[SR-71Panorama]

Any thoughts on this?

I've been looking into storage for my lossless music, as I'll be adding a significant amount this year, and need multiple backups. I currently have no plans for any video related material; no home theater, etc.

What I like: Ability to use different size drives from different manufacturers, hot-swappable, USB 2.0, 4 storage bays, support for 1TB+ drives, email alerts, and yes, the magnetic cover & purdy case

What I don't like: data is lost forever if Drobo fails and there is no available replacement (i.e. 5 years from now Data Robotics is not a company), no user-definable (AFAIK) array type (redundancy/stripping/etc)

I guess I could combat the failed drobo scenario above via my MOZY online backup (which the initial upload is currently between 1-2 % of my library, lol.)

I'd like any success/failure stories from users here

 

[damayor521]

I've been looking at the Drobo for some time ever since I learned about them from the GeekBrief TV Podcast. I love the idea of popping in drives and having the Drobo handling all the configuration all by itself. The only cons I see is the cost and the lack of firewire/lan ports.

They just released a DroboShare device which enables the Drobo to become a NAS box. But for $200 just to add a gigabit port? Ouch.

 

[Wodgy]

The Drobo is a nice device, but for the price (especially if you want to use it as network-attached storage, which adds yet another $200) you'd be better off just finding an old machine you're not using any more and installing ZFS. ZFS is free, does a lot more than the Drobo does, and has very sophisticated methods of guaranteeing data integrity. It also has an open design and has been contributed to by some of the best minds in storage research... Drobo may be good too, but you never know how good because it's completely closed. The downside of ZFS is that it's only supported on OpenSolaris, FreeBSD, and OS X, but the former two are free and especially FreeBSD runs well on any old machine that's too old for anything else and makes a great server.

 

[grokit]

OK a year later... I just noticed this post, and though I would weigh in on an old thread...

My Drobo has firewire 400/800; I think Drobo rocks (no LAN yet) but I keep an extra 500GB drive at a friends house in case of catastrophic damage (fire, etc.) that I rotate out every so often, as off-site redundancy is also extremely important!

 

[mark2410]

drobo's do look great but dear lord cheap they arent

 

[bigshot]

In the long run they are cheaper than buying redundant external hard drives. I have three drobos daisy chained with four 1.5 tb drives in each. It's my media collection- music and movies. Works great and it's a relief to not have to back stuff up any more.