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The Drobo is a new way to store your data. It works like RAID, only better. Made by Data Robotics, the Drobo is an enclosure that can use anywhere from 2 to 4 SATA hard drives of any size and brand to keep multiple copies of your files and ensure against hard drive failures.
It’s all about the data
The main advantage is that consumers are freed from the problem of having to use identical hard drives (which is how things work in RAID) and can rely on the largest and cheapest drives they can find on the market for their data storage. In a word, the Drobo turns hard drives into a commodity, a building block of your data storage that can be replaced at any time with any SATA hard drive without negatively affecting your data.
Depending on the amount of total space available on the Drobo, it can withstand the failure of one or even two of its hard drives without losing any data. (Naturally, you’ll need to have more than two hard drives in there in order for it to protect against a double hard drive failure…)
It is its capacity to withstand drive failures and use any SATA hard drives that makes it both remarkable and unique for a consumer product.
I bought a Drobo a few weeks ago, and have been using it since to store my photo library. You may recall I first tried a WD My Book World Edition II, then a WD My Book Pro Edition II to store my photos, and both failed me. The My Book Pro failed me miserably, but that’s another story. (Incidentally, I’m working with WD’s advanced tech support to see if my issues can be resolved, so I may have an update on that in the near future.)
I believe I’ve finally found my storage solution with the Drobo. It offers the data redundancy I need to keep my over 36,000 photos alive and well, and it works on both my Mac and my PC. Not only that, but I know it will grow with me as my data storage needs expand.
Updated 1/6/08: Since writing this article, I purchased two more Drobos. An additional one to store my videos and other files, and one more for my parents.
How it works
I bought two 500 GB SATA hard drives with 32 MB buffers and installed them in my Drobo. Installation is a snap, you just need to slide them in and a locking lever snaps into place, securing them in their slots. (If you think a 32 MB buffer is overkill for a hard drive, you might want to have a look at my review of the Dell OptiPlex 745.)
The two drives give me about 464 GB of total storage. There’s a wonderful tool called the Drobolator that lets you see exactly how much storage you’ll get with your Drobo when you stick in drives of various sizes.
There is one detail I want to point out here that you may or may not be aware of, depending on how well you read through the Drobo literature. Because there’s an upper limit of 2 TB on a single USB volume, if your Drobo’s storage capacity exceeds that limit, your computer will then see two Drobo volumes.
Let me put it another way. If you use the Drobolator and you stick 4 (four) 1 TB hard drives into the Drobo, your total available storage will be 2.7 TB. This means, according to Drobo’s literature, that you will see two volumes on your computer. (This is because of that pesky 2 TB limit on USB devices.) Given that USB 3.0 specs are in the works now, and that Data Robotics has acknowledged they’re looking at the possibility of Firewire connectivity in the future, that may be a non-issue at some point, but it is something to know about now.
Updated 1/17/08: Data Robotics will soon release a firmware update that will bump the upper limit up to 16 TB for a single USB volume. Those who already own the DroboShare accessory will already be able to format the Drobo volume at 16 TB. To get the details on how this works, read my comment below.
The perceived vs. actual size of the volumes can be confusing, so let me explain it a bit further. Even now, my computer sees my Drobo as having a size of 2 TB. The Drobo only has 2×500 GB drives in there, and the total size of my available storage is 464 GB. But since the Drobo’s storage can expand or decrease, and it needs to be a platform-independent device — one that does not depend on the computer for sizing information or partition tables — it has to declare its maximum size (2TB) from the start. That’s the perceived size. The actual size is indicated by the capacity meter, and if you’ve installed it on your machine, the Drobo software, which communicates with the device and displays information from it locally. In our case, if we were to put in 4×1 GB hard drives in the Drobo, we would have two actual volumes: a 2 TB volume, and a 700 MB volume. Their perceived size will be 2 TB each. If this is still confusing to you, don’t worry. Just go by the Drobo’s capacity meter to monitor how much free space you have left, and don’t worry about the perceived size.
Transfer speeds
Some people are saying that it’s slower than other storage solutions. In terms of speed, I’ve found it to be equivalent to RAID 1 drives like the My Book Pro II (which can be configured in RAID 0 or 1). I haven’t done benchmark testing, and I don’t intend to — I focus on real world use in my reviews, not lab tests — but it’s not what I’d call slow, and it’s not what I’d call fast. It’s somewhere in the middle, and it’s good enough for me. I’m willing to give a little when it comes to transfer speeds in exchange for data redundancy and safety.
Updated 5/1/08: When the Drobo will get up to and a little over 70% used space, and even before the orange light will turn on in a drive bay to indicate that you need to puchase additional hard drives, the transfer speeds will start slowing down. I’ve experienced significant slowdowns in transfer speeds, to the point where copying a 1 GB file onto the Drobo takes 10 minutes or more (when it usually takes 1-2 minutes) when the used space was 80% or more, and the orange light wasn’t yet turned on. You may want to keep this mind as you plan your storage needs. As soon as I put in another drive and the used space dropped back down, the transfer speeds went back to normal.
How it looks
In terms of physical size, or footprint, you should know that the Drobo is significantly larger than other consumer-level storage products out there. It’s big, as you can see from both the photos and the video that accompany this review. If you’re thinking about buying it, make sure you have enough space on your desktop to accommodate it.
In the photo shown above, I’ve got a NewerTech miniStack (1st generation) sitting next to the Drobo. I’ve also got a WD Passport Drive on top of the miniStack. This is to give you an idea of how it compares to other external hard drives. The miniStack, for example, is the same size as a Mac Mini, and is actually meant to be stacked with it. I’m using it as a standalone drive, because it has both a USB and Firewire hub built in, so it’s quite versatile.
I like the design of the Drobo. I like rounded corners and glossy surfaces. Apple has spoiled me that way. The Drobo’s black, glossy ends (front and back) are really beautiful.
How it sounds
I think it’s quiet — when not accessed. Even though it has a big fan in the back, it makes barely any noise. The Drobo becomes audible when you are reading or writing to the hard drives. Because it’s a metal enclosure, the sounds generated by the seek operations are amplified slightly by it. The metal adds a melodious echo to each sound. It’s not what I would call loud, and I find it somewhat interesting. Ligia doesn’t share my opinion, but I guess you can’t please everybody. At any rate, just be aware of the fact that you will hear sounds coming from the Drobo when you’re actively using it.
Updated 4/2/08: I had some noise issues with my Drobos, which were resolved nicely by Data Robotics. You can read the details at the end of my review.
Updated 5/1/08: When you fill up the Drobo (all four drive bays are taken) you will notice that the fan will kick into high gear a lot more often, and even when the Drobo is barely being accessed, or not even accessed at all — only plugged into the computer’s USB port. It’s not an overheating issue, because I put my finger on all four drives, and they weren’t hot to the touch, only warm, so I think it’s a firmware issue. This has happened with two of my Drobos. It seems that if the temperature gets above 75 degrees Fahrenheit in the room, the fan will start spinning faster, and if it gets close to 80 or over it, the fan will start going nuts and will generate quite a bit of noise. For a consumer device which isn’t meant to sit in a server room (controlled temperature environment), I think this is excessive, and the fan speed needs to be adjusted in one of the next firmware releases.
Video review
I hope this video will give you a better idea of Drobo’s looks, size and functioning, as well as its sounds. I tried to make the video as useful as possible by looking at the Drobo from various angles and by comparing its size with other external drives that I own. I also pulled out one of the drives with the Drobo turned on, so you could see that that they’re hot-swappable and that it wouldn’t miss a beat. You can also watch it here, and download it as well.
If you’ve just finished watching the video, don’t worry, the hard drive status lights stopped blinking after the data check. It’s just that when you remove a drive and stick it back in, the Drobo does a thorough check to make sure all the data that should be there is there. It may even re-sync all the data across the drives. It took a few hours for that check to complete since I had over 300 GB of data. By the way, all of it (the data, that is) was accessible during the check, so yes, you can work with the Drobo immediately after you do a hard drive replacement.
A few thoughts on the design
I like the idea of the lights on the front of the drive. It’s great to have an easy-to-use capacity meter, and to indicate the health of each drive through different-colored lights next to it. What I don’t like is the blue LEDs used for the capacity meter. They’re very blue, and very strong.
Generally speaking, blue LEDs cause headaches, because the eyes can’t focus properly on them. They always seem out of focus when you look directly at them. Every time I see blue LEDs on something that’s meant for constant use I cringe. Fortunately, the Drobo isn’t meant to sit directly in front of the user, but off to the side, which is where I have it.
It would be nice if Digital Robotics would do something about the capacity meter in their next build of the Drobo. They could even leave the blue LEDs in there, but obscure the light slightly by orienting them at an angle instead of having them point straight out toward the user. I’ve found that when I look at blue LED light from an angle, it doesn’t cause the same vision problems.
I like it
Is the Drobo a keeper? I think so. I’m happy with it. Even though there are a few sticking points, it’s nothing that would have dissuaded me from buying it, even if I had known about them beforehand. As a matter of fact, I’m so satisfied with it, that I signed up for the Drobo Evangelist program. That means that between now and December 31st, if you buy a Drobo from the Digital Robotics online store and you mention my evangelist code (EVPOP), you’ll get $25 off its purchase price. In the interest of full disclosure, you’ll also help me, because I’ll get $25 for each successful sale as well. Remember, this is only until 12/31/07, unless Data Robotics extends the program — and I haven’t heard anything about that. (Updated 1/2/08). I heard from Data Robotics today: they’ve extended the evangelist program until 6/30/08. That means the discount code will work until June 30th if you decide to use it.
Let’s review
The good points:
- Data redundancy ensures availability, even if up to 2 hard drives fail
- Virtually unlimited data storage (but remember the 2 TB limit for each volume when connected through USB 2.0)
- Independence from hard drive size and manufacturer: as long as it’s SATA, it’s fine
- Size can expand as your storage needs grow
- Great design
- Ease of use
The sticking points (nothing bad, just some things you need to consider):
- Price is hefty: total cost is significant when you count in the enclosure and the individual hard drives
- You may or may not like the sounds it makes when data gets accessed on the drives: make sure you listen to my video carefully to see what I mean (if yours is making too much noise, you may need to get it replaced)
- Blue LED lights used for capacity meter are too intense and may cause headaches if you look directly at them
- Transfer speeds may not be fast enough for you
Buy a Drobo
If you’re interested in buying one, here’s where you can find one:
- Drobo Store (mention code EVPOP to get $25 off, but only until 6/30/08)
- Amazon
- B&H Photo
Updates
Updated 1/6/08: Since I now own three Drobos, I can tell you that my first impressions about the noise were wrong. It seems my first Drobo is unusually loud. My other two Drobos are very quiet. I can barely hear them, even when writing or reading to the hard drives actively and for prolonged periods of time. I’ll need to contact Drobo Support to see if I can get my first Drobo replaced.
Updated 1/7/08: I called Drobo today to ask them why one of my Drobos is making more noise than the other two. I described the situation to them, and told them I’m using the exact same drives inside each Drobo (2×500GB Seagate SATA drives with 32MB cache). Their initial response was to blame the hard drives. I doubt they’re at fault, but it’s possible, since it’s the hard drive churning noises that are louder in this particular Drobo of mine. So what I’m going to do later today, since I have the luxury of having more than one Drobo at home, is I’m going to take out the two hard drives from the louder Drobo and stick them in one of my two quiet Drobos. We’ll see what happens next. If the hard drives are at fault, then the quiet Drobo will start being loud. If not, then there’s a problem with my original Drobo. I told them all this, and asked for a case number. I indicated that I’ll be looking for a replacement if it turns out that the Drobo is at fault, not the hard drives. I’ll keep this review updated with my findings.
Updated 1/7/08: Okay, spoke with Drobo again about the noise, and it turns out that the hard drives are at fault. I did just what I described above. I wouldn’t have thought it, but these two drives that I’ve got in the original Drobo are louder than the four I use in the other two Drobos, even though they’re the exact same size, brand and model. I’m going to return them and order new ones, and I believe the noise will go away. This is definitely something to keep in mind if you’re having noise issues with your Drobo. Don’t assume it’s to blame. If you can, check the hard drives first. Remember to do it properly though. You have to turn OFF the Drobo and unplug it BEFORE removing the hard drives, or you’ll lose your data. Read this clarification, and if you’re still not sure, don’t take risks, call Drobo Support and have them stay on the line with you while you swap out the hard drives.
Updated 1/9/08: I still have noise issues with that original Drobo even after swapping out the hard drives. At this point, I’m not sure what to think. Could it be that Adobe Lightroom, the application I use to process my photos, places such a high I/O load on the Drobo that the hard drives will churn heavily no matter what, or could it be that this particular Drobo of mine is not phonically isolated as well as my other two? Not sure. I ordered hard drives of a different brand, to see if those will be quieter. I’m going to try those out for a day or two to see what happens. Then I’m also going to switch Drobos, and use one of my quiet Drobos for a day or two with the new hard drives and with the old hard drives, and then I’ll be able to get a better idea of what’s going on. Perhaps it’s just Lightroom causing this. Perhaps it’s the Drobo. Perhaps it’s the hard drives. But one thing’s for sure, while I was on the phone with Drobo Support, I didn’t use Lightroom heavily enough in order to compare the noise levels.
Updated 2/6/08: I sent two of the original Seagate 500 GB drives back, and purchased two Western Digital 500 GB drives. The difference between them, specs-wise, is that the Seagate drives have 32 MB caches, and the WD drives have 16 MB caches. But it turns out that there’s a problem with the Seagate drives where their caches default to 8 MB if the latest firmware upgrade isn’t applied. And there is NO way to apply a firmware update to the drives while they’re in the Drobo. Doesn’t work, I tried it. At any rate, the two WD drives are quieter than the Seagate drives, although they run hotter. At least noise-wise, things are alright now, and the Drobo’s cooling system seems to handle the extra heat just fine.
Updated 2/6/08: You’d think now that I’ve got the noise issues straightened out, things have quieted down, but they haven’t. I’ve got noise issues with one of my other Drobos, and this time it’s related to the fan for sure. I’ve swapped out the drives, and I’ve swapped the Drobos, and I’ve pushed on various drive bay flaps and listened carefully, and it’s the fan. Trust me, I spent about a month ferreting out this particular noise issue. I arranged for an RMA, which arrived today, only to disappoint me thoroughly.
Guess what? I received a heavily used Drobo from Data Robotics in return for my brand new Drobo (thanks for nothing!), even after I’d asked them kindly over the phone not to send me a used one or a damaged one. To make things worse, there’s serious dust in the crevices of this Drobo. The drive bays themselves are lined with dust that sticks to my finger when I touch it. One of the blue LED capacity indicators doesn’t light up (it’s broken), and as if that’s not enough, one of the ejection springs for the drive bays doesn’t work. When I wanted to take out a drive, it wouldn’t push it out. I had to point the Drobo’s mouth downward and shake it. To top it all off, it makes the same fan noise as my own Drobo.
But wait, there’s more! The firmware versions are different! While this replacement Drobo was able to read all of my data from the drives, when I turned it off (disgusted by all its problems) and removed the drives, intending to put them back in my own Drobo, I found out I couldn’t! That’s right, because the firmware versions are different, my original Drobo now can’t read any of my precious data. I’m stuck. My Mac wanted to initialize the Drobo, which would have meant erasing all of my data. I think at this point I’m stuck transferring all of my data to external USB drives and reformatting my Drobo, only to stick all of the data back onto it afterwards.
Understandably enough, I’m upset and disappointed with Data Robotics. To send me a heavily used Drobo with existing problems, and then to also put my data in danger when they’re supposed to make my data safer, is simply not acceptable. I notified them by phone and email, and will give them a chance to make things right. I’ll keep you updated of what happens.
Updated 2/7/08: Drobo’s Tier-3 Support replied to my emails. They were courteous, apologized for the experience, and promised to make it right. I believe they’ll try to ship out a new drive to me in replacement in a few days. Until then, they emailed me the latest version of the firmware (which is not yet available to the public) and showed me how to upgrade my Drobos manually. I upgraded the firmware on all of my Drobos, successfully, and now my original Drobo can read my drives without any problems. I didn’t lose any data after all. I’m very glad things have worked out!
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…pesky 2 TB limit…
Had a sales guy with clue at Fry’s a couple of weeks ago, and we were both laughing over our first 20 MB hard drives, and then how we thought 1 GB would last for years!
Now we’re fretting over terabytes.
Comment — December 20, 2007 @ 9:03 am
@Julie: I think 1 Exabyte of storage would suffice for my needs, at least for the time being.
Comment — December 20, 2007 @ 9:56 am
What happens if Drobo breaks, you don’t have a second good Drobo case and mission critical data, Can the discs be pulled and plugged into a SATA bus and the data searched for and read? Or is data atomized and spread all over the “pooled” 4 discs? What happens when inevitably Data Robotics is no longer an ongoing company and there are no more Drobo boxes? If the data can be read, however laboriously, I’d feel safer. Drobo has the feel of being similar to ZFS with regular formatting, but perhaps it just would be better to wait until Apple implements a bug free read/write ZFS.
You also don’t mention how you made it cross platform compatible, but I assume you formatted FAT32. DR indicates that drives are formattable. Needless to say this works only with certain files, Mac files with resource forks (less common is OSX) will be fried on Windows formatting. Isn’t there also besides a USB 2 limit, a FAT32 size limit?
Comment — December 20, 2007 @ 11:41 am
@Yacko: Good questions. Here are the answers.
I put a call through to Data Robotics tech support, and they told me the following (I’m paraphrasing):
Yes, the data is pooled on all 4 discs, but with redundancy, so it can accommodate the failure of one or even two drives.
“What happens when Data Robotics is no longer a company?” Um, what happens when your favorite convenience store closes? You cry a little, then go find another store. I found this question of yours a little silly. The company’s alive and well now, they’ve got a great product, and I intend to use it. Period.
Drobo is not ZFS.
I made it cross-platform compatible because I formatted in HFS+, and because I have MacDrive installed on my PC. I have most of my drives formatted in HFS+, I like that file system.
Not sure about the upper FAT32 volume limit, but there is an individual file size limit of 4 GB, and that’s well known.
Comment — December 20, 2007 @ 12:05 pm
Nice review. I’m curious about how you handle backups for the case of catastrophic failure or disaster (for example, a house fire). I would imagine for the current sized volume you could just copy it to an external drive periodically, but what about when you expand the Drobo volume to the point that it will not fit on an external drive? I’ve been looking at a Drobo, but I’m not sure how to handle offsite backups for large volumes.
Comment — December 21, 2007 @ 3:49 pm
That’s the rub, isn’t it though? Off-site backups aren’t easy to do. It’s not that it can’t be done, it’s that the upstream pipeline is too slow for most broadband users. There are a number of companies that offer offsite backups and unlimited storage at various prices, and I’m looking at them. I haven’t chosen any one company yet — I’m also waiting to see what Google will bring to this market.
The upload speeds, which are dependent on residential broadband plans, are awfully slow for DSL users and overstated for cable users. Fiber holds a good solution, but most people don’t have fiber. For example, I can’t imagine how long it would take to get 1 TB of data upstream to an offsite backup location on a DSL connection, but it would probably take very, very long, and my guess is that the uploads would time out frequently.
I so wish there was a decent solution to this, but until then, I’m stuck with DVD backups and/or periodic or partial backups to external hard drives that can be shipped to other locations.
Comment — December 21, 2007 @ 4:23 pm
True, off-site via network is way too slow now. My current off-site consists of external drives stored at work, which I bring home to update, then bring back to work. So I have a 12-hour window of vulnerability. This works fine, and is easy to maintain as long as I have paired drives. The backup simply mirrors the master. But with a Drobo and potentially 2-2TB volumes, this solution fails. I would have to have another Drobo (or some raid solution) to mirror my 2TB volumes.
Comment — December 21, 2007 @ 6:34 pm
I’ll tell you a little secret. Data Robotics is offering a deep discount on a second Drobo once you buy the first one and register it. You can get a second one for $299. I can’t guarantee you the same treatment, but that’s what happened to me, and I’m seriously thinking about purchasing the second one. They’re only running this offer till 12/28, to my knowledge, so I don’t know how orders placed now would be treated. If interested, you might want to give them a call to make sure you’d get the same deal.
Comment — December 21, 2007 @ 6:37 pm
““What happens when Data Robotics is no longer a company?” I found this question of yours a little silly. The company’s alive and well now, they’ve got a great product, and I intend to use it. Period.”"
What the hell is silly about this? I lose 2.7TB of data (current max) or 5.4 or 11.8 (perhaps a future that will happen soon) and I would feel suicidal. Drobo is proprietary while RAID is a known standard. A firewire 8-bay case with 7TB attached to a Mac using Apple’s builtin RAID using drive utility has greater future safety than a box with hidden algorithms. My question wasn’t about dead Drobos or defunct companies, but merely worst case scenarios. The question I asked which you did not answer is - “Can the discs be pulled and plugged into a SATA bus and the data searched for and read?” I noted - “If the data can be read, however laboriously, I’d feel safer.” That’s not a silly question. Or can Drobo discs be placed in a RAID case and read that way (unlikely)? You say - “What happens when Data Robotics is no longer a company?” Um, what happens when your favorite convenience store closes? You cry a little, then go find another store.” If that’s how you deal with large and extreme data loss, more power to you. I merely asked whether there was an escape hatch or not, given computer equipment and computer company reliability can be much less than an NFL running back. The past 25 years is littered with the bleached bones of many famous computer companies, DEC anyone?
“Drobo is not ZFS” I also did not say Drobo was ZFS. I said - “Drobo has the feel of being similar to ZFS…” which is Sun Computers pooled data storage strategy, and which is probably available to others like Apple because of the company’s open source policies. Perhaps there will be several similar rival ideas in the next couple of years.
I’m not saying Drobo is retarded or worthless. It’s an interesting piece of hardware sure to appeal to somebody. I’d just feel better if there was an escape hatch that did not involve burning 48GB or so to Bluray discs one hour or so at a time.
While you are quizzing the company, what’s the prognosis for a firewire version (it doesn’t strike me that they are working very hard on this considering how long Drobo has been available) and what about Drobo cases with greater than 4 drives, maybe an 8, 10 or 12? Have they given thought to a network Drobo?
Comment — December 24, 2007 @ 4:24 pm
Yacko, why would you lose that data? I’m not sure you read my previous reply to you in its entirety. You should read it again. I pointed out how you can recover the data in its entirety in case the Drobo breaks down.
No, you cannot pull the hard drives out and read them from a SATA port, I thought that was made pretty clear in my previous reply as well.
Why in the world would you need to burn the data to Bluray discs? I don’t get you at all. If the Drobo works, you use it. If it doesn’t work, you get a new Drobo, stick the drives in and access all your data, just like before. Of if you feel better about it, get some other hard drives or another Drobo, and keep the data on both sets of hardware.
Furthermore, I’m not going to quiz the company on your behalf. That was a one-time favor, but I don’t like your tone, so you’re on your own now.
If you don’t feel safe about the Drobo, no worries. Get another product, there are PLENTY on the market. But don’t expect me to tolerate you when you (1) are rude and (2) don’t use your real name.
Comment — December 24, 2007 @ 4:44 pm
[...] is a bit of a rant, but a recent comment on one of my articles reminded of an argument I sometimes hear as a consultant. It goes something [...]
Pingback — January 3, 2008 @ 7:35 am
Raoul, I think Yacko just meant if the Drobo fails and the company is no longer manufacturing or not around to sell you a new one (for whatever reason, just worst case scenario), and there’s no alternatives enabling you to get your data off of those Drobo formated drives well then….you’ve lost all your data which kind of defeats the purpose looking at it from that angle.
Anyways, I’ve been searching around on the net for hours looking for a solid review with nice real life quality photos, and quality video. Cnet had an ok one, but this one is superb. Bravo man this review gives me a feel of the actual unit, and I wanted to commend you on it.
Ciao
P.S. I’m buying one
Comment — January 7, 2008 @ 1:49 am
Man this thing is awsome, I buy one forrr sure. Raoul one quick question, When I attatch an external hard drive to my desktop (my 80gig) for example, the desktop quickly scans though all the data then a window pops up giving me options on what I want to do etc.
So my question is if you had 1TR or even 2TR of small files eg mp3’s, I assume the desktop still has to scan all that data, so it must take a few minutes? I know that’s a neccessary evil, but I just wanted verification I guess.
thanks
Comment — January 7, 2008 @ 2:06 am
Dana, I assume you’re on Windows, since Macs don’t do that. You can cancel that scan at any time by hitting the red X in the top right corner of the dialog box. And if you’d rather Windows not scan the Drobo, you can go to My Computer, right-click on the Drobo, go to Properties, then the AutoPlay tab. The go through the options in the drop-down menu (Music Files, Pictures, Video Files, Mixed Content), and for each of them select Take No Action, and hit Apply. Then when you next connect the Drobo to your computer, you won’t be bugged by that content scan.
Comment — January 7, 2008 @ 7:36 am
What did data robotics do about your noisey drobo? … I think I have one of those too.
Comment — January 7, 2008 @ 8:21 am
Haven’t called them yet, Paolo. I’m planning to do it later today. Will update the article or post another comment to let you know.
Comment — January 7, 2008 @ 9:03 am
Okay, spoke with Drobo Support and updated my review as promised. Check the update marked 1/7/08 above to see what happened.
Comment — January 7, 2008 @ 1:30 pm
cool … I’ll watch the post to see your results .. thanks
Anyone have any clue what Drobo is announcing at MacWorld?
Comment — January 7, 2008 @ 1:39 pm
The word in an email from them was “an accessory for the Mac”. Not sure what that could be, they were pretty tight-lipped about it. All I know is that I hope they’re not going to announce a Firewire Drobo. While it would be very cool, it would greatly pain me… seeing how I’ve just bought three USB Drobos.
Comment — January 7, 2008 @ 1:57 pm
I’ll die if its an ethernet version
Comment — January 7, 2008 @ 2:02 pm
I’m with you there. But Ethernet (NAS) drives are a lot harder to pull of than USB or Firewire drives. Just look at my review of the WD My Book World to see how many headaches you can have with such a device. Sure, the functionality is useful, but connectivity and speed are big problems afterwards.
I just looked at that email from Drobo again, and it says: “Buy a Drobo at the booth & its new accessory”. So it’s an accessory, for the Mac, since they state that in the email as well: “Since more than 50% of Drobo owners use Macs to store their pictures, music, video, and project files, we’re sure you will want to stop by our booth at Macworld and see what’s new!” What is it? Don’t know. Maybe the accessory lets it network. Or maybe it lets it talk directly to AppleTV, through USB or wirelessly. Don’t know, but we’ll find out soon enough.
Comment — January 7, 2008 @ 2:17 pm
Well I bought the new mac airport router … hoping it would network the drobo … but it just was too buggy … and the router would constantly drop the connection to the disk … so now I’m running drobo off a mac mini … just have it play nice on the network …. are you on a a mac or pc?
Comment — January 7, 2008 @ 2:43 pm
I’m on both. I’ve got an iMac and a PC laptop running MacDrive, so I can read all of my HFS+ formatted external drives, including the Drobos. It’s interesting to hear your take on the Airport Extreme, because I’d been thinking of buying one in the future. I guess I should hold off on that, which is just as well.
The thing with me is that I’ve got both the Mac and the PC sitting close together, so I can just unplug a Drobo from one and connect it to the other. Works out nicely and I don’t really need to network them.
Comment — January 7, 2008 @ 2:57 pm
I run a MacbookPro, that also runs windows … and I use the mini as a general fileserver … and backup computer if needed … Just nice to roam around the house and backup wirelessly for small files … but when I have a lot of video to backup … I just plug the Drobo into the laptop … ended up buying the mini because the airport was useless at connecting the disk on the network … but other than that … its a pretty good router …
You run a nice site … and the Drobo review was great
Comment — January 7, 2008 @ 3:07 pm
Thank you Paolo! I put a lot of time and effort into my site, and it’s nice to hear good things.
Spoke with Drobo Support again, swapped out the drives as indicated, and it turns out the noise is from the drives, not from the Drobo. I already arranged for a return from NewEgg (which is where I purchased them) and I’m going to order new ones.
Btw, NewEgg’s customer service was amazingly nice and fast. They arranged for a return with a pre-paid shipping label in about 2 minutes, no questions asked. Awesome!
Comment — January 7, 2008 @ 7:45 pm
cool good to know … I have seagate drives in mine … maybe they are the source of the noise …
Comment — January 7, 2008 @ 7:48 pm
According to Drobo Support, if it’s not fan noise, the hard drives are the likely culprit. Just FYI.
Comment — January 7, 2008 @ 8:06 pm
It looks like that new Drobo accessory that we got teased with a week or so back is called DroboShare, and networks the Drobo. It’s for a wired network, not wireless, and supports multiple network protocols and file systems. Nice!
Comment — January 14, 2008 @ 10:08 am
I was wondering why Data Robotics didn’t include network support on the Drobo. I purchased a TeraStation last year, it came with a 1TB (750GB usable) 4-drive/RAID5 array, and is network capable out of the box. It was also only $350.
For the Drobo to be REALLY practical in the home market, I would like to see DR add network capability to the base unit and lower the price to around $299. Especially, since the drives must be purchased separately.
I also didn’t see much about security on their site. Does anyone know if you can apply NTFS or other security permissions to limit access to the files and folders? On the Terastation, you can create groups and users, and restrict or permit access to individual items on the storage.
I’m not a Terastation advocate, it’s just my only frame of reference for a home based unit like this. However, another unique feature of the Terastation is that you can connect USB drives and printers directly to the unit, and share them over the network. I have to hand it to Data Robotics and their smart array design, it’s the way all RAID should work. But, I feel they still have some work ahead to be really useful and competitive for today’s home network.
Thanks for the great review Raoul!
Comment — January 14, 2008 @ 7:23 pm
Keith, I haven’t used a TeraStation and I can’t compare the two. I do agree the price is set high, and I’m not sure why that is. Perhaps their technology is still new and required a fair amount of R&D to bring to market.
Even when you consider their high price, they still seem to be doing pretty well, so I don’t think they’re hurting. What they’ve done is to carve out a nice little niche for themselves, and they’ve done a fair amount of work differentiating their product from the others on the market, so I don’t think they care about being more competitive at the moment. They might, when they choose to scale up.
With the Drobo being a USB device, you’re not going to get file or folder-level security. That’s just the way things work with USB or Firewire drives. Perhaps the DroboShare might include some sort of security, but that’s still so new I can’t tell you more.
It seems like the TeraStation does a lot from what you mention. And yet it doesn’t seem to command the same amount of mind share that Drobo has. Perhaps that’s something to think about. Instead of trying to do a lot of things at once, it’s better to focus on doing one thing well.
Comment — January 14, 2008 @ 7:57 pm
[...] these) or to use a device that’s built to secure your data against hardware failures (like a Drobo, which I also use). Apple has just released a wireless backup drive called Time Capsule, which [...]
Pingback — January 15, 2008 @ 3:46 pm
Hey Raoul, thanks for the great review of Drobo. I’m hoping to get one, thanks for being so thorough.
I was wondering if you’ve heard anything about a new firmware update that defeats the 2TB volume size limit? I read about it here:
http://www.drobospace.com/blog/737/11074/Competing-Against-Complexity/
“Now, using OS X or Windows Vista, Drobo can create a single virtual drive up to 16TB in size. The previous 2TB limit has been removed for OSes that can support very large disk sizes.”
That’s one of the main complaints of Drobo (judging by the user forums), so if they’ve fixed it, that’s impressive. I don’t think I’ll have more than 2TB space in my Drobo for a while yet, my iMac is only 270GB full. But it’s good to know.
My only other concern is the noise, but I’ll be keeping the Drobo underneath my desk (a couple inches off the floor), I don’t think I’ll mind the noise, no much more than any other external hard drive I’ve owned.
Thanks for the video, it was very helpful.
Comment — January 17, 2008 @ 1:23 pm
Oddy, your question piqued my interest, and I called Drobo to find out. It turns out that it is a firmware update. If you have a DroboShare, you can already format it as a 16TB volume, but the USB version of the firmware isn’t yet available. It’s going to be released fairly soon, but, and this is a big one, the Drobo will need to be reformatted in order for the new size limit to take effect.
So that will mean moving the data off it, then putting it back on after it’s reformatted. Because it writes a volume identifier to each drive, you won’t be able to trick it by taking out existing drives (while it’s off) and sticking in new drives, reformatting to get the new limit, and then putting in your old drives. It won’t work, I already asked. The drives you intend to use will need to be in there and get reformatted with the Drobo in order for the new volume limit to apply.
As for putting the Drobo near the floor, I would definitely NOT recommend it. It’s got a huge fan that sucks in quite a bit of air, and it will suck in a ton of dust from the floor and get clogged up, then it won’t be able to cool properly. Don’t do it, keep it on your desk. Chances are you’ll barely hear it unless you’re using something like Photoshop or Lightroom to work on files stored on it.
Comment — January 17, 2008 @ 1:51 pm
“…The drives you intend to use will need to be in there and get reformatted with the Drobo in order for the new volume limit to apply.”
I understand what you mean, thanks very much for checking that out.
“As for putting the Drobo near the floor, I would definitely NOT recommend it. It’s got a huge fan that sucks in quite a bit of air, and it will suck in a ton of dust from the floor and get clogged up, then it won’t be able to cool properly.”
You make a good point there, I didn’t even think about that. Well, there’s lots of room on my desk behind my iMac screen, so I can fit it there.
And I know what you mean about the blue LEDs, I have had drive enclosures in the past with such lights, and my Logitech speakers have a bright blue LED volume knob. I have to cover it up at night!
Thanks for all the info.
Comment — January 17, 2008 @ 3:21 pm
16 Terabytes … just after I finally set up all my assets, and copied them over to Drobo … ugh … now to back them up … and run the firmware update … when its available
Comment — January 17, 2008 @ 3:51 pm
Is it possible to switch different sets of 4 drives? (After shutting down the drobo?)
If so, the Drobo would be great for using our our old (and small) drives for emergency backups.
Will a FW800 be compatible to the current USB 2.0 version?
Comment — January 21, 2008 @ 6:10 pm
Wolf, that’s a yes. I’ve done it several times already in order to troubleshoot the noise issues. So yes, as long as you have different sets of drives, and you keep them separate, and you shut down the Drobo completely when you switch out the sets of drives, you should be fine.
As for FW800 question, I don’t know what you mean. Can you rephrase it? If you’re referring to the possibility of a future FW800 Drobo, and whether the drives used in a USB Drobo will be usable (as a set, maintaining the data) on a FW800 Drobo, my guess is yes. The connection (USB vs. Firewire) is just a means of communication between the Drobo and the computer. The Drobo has its own little OS and circuitry, so I assume that’ll stay the same regardless of the connectivity (USB, Firewire, Network, etc.). But then again, there isn’t even talk of a Firewire Drobo at all, so this is all hypothetical.
Comment — January 21, 2008 @ 9:11 pm
Raoul i need your help. If im using different brand of hdd and those hdd have different cache buffe, is that ok for Drobo ? thanks for your time Raoul
Comment — January 22, 2008 @ 3:13 am
[...] to be moved off the primary computer, be it a laptop or a desktop machine. Its sheer size demands a large external device, and hopefully one that stores the data in redundant fashion, to guard against hardware failures. [...]
Pingback — January 22, 2008 @ 7:21 am
Vaynard, the hard drive buffer size doesn’t matter. Neither does the brand or model of drive. As long as it’s a SATA drive, you should be fine.
Comment — January 22, 2008 @ 7:42 am
thank you so much for the info Raoul.
Comment — January 22, 2008 @ 6:04 pm
[...] recent push to find a feasible solution for my photo library, which resulted in the purchase of a Drobo (three, actually, but that’s beside the point), I’ve gotten to know a bit about hard [...]
Pingback — February 4, 2008 @ 7:12 am
You can tame those LEDs by “painting” their domes with a Sharpie pen. You can attenuate them to whatever degree you’d like. Still visible, but they return to being “indicators” instead of room lighting
Comment — February 6, 2008 @ 3:58 pm
[...] Drobo (full plus video) [...]
Pingback — February 7, 2008 @ 12:00 pm
Hi Raoul. Question about drives. I’ve got three 750GB Seagate drives in my new Drobo. You mentioned:
“But it turns out that there’s a problem with the Seagate drives where their caches default to 8 MB if the latest firmware upgrade isn’t applied. And there is NO way to apply a firmware update to the drives while they’re in the Drobo. ”
Any idea how to check the firmware on my drives? I’d obviously like to use the 32MB cache vs 8! The firmware version is printed on the drive itself (so if I turn off Drobo, I can get those numbers), but how/where can I check for an update, do you know?
Thanks. There’s also some discussion boards on Seagate’s site I’m checking through.
Comment — February 15, 2008 @ 5:12 pm
[...] also lied about the fate of the package addressed to Data Robotics. I was returning a defective Drobo to them in exchange for a replacement. Here’s what the FedEx website says about that [...]
Pingback — February 27, 2008 @ 11:30 pm
[...] work out, and another was the original Drobo that made questionable fan and chassis noises. See my Drobo review for the details on the Drobos, if you’re [...]
Pingback — March 18, 2008 @ 7:54 am
Hello Raoul, thanks for the drobo review and information.
In your entry “Updated 1/7/08″, regarding drobo unit 1 being noisy or drives being noisy…you say this:
“since I have the luxury of having more than one Drobo at home, is I’m going to take out the two hard drives from the louder Drobo and stick them in one of my two quiet Drobos”
WAIT :o) can you actually do that? i was under the impression that as soon as you put a drive into drobo, it wipes it!?
If not, could you please help us to better understand how to use 2 drobo units? (eg, could i have 1 drobo unit plugged in with drives inside, and could i have a spare unit in my room, unplugged. And if the 1st unit has a hardware fault, could i simply take out the drives, and put it into my spare 2nd Drobo unit, and plug unit2 into my computer, “without” losing the data on the drives?
regards,
paul
Comment — March 24, 2008 @ 3:46 pm
Paul, I answered your first question in commment #4. Yes, you can readily switch drive SETS between Drobos without losing data, as long as both Drobos are OFF and unplugged. Remember, it’s important to keep in mind that you need to switch the drives as SETS, not individual drives.
As for how I use my two Drobos, I store my videos on one and my photos on the other. They’re both in use. And I know that since I have two of them, that should one of them go down, I can swap my drive sets between them until I get a replacement from Data Robotics. It provides an extra layer of hardware redundancy.
Comment — March 24, 2008 @ 3:54 pm
i just saw the next paragraph
one other thing though… what happens if there is a power cut during its re-synching?
is drobo intelligent enough to read/synch/verify first in cases of power cuts etc?
regards,
paul
Comment — March 24, 2008 @ 3:54 pm
Excellent, thanks for post 49 Raoul
Comment — March 24, 2008 @ 3:56 pm
If the power gets cut, provided there isn’t an electrical surge that burns its circuitry, I assume the Drobo will pick up the data synch where it left off. I’ve never tested this though, so I can’t vouch for that capability. My data is much too precious to play with it like that, and I hope I don’t have to face that situation at some point unless I know for sure the Drobo will pull through it while keeping my data safe. I suppose it’s worth investing in a small UPS device, just in case.
Comment — March 24, 2008 @ 3:58 pm
ahh yes, i wouldnt like you to try it out just for the sake of posting the asnwer here
ok thanks very much indeed. (i just started posting and reading on drobospace as well, and am getting more inclined to buying one
here is a tip for you… you can get Black masking tape/ which is black cellotape strips, and stick it over the outer front case. then you can just make a small hole in it using a pin, wherever the blue led lights are.. that should give you a tiny hint of capacity, without all the glare, and you can still keep the drobo on yoru desk (much better than the floor).
(it might not be the “nicest” looking thing, but hey, i go for practicallity anytime - (plus anyone looking at it, will still be partially blinded by the lights and not notice the black cellotape)
regards,
paul
Comment — March 24, 2008 @ 4:08 pm
I have been doing a lot of reading on this product and there is still one thing that I am not 100% sure about. I currently have a Western Digital My Book Pro Edition II (Just like the one you are having trouble with but I am using Windows and mine works just fine so far) that has 2x 500GB drives inside. Those drives have a lot of my data stored on them in RAID-1 so if a drive fails I will not lose my data. My specific question is that if I remove the 500GB drives from the WD enclosure and connect them direct SATA or through any other USB enclosure I can see all my data mirrored onto each drive. I would like to buy a Drobo and put those drives into the Drobo but I don’t know if I will lose my data in a mandatory initial format or not. It sounds to me from what I have read that it would require an initial format and erase my data but I would like to be 100% sure. (I would back up my data either way before attempting something like this of course but I would still like to see this type of question addressed.)
Comment — April 10, 2008 @ 5:43 pm
One more thing. I mentioned earlier that my WD My Book Pro Edition II is working fine but I want to go with a Drobo because it will allow adding more drives and the WD goes into power save (spins down the drives) after 5 min and there is no way to change that. If it was set to 1 hour I would be much happier with it but 5 min is just way too often since it takes the drives about 20 seconds to spin back up. Does the Drobo spin down the drives or just run them all the time? And if it does spin down the drives how often does it do that and can you change the timer? I also find myself wondering how long it would take for the Drobo to spin up 4 drives if it does spin them down. The WD takes about 20 seconds because it spins them up one at a time.
Much thanks for all your work and the great review! Almost all of my questions have been answered except for these two points and I have found all of my answers from your review and/or the links that you have provided here. Great job!
Comment — April 10, 2008 @ 5:48 pm
Chris, to answer your first question, yes, the drives would get formatted when inserted into the Drobo. Your data would get erased. If you get a Drobo, make sure you buy enough hard drives so that you can copy the data from your My Book Pro drive onto the Drobo. Use the Drobolator tool on the Drobo website to see how many drives you’ll need and what sizes you should get. You can also read this article on hard drive prices I wrote a while back to get an idea of the best deals you can find.
As for your second question, I haven’t timed the spin-down period on a Drobo, but it’s definitely more than 5 minutes. When the Drobo wakes up and spins the drives back up, I believe (but don’t quote me on this) that it starts them up in sequence, but it still takes only 20 seconds or less from my experience.
Comment — April 10, 2008 @ 5:57 pm
thanks for your review, and some other research i did, I bought a Drobo, and 2×1TB western digital GP drives..
so far so good, and its quick silent, and cheap on power too
(btw in my own opinion, the Drobo looked much bigger in your video then i found it to be in real life. here for me, it’s like a small toaster but shorter. but it sure does look Slick in the video and real life :o)
Comment — April 10, 2008 @ 6:54 pm
Chris, just timed the startup time (from sleep), and it’s 5 seconds or so per drive. That means that it’s 10 seconds with 2 drives, 15 seconds with three drives, and 20 seconds with four drives. They’re started up in sequence.
Comment — April 20, 2008 @ 8:20 am
[...] reviews, storage, technology. Save it Stumble it Digg it Twitter it I’ve re-organized my Drobo review and also added two brand new updates to it, in the “Transfer speeds” and “How it [...]
Pingback — May 1, 2008 @ 7:06 pm
[...] into high gear prematurely and stays there inordinate amounts of time. I talked about this in my Drobo review, and I’d like to see Data Robotics come out with a firmware update for this problem in the [...]
Pingback — May 15, 2008 @ 10:00 am
[...] should also point out that there’s still no fix for the other two issues I outlined in my original Drobo review recently, where I pointed out [...]
Pingback — June 6, 2008 @ 7:08 am
Dudes, the current firmware 1.1.2 and maybe even the previous has the ability to format for up to 16TB for USB (no dorbo share). This is the 3rd screen in the formatting process, featuring a slider. Check it out: http://badmagicnumber.net/media/pics/drobo_partition_slider.png
Note, boot up time is supposedly increased 1 minute/1 TB, although at 2TB my boot up time seems way less, more like 25 seconds, not 2 minutes.
Comment — June 19, 2008 @ 10:23 am
I was under the impression that USB can only address volumes of 2TB or less, which means when you use >2TB, your computer would mount the Drobo as multiple volumes. Is this incorrect?
Comment — June 19, 2008 @ 1:22 pm
No Jeremy, that is incorrect - the slider i described makes it possible to go up to 16TB. Haven’t done this myself yet, but drobo tech support told me this on the phone and i tried it, but didn’t hit final step as i havent yet backed up my stuff.
Comment — June 19, 2008 @ 1:50 pm
I was under that same impression, Jeremy, but I ended up re-formatting both my Drobos after the firmware was released. One of them is now 4TB and the other is 8TB. They show up as single volumes on my Macs.
Comment — June 19, 2008 @ 1:53 pm
I found this on Drobo’s knowledge base here:
What happens if the amounts of disk space I add exceed 2 Terabytes?
SYMPTOM:
Going beyond 2TB of disk storage in drobo
RESOLUTION:
Drobo is designed to handle this situation automatically. When the total storage offered by the inserted drives exceeds 2 TB, Drobo automatically creates a second 2TB volume which appears as another volume icon on the Mac’s Desktop or as a new Drive letter on the PC.
So it sounds like this is old information — the new firmware makes volumes >2TB possible. That is great news! Since it is impossible to currently have 16TB of available space in only 4 drives, I assume that this number is what Drobo presents to the OS, and the OS will see available space based on the installed drives? For example, 1TB free, 15TB used?
Comment — June 19, 2008 @ 1:59 pm
Jeremy, see the How It Works section in my review. This is already explained there. The OS sees the total volume, which can be up to 16TB. It doesn’t see the free space correctly. Only the Drobo Dashboard does that.
Comment — June 19, 2008 @ 2:12 pm
Hi Again, we had a power cut here, and luckily my pc and drobo all worked fine again.
(i have them behind a surge protecter anyway, but am glad i found out my power cut question, at least for normal usage, in a good way) :o)
regards,
Paul
Comment — June 20, 2008 @ 6:52 pm
[...] Drobo: I have two of them. I store backups of my photos on one, and my videos on the other. Both of them are shared over my home network, so that my other Mac, a 20″ iMac G5, can access the videos and play them in Front Row. [...]
Pingback — July 2, 2008 @ 9:02 pm