Drobo for Timemachine Review

Intro
About 1 month ago my Lacie Big Ethernet disk died (days after the warranty expired)... and I lost ~1Tb of data. So I started looking for a better solution... and thankfully Xmas was coming and my wife was happy to have that be my present. Raid solutions were too complicated and time consuming to setup and maintain. Also I wanted something that was compatible with Timemachine, and allowed easy expansion in the future.
The only solution I found was a Drobo.
Fortunately the drives from the Lacie were still useable (just the controller card broke) and I had another 300Gb sata disk lying around so I was able to set the thing up without a huge upfront cost.

Tech Spec's

SATA I or SATA II hard disk drives
* Full or half-height, no carriers required
* Choose the drive manufacturer, capacity (mixed capacities ok), and
spindle speed or cache that fits your current storage needs
* FireWire 800
* USB 2.0

File System Options
Windows: NTFS
Mac OS X: HFS+
Cross-Platform: FAT32
Linux: EXT3

Power
Idle system (standby, drives off) = 5 watts
Typical idle system - idle, drive spin down mode (one drive) = 12 watts
Typical busy system (four drives) = 40 watts

Acoustics
Normal operation: 20.9dB (negligible) to 24.2 dB**

Drobo's Size:
Width 152.4 mm (6.3")
Height 160 mm (6.3")
Length 271.8 mm (10.7")


Pros:
* Its very very easy to setup. I had mine up and running in less than 10 min, from un-boxing to coping over data.
* No tools are needed, just slide any S-ATA hard drive in and bob’s your uncle
* No software needed but included drobodashboard is quite useful
* USB or Firewire 800
* Can be formated in HFS+ and thus works with timemachine
* Nice LED indicators give all useful info at a glance
* Fully automated data redundancy, you don’t need to do anything, and it shuts itself down too.
* Hot-swappable drives
* Amazingly small footprint for a 4 bay enclosure
* Quiet
* Operates just like any other usb/firewire external hardrive. You can partition it with disk utility etc.
* Additional drives don't need formatting, just buy them and slide them in. Drobo takes care of the rest.

Cons:
* Its a bit pricey and if you have to buy drives then the cost maybe too much for some.
* You have to pay extra to network it (via droboshare)
* The largest drive is used for redundancy, thus in my case adding a 1.5Tb drive gives no extra useable space over just adding a 500Gb drive.. until I upgrade the 300Gb drive (see images below).

Other Issues:
The main issues I had was trying to transfer my old Timemachine to the Drobo. I tried Superduper and Disk Utility... following the many guides out there on the internet,.. but it would continually fail to copy about half way thru. So I gave up, and started a fresh. My old 500Gb drive was a P-ata drive anyways so I couldn’t use it in the Drobo, so it now sits in a cupboard just incase.

It is now working very well with Timemachine, I chose to set the drobo up as a 1Tb partition, this is more than enough space for backing up the two Macbook’s in the house. When I add another drive, a new 1Tb partition will be made automatically and I will use this for other files. NB: with Drobo you have to specify the size 1,2,4 or up 16 Tb as the partition size of the drive even if you don't have that much actual space. This allows you to expand with easy. This can cause problems with Timemachine as if I had set this thing up as the standard 2Tb size, TM would try and use up all that 2Tb. But the reality is that I only currently have ~1Gb of useable space and thus TM & Drobo would chuck a fit when it try's to copy extra data past 1Tb.

Eventually I will network this thing, probably via a airport extreme or mac mini so that I can have Timemachine work wirelessly. NB: The Droboshare add-on does not currently support TM.

Conclusion:
All in all, I am very happy with how well and simple it is. It will provide future proof data security and hopefully I won’t loose 1Tb of Data again !



Unboxing


Current Drive Setup


Future Expansion +500Gb = 1.2Tb useable


Future Expansion +1.5Tb = 1.2Tb useable

 

nice review, just two minor errors regarding the comment on the last two pics... it should say "Future Expansion +500Gb = 1.6Tb useable" and "Future Expansion +1.5Tb = 2.5Tb useable"

 

Nope those aren't mistakes, at least according to the drobolator app on the Drobo website. That's why there is a negative comment in the Con's about that. The largest hard-drive is used for redundancy, so in my case anything over 500Gb will be that drive and thus not counted.
a

 

Nice review, the Drobo is a really great device, especially for RAID, but it's too expensive for me :/

 

quite expensive, yike.

 

Nice review! Although it's way too expensive for me.

 

i think it way to expensive for the majority of people.

at 500$ there are better options to someone that wants to manage a small raid array.

The drobo looks like it simplifies it for the user, which is nice. But at the same time, it looks like it sorta limits what each HD can actually do, depending on size.

 

I will admit that the upfront cost is high, BUT I wish that I had originally got one a year ago. The Lacie cost me ~$300 euro, and the Drobo was ~420 euro so had I spent a bit more I would have not lost my data and probably saved money in the long run. But its not for everyone, if you don't have huge space requirements then yes the average commercial raid solution will probably be a cheaper/better choice.

Actually its the exact opposite. It enables you to be free with your drives... and upgrade as you need to without having to go out and buy a whole new raid solution. You can rip out a drive and whack in a new one without loosing any data and the drobo will automatically add the space and copy the data across the drives so that your safe from hard drive failure.

The space problem I have is due to the 300Gb drive which is limiting the expansion abilities at the moment.
But in general you get more space than your average raid setup.. for eg with 4x 500Gb drives you would have a total of 2Tb BUT only 1Tb useable with normal Raid, with the drobo you get 1.4Tb
a

 

so... its a $300+ hard drive enclosure?

 

Well the lacie is now a very expensive used coffee grind knock box... which it actually does a better job at then it did as a networked hard-drive.

Yes the drobo is a expensive 4 bay hard drive enclosure... but its a frigin ROBOT !!!! so its so worth the money.
a

 

it is ok, but is really is quite expensive, but for a 4 drive setup, not a bad deal I suppose. 4 Drive enclosure's are quite expensive. still though, the one's I have been looking at are from CalDigit, all aluminum fully, modular, as in, able to replace everything, and really create support and design.

but I have know quite a few people that really like the old Drobo. I don't know if it really does anything more than any other nice Raid setup, but it does make it slightly simpler, although possibly two simple.

do you have the option to just use it in RAID 0?

I still think a Time Capsule is one of the best Time Machine solutions, especially with Multiple macs. but if you don't need a router, you don't need a router.

 

It (the Drobo) doesn't use RAID at all. Its a data robot that is able to create data redundancy across all disks... meaning you can loose a hard-drive from the array and still have access to all your data with zero downtime and zero loss. It can even suffer a second drive loss after the first.. as long as its had a few hours to reshuffle the data across the remaining drives.
Its much more flexible then your standard RAID, provides more useable space, and is a lot easier to use + 0% maintenance.
While the initial upfront cost is high, I think that its ability to cheaply grow and adapt will mean that for my situation the Drobo is actually going to be cheaper in the long run... I plan on this thing lasting me 10+ years or more.
But I understand that this is not for everyone and thus I cannot recommend it except for those with special requirements.

a

 

so its proprietary raid, basically, implemented in a hard drive enclosure.

and its almost 400 dollars.

 

yeap thats about it.

 

that is pretty much what other multi drive RAID setups do as well, RAID 5, 6, etc, but if you really look at it, this is a fairly inexpensive option overall.

there advertising is actually a little deceptive though, BeyondRAID technology! eh heh.

 

Just a bit more on the Price issue:
These were some of my other choices:
* Synology Cube Station CS-407~ 350 euro
* Thecus N4100 ~ 370 euro
* Qnap TS-409 Pro ~ 560 euro

These are all in the same price bracket.. but given that you have to match the drives in all those setups, the drobo worked out much much cheaper.

Yes it does the same thing that those others do... in fact it does a lot less (no network, itunes server etc unless you buy the droboshare).

But I was sold by the ease of use... I've had bad experiences with Raid before, probably due to my lack of patience and ability. My wife also said that if I spend anymore time fiddling with gadgets she will divorce me. lol

Finally I have lost data via dying hard drives 2 or 3 times in the past 4 years... so I really wanted a long term all in one solution.
We all spend a lot more the $400 on our other gadgets.. I know that storage is boring but when you loose all your wedding photos, and DVD collection you spent weeks ripping... 400 is a very small price to pay.
a

 

definitely agreed, it will be fantastic when solutions like this become more available for the mainstream, losing data is never fun. I am excited to see how soon of an impact SSD's can make on the reliability issue, it seems like there are a few years to go still unfortunately.