Drobo Experiances

[preinheimer]

[First Post, can't for the life of me find search]

I'm looking into procuring a drobo drive. I picked up a DSLR just before Christmas (and a long overseas trip) and am really enjoying photography as a hobby, tragically my little mac book pro 80GB drive isn't going to last long, I've got an external lace 250 that was nearly full before I got started (and started running time machine).

I work full time, so I can afford the device and a drive or three to put into it. I'm just wondering if anyone else out there has much experiance with it.

I'm really just looking for:
- an easy way to store my photos (and anything else that comes along)
- something I don't need to lose two days building (drobo would be cheaper), then handhold whenever I want to upgrade
- I don't want to lose my photos if a drive fails.

Drobo seems to fit the bill, but that's just an ad. Anyone got real world experiance with it?

 

[Dangman]

[First Post, can't for the life of me find search]

Search has been disabled at the moment since they're having some problems with the search server. Should be back up by end of next week according to Kyle.

Anyway, don't have any real experience with the Drobo. But I did find a few Web series covering the Drobo. Might be worth the check out:
http://dl.tv/2007/06/episode_171_drobo_its_not_a_na_1.php
http://dl.tv/2007/06/episode_172_painting_your_note_1.php
http://revision3.com/tekzilla/rockband/

 

[Ockie]

Drobo looks like an awesome device, but it seems way overpriced.

 

[havand]

I was really interested in it until I saw it was only usb 2.0 and that the ethernet addon was 200 Wow. 600 for a (i assume) raid 5 setup?! $600 without the drives

 

[preinheimer]

Network isn't all that important to me, I intend to keep it close at hand, worst case I've got the airport extreme or whatever that supports USB storage. So it's $500 (tax write off reducing effective cost marginally) for a raid-5 (ish) device that doesn't force me to buy drives in sets of 3-4 and wont need baby-sitting... i hope?

Anyone actually got one?

 

[Cyrilix]

<DELETED>

 

[Cyrilix]

Umm.. all you guys freaking out at the Drobo prices, you do know that the Thecus N5200 unit is ~$620-670 for the non-pro version without drives, right? You also know that the Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ (their newer model) is even more expensive, right? To put some things into perspective here, the Drobo is pretty damn cheap. Unfortunately, it only has USB 2.0 for the cheap price.

I don't have a Drobo, but I do have an N5200, so I can't really give out any opinions on the Drobo.

 

[ReelMcCoy]

The Drobo isn't too bad although my experiences are with a PC and with Vista 64. I did have some issues with it having iTunes sync iPods up with the music stashed on the Drobo vs local storage. But for backups and whatnot, it's done well enough. I ended up putting 2 Drobos to the side and got two more ReadyNAS boxes instead because I wanted network connectivity and I feel a bit more comfy with the ReadyNAS boxes only because I've had a NV that has worked flawlessly since day one. Out of curiosity, I bought a DroboShare to give it a whirl. But speeds aren't that great compared to USB or to my ReadyNASes on a gigabit network with jumbo frames enabled.

They aren't bad devices. VERY easy to work with. They have the product packaging down pat and the products just seem polished. Even with the DroboShare, it was extremely simple to get it set up and working. I imagine the experience is the same with a Mac and the Drobo. Granted, I'm just at home with devices that need a bit more configuration but it was refreshing to see the polish they put into their products and the simplicity of it all.

Check out www.drobospace.com for more information and forum messages as well.