGLE HARD DRIVE MAKER (or company selling storage space) counts how much space you have based on 1gb =1000mb, this is totally false! The truth is that 1gb = 1024mb. This means that they are shorting you 24mb for every GB you buy. I realize that on 1 GB, it is only 24mb lost, but on a TB that starts adding up.
Also the system uses some of the storage to index your drive so it knows how to find the data on your drive. This is why when you buy a computer with a 80gb hard drive and look at usable data it will say about 75GB.
Second complaint: "This is a RAID system" while the drobo does not use raid 5 per se, it does use something very much like it. To get a raid 5 array, you need 3 or more drives that are all the same size. Regardless of how many drives you use, you lose the amount of storage space equivelant to one of the drives. This goes to the protection of the array. In other words, if one drive fails you replace it with another identical drive which will rebuild the array and to prevent data loss.
Most implementations of raid 5 do not allow the storage space to grow, and if they do, it is very expensive for the raid controller card and very difficult to implement. What makes drobo different, is you get the benefits of raid 5 protection, with out of lot of its costs and complications.
For example, you can put in any 4 sata drives, and it works, regardless of there sizes. Also, if you replace a drive you can replace it with any sata drive, not the same ones you used before. Both of these are a big deal because it is what makes what drobo does very unlike raid.
Third complaint: "Drive rebuilds/expantions can take 2 to 5 days". OK, this one is true. But lets think about this, there is a good reason why this is true. You have data on all four drives. But it is writen to those drives in such a way that if any one drive is removed from a system and replaced with a new drive the drobo can rebuild all of that data.
Look, that is pretty impressive. And I would imagine if you had a drive crash you would rather wait a few days to get your stuff back as opposed to losing it all together. But if you are rebuilding data for several terabytes... yes it is going to take a while. And the same is true for raid 5.
Ultimately, the drobo does what it says. It is a very consumer friendly implementation of raid 5 like protection at an extremely affordable price. I would LOVE for someone to show me a raid-5 device (or something like it other then the drobo) that you can buy empty for under $500 that can connect to both USB and Firewire 800.
In conclusion, I have used many types of raid 5 implementations. So I can safely say: if you want raid 5 without the headaches, get a drobo. If you want a mirrored drive (raid 1), a striped drive (raid 0) or JBOD (just a big disk) - then the drobo is not for you. There are other products that will better serve your needs.
----------------
UPDATE 11/18/2008:
----------------
When I purchased the drobo, I initially put in two 1TB drives and two 320GB drives. After nearly filling it up I added another 1TB drive. Shortly there after I decided to add another 1.5TB drive. So this means I have done 2 expansion rebuilds. The process in both cases took about 10 hours and was flawless. Just to be sure I did it at night and didn't use the drive while this was going on. So my statement above about 2-5 days is way off and not true. I am sure that this will be a happier solution.
Also, based on the way that the drobo allocates space for future growth, I wish I had purchased two 1.5TB drives. IF someone is interested in learning more about this, I recommend looking at the drobolator calculator at [...]. But otherwise I am still very happy with my drobo.
Someone added a comment to this review that "it fails semi-randomly and takes data with it & that customer service is useless". Well this I can not comment on as I haven't had this problem nor have I noticed that the support was useless. I did have one minor issue and called support. They weren't the best support team, but far from the worst.
Statements like that need to be taken with a grain of salt. Sometimes people get a bad unit or talk to someone at support who is the bad apple of the group... or juts having a bad day. That isn't an excuse for them, but a reality. But again, I don't have any experience with support being useless by any means.
When it comes to data protection, I am about give the secret to security. You will never hear something more true then this: The more you value your data, the more copies of it you should have. For example, priceless pictures on your hard drive are just begging to disappear. Backing them up to a device like the drobo is a much safer solution. Burning a copy of them and putting them in your closet is even better. Making another copy and keeping them somewhere else (outside of your home) really prevents data loss (think fire, theft, etc). Another backup onto the internet... well you my friend can sleep well at night knowing that your data is safe.
Now, I am not saying that you have to be this paranoid about data. But if you have data that can never be lost, remember this simple rule about backups: redundancy, redundancy, redundancy.
Ultimately, I stand by my opinion that this is a great device. I am in the process of getting a few more for our company.
----------------
UPDATE 11/22/2008:
----------------
A few things I have thought about since my last update. I had clarified why 4 drives only yield 3 drives worth of available storage. Incedently, this is also true of raid5 or other raid like storage that is based on raid5 principles.
First the drobo is not for everyone. If you are concerned about having the maximum available amount of your data as possible, this device isn't for you. As their website CLEARLY explains, the drobo uses a fair amount of data to protect you incase of a single drive failure. It also reserves some storage for overhead and for future expansion.
Second, before purchasing this check out the drobolator ([...]). This is a calculator that shows how the drobo will address the hard drives you put into it. You will see exactly how much storage will be used for overhead, protection, future growth and available to use. If people were familiar with this page alone, it could help solve a large portion of the drobo's misconception.
Finally, I have tried to respond to the questions and comments of this review. So, there may be additional information there.
----------------
UPDATE 8/19/2010:
----------------
I updated my explaination about why 4 drives of data only yield 3 drives worth of data. This is labeled as "the first complaint".
Most of the consumer Reviews tell that the "Drobo Beyond Raid 4-Bay USB 2.0/FireWire 800 SATA 6GB/S Storage Array with Drobo PC Backup" are high quality item. You can read each testimony from consumers to find out cons and pros from Drobo Beyond Raid 4-Bay USB 2.0/FireWire 800 SATA 6GB/S Storage Array with Drobo PC Backup ...
No comments:
Post a Comment