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[Skel1ingt0n]

Like many, I have been outgrowing CDs/DVDs/flash drives/portable hard drives, and desktop HDDs for the better part of two decades now.

I'm constantly needing more storage, and have all my stuff strewn about in a million locations. Fortunately, Dropbox has made it much easier to work on the same file from multiple devices, and that's worked well for me the last couple years.

That said, what has long been just a fun side-hobby outside video games for me, my photography is starting to get me some very small-scale gigs, and I'm looking for a better system and centralized location for working on photos and making sure they're recoverable.

A Drobo + online backup (Amazon) seems to be the perfect combo. Mainly because without any work from me, ALL my photos are always backed-up, pretty much instantly. Furthermore, I don't have to invest in all my drives now - I can grow with it. So if I start with 2x 4TB drives, I have three more slots. And what's great, is if when all five slots are filled, I need more storage, I can flip out a 4TB for an 8 or 12TB when they're cheap enough.

Anyway - it's a little expensive, but I think it's a better solution than just buying more and more external drives that eventually get stuffed in a closet. Looking for impressions from those using them here.

 

[The Real Abed]

With all the money I've spent on external HDDs in the past 15 years I wish I had gone the Drobo route instead. I started with 1TB drives (Always in pairs to have one as a cloned backup) and kept upgrading as capacities got larger and larger. Ive had 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and now 8TB drives. And still have all my lower capacity drives in my closet with my main server having a 4, 6 and 8TB drive pair each. Just give me a cheap 20GB drive and get it over with already, science!

I don't know if I'd have saved or spent more going the Drobo route. At this point I'm just waiting for a 12TB drive to pair with my 8TB to hold me over for a while.

Famous last words.

 

[Crazymoogle]

Historically Drobo has always been

+ Easy to use
+ Supports mixed drives
+ Very fault tolerant from a drive perspective
- Slow as shit
- Expensive
- If the Drobo hardware dies your data is probably lost

It seems the speed issue has really been resolved with the 5D thanks to USB3, although you still lose out on Ethernet (lame) and the box is not really insulated so noise is going to be noticeable if you load it up with Seagates or something. You could opt for the 5N which has ethernet (but then no USB3?)

Personally if money was not an issue I would consider a 5N, 5 bays is a lot, it's going to do the sysadmin for you effortlessly, and if you put it somewhat out of the way maybe there is not much of a noise issue. 5D maybe makes sense if you just want it on your desk or have a MBP with Thunderbolt. My real question would be how you want to use it with Amazon because that will affect your day to day backup situation a lot. (There's also the Synology NAS route, though you can't hotswap mismatched drives there)

 

[Macam]

Don't buy them.

When it works, they're fine, but mine died right after it was out of its warranty, and no amount of reaching out to the company was able to garner a response. If you don't buy their extended warranty, they literally don't even respond, which is frankly pretty hostile.

So I basically have a proprietary brick that I need to sort out how to revive, but at this point, I'm tempted just to shift over to a Synology or some custom solution.

 

[awilliams213]

My department went through the first two versions that had the network box. At the time it was a mess almost every morning someone had to restart the entire system and wait for it to run tests on all the drives before anyone could access anything on it.

 

[Marty Chinn]

Maybe look at a Synology instead?

 

[Skel1ingt0n]

UPDATE

AVOID A DROBO AT ALL COSTS

This thing sucks ass. Fuck this piece of shit. Countless hours on their web portal. Endless google searches. This thing mounts MAYBE 20% of the time on OSX. Everything is up to date. Everything is set up correctly. I despise this piece of trash 5C. And I'm outside of the return warranty. And a second unity had the exact same issues as the first. And I'm not alone - same issues all over the internet.

If I can even help one person avoid this piece of fucking trash, I will have contributed to society.

The worst $350 I've ever spent on technology in my adult life.

 

[Jafku]

UPDATE

AVOID A DROBO AT ALL COSTS

This thing sucks ass. Fuck this piece of shit. Countless hours on their web portal. Endless google searches. This thing mounts MAYBE 20% of the time on OSX. Everything is up to date. Everything is set up correctly. I despise this piece of trash 5C. And I'm outside of the return warranty. And a second unity had the exact same issues as the first. And I'm not alone - same issues all over the internet.

If I can even help one person avoid this piece of fucking trash, I will have contributed to society.

The worst $350 I've ever spent on technology in my adult life.

Thank you for the update

 

[PeakPointMatrix]

UPDATE

AVOID A DROBO AT ALL COSTS

This thing sucks ass. Fuck this piece of shit. Countless hours on their web portal. Endless google searches. This thing mounts MAYBE 20% of the time on OSX. Everything is up to date. Everything is set up correctly. I despise this piece of trash 5C. And I'm outside of the return warranty. And a second unity had the exact same issues as the first. And I'm not alone - same issues all over the internet.

If I can even help one person avoid this piece of fucking trash, I will have contributed to society.

The worst $350 I've ever spent on technology in my adult life.

yikes

I'm reading the thread like it's new thinking, maybe I'll get a-

NOPE

 

[andythinkpad]

Never heard of NAS that doesn't run reliably, why don't you buy mainstream NAS like Dlink, synology, or a micro server you just run windows on it?

 

[GaryD]

Microserver + freenas

 

[Carn82]

No Drobo experience, but very happy with my Synology DS916+ so far. Mostly use it for Plex. I backup my photos, music and docs to cloud storage and a spare external HD just to be safe. My other media (movies and TV shows) take up most storage but if I loose that I can live with having to re-download stuff. Too bad Amazon's storage plans have gone down the crapper.

 

[Particle Physicist]

No Drobo experience, but very happy with my Synology DS916+ so far. Mostly use it for Plex. I backup my photos, music and docs to cloud storage and a spare external HD just to be safe. My other media (movies and TV shows) take up most storage but if I loose that I can live with having to re-download stuff. Too bad Amazon's storage plans have gone down the crapper.

Are you on a mac? I am curious how well it works with macs, as well as with time machine. Anyone have experience? I am debating between a Synology NAS or a micro server. I am not sure what to look for in a microserver though

 

[Engell]

UPDATE

AVOID A DROBO AT ALL COSTS

This thing sucks ass. Fuck this piece of shit. Countless hours on their web portal. Endless google searches. This thing mounts MAYBE 20% of the time on OSX. Everything is up to date. Everything is set up correctly. I despise this piece of trash 5C. And I'm outside of the return warranty. And a second unity had the exact same issues as the first. And I'm not alone - same issues all over the internet.

If I can even help one person avoid this piece of fucking trash, I will have contributed to society.

The worst $350 I've ever spent on technology in my adult life.

Sorry i didn't see your post back in the day.. Yes in my experience drobo is crap, but it is 5-6 years since i touched one. Had same experience you are describing worked with 3 of them, so wasnt just a faulty unit, it is/was just a shitty system.

Running Synology now(22drives), and there has been no problems at all, no downtime for 5 years basically.

Only problem I had was a 10gbit nic i installed would overheat because i myself had set the fans on the unit into lownoise mode, so basically my own fault. And also one security update removed my background picture on the unit.. I swear it wasnt naughty 😅