Drobo anyone?

[spammedhardware]

i've been looking to consolidate my external drives and put them into a nas type system. all the drives are identical. Been looking for a good nas system saw the Drobo's at fry's. I've heard good things about them, anyone try them out?

 

[Dangman]

Drobos have some caveats from what I remember:
1) Proprietary hardware and file format. So if the hardware dies, you basically need to get another Drobo to get your files

2) Relatively slow performance even for a prebuilt NAS

3) Supposedly unreliable

4) A tad pricey at around $700 to $800.

With that said, it's stupid simple to use. If simplicity is the number one key factor to the point it outweighs the above four cons, then the Drobo is your best bet.

 

[ChrisBenn]

One thing to remember is (assuming you are going for some sort of pairty/redundancy setup) you are going to end up essentially formatting the disks. So you if you don't have anywhere else the data can "live" - and then be copied to the NAS - you have problem.

HP Microserver is pretty hard to beat for a bang for the buck perspective - especially if you catch the 200-250 sales that have been going on. But it really depends on how comfortable you are with a DIY.

The one thing you get from the Drobo that's sort of unique is the ability to mix and match different disk sizes. It sounds good, but you have to give up quite a bit in performance (Drobo's are generally slow), and price (they are expensive) to get there.

If you really want a pre-rolled solution I would still suggest looking at Synology or QNAP - you don't want to mix and match disk sizes with them, but otherwise they have a full feature set, support adding more disks later on, etc.

 

[AQ_OC]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003X26VV4/ref=oh_o03_s00_i00_details

 

[Old Hippie]

The one thing you get from the Drobo that's sort of unique is the ability to mix and match different disk sizes.

That's also one of the great aspects of WHS V1.

Too bad they screwed it up.

 

[Trepidati0n]

That's also one of the great aspects of WHS V1.

Too bad they screwed it up.

I think it will be back with the Windows 8 architecture...just in another form. My guess is that was the real reason they killed it in Vail. Also...drivebender has been doing a great job. I haven't heard of one peep, since formal release, about so sort of "bad bug".

 

[SirMaster]

The one thing you get from the Drobo that's sort of unique is the ability to mix and match different disk sizes. It sounds good, but you have to give up quite a bit in performance (Drobo's are generally slow), and price (they are expensive) to get there.

This is not at all a unique feature. You can do this on a Synology NAS for years now. And you don't have to sacrifice speed.

http://forum.synology.com/wiki/index.php/What_is_Synology_Hybrid_RAID?

I wouldn't look at Drobo personally. They do not have very many features and arent on top with performance. Look at Synology or QNAP.

Synology and QNAP are the fastest NAS boxes out there now and have the most features. Also they use standard MD RAID so if the box dies you can easily mount the array in any PC.