Drobo Suggestions

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MrHood22

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I think i'm going to pull the trigger on a Drobo. I'm looking at a 5-bay (5 x 1tb). In regards to speed i'm not sure whether to pick the Drobo S or the Drobo FS.

Drobo S: eSATA, FireWire 800, USB 3.0

Drobo FS: Gigabit Ethernet

I'm going to be plugging this directly into my computer. I currently have a esata card. I know there has been some complications with esata compatibility with the drobo but i'll cross that bridge when I get there.

My questions are...

1) Which should I get? It looks like they're both the same except for their connection interface. I'm assuming ethernet is the faster choice but i'm not sure.

A) What would I need to take advantage of the ethernet speeds? Cat6 vs Cat5?
B) Would they both be bottle necked to the PCI speed (since they're both going into PCI cards)?

2) Where should I buy it?

I'm looking here:

http://www.drobostore.com/store/drobo/en_US/DisplayCategoryProductListPage/categoryID.54837300

Looks like the Drobo FS is $700 and the Drobo S is $800. It specifies the Drobo S as 2nd generation but i'm not sure if that's the previous generation or current.
 
My suggestion would be not to get one. Speed and reliability are not normally associated with them, not to mention they're fairly overpriced.
 
If you want networked storage, you can build a small NAS for less. If all you need is ~5TB, here's an example of something that will do it:

Motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182233
Case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811123154
Drives: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145475
Memory: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148233

Just have to either get a 2.5" hard drive or USB flash drive to put the OS of your choice on and you're set. Costs less than a Drobo and even includes 8TB of raw space.
 
While I fully agree with Blue Fox's recommendations, I will attempt to answer your questions so that you get a better understanding:

MrHood22 said:
1) Which should I get? It looks like they're both the same except for their connection interface. I'm assuming ethernet is the faster choice but i'm not sure.
Click to expand...
If you're gonna be plugging in directly to the PC, go for simplicity and higher performance by going with the Drobo S.

If you want a NAS, then definitely the Drobo FS. Though you're gonna need a fast gigabit switch and an Intel NIC on the desktop to get close to native Drobo speed as possible.
MrHood22 said:
A) What would I need to take advantage of the ethernet speeds? Cat6 vs Cat5?
Click to expand...
An Intel PCI-E x1 NIC and a CAT 6 cable should be fine if this is directly connected.
MrHood22 said:
B) Would they both be bottle necked to the PCI speed (since they're both going into PCI cards)?
Click to expand...
Yes. Well then again, the Drobos aren't that fast to begin with.
MrHood22 said:
2) Where should I buy it?
Click to expand...
Cheapest place that you can find it.
 
Thanks for the help so far.

It's not that i'm looking for network storage. I'm more going for redundancy. I like the fact that if one of my hard drives is failing it moves my data to another one.
 
You can have redundancy with pretty much any of the options listed in the thread so far. It doesn't quite work that way though. The data is spread across all the drives and you have parity data as well, however if any drive fails, you still retain all the data, but the data isn't moved around. If you want a better explanation, look up RAID 5 on wikipedia (the Drobo essentially has the same principles behind it as well).
 
How much data do you need to store in a fault tolerant mode? If it's < 3TB putting 2 3TB disks in a raid1 mirror is cheaper, more reliable, and more performant than the drobo or nas solutions.
 
Blue Fox said:
My suggestion would be not to get one. Speed and reliability are not normally associated with them, not to mention they're fairly overpriced.
Click to expand...

+1. Ease of use is, I believe, their major selling point. If you're posting here, that's likely not a huge concern for you. You could roll your own NAS for less and get much better performance.
 
PurduEE said:
+1. Ease of use is, I believe, their major selling point. If you're posting here, that's likely not a huge concern for you. You could roll your own NAS for less and get much better performance.
Click to expand...

I'm not very knowledgeable with networking but I feel comfortable learning it.

So a NAS is pretty much just a computer that i'd put my 5 x 1tb HD's into and then share them out? What would I do about redundancy? RAID? I heard that if one hard drive fails in RAID then they all do. I don't know much about RAID setups either.
 
MrHood22 said:
I'm not very knowledgeable with networking but I feel comfortable learning it.

So a NAS is pretty much just a computer that i'd put my 5 x 1tb HD's into and then share them out? What would I do about redundancy? RAID? I heard that if one hard drive fails in RAID then they all do. I don't know much about RAID setups either.
Click to expand...
Yes, that's essentially how you do it. Fairly simple and straightforward really. Actually, the whole point of RAID is that if one drive fails, you don't lose all your data. You're thinking of RAID 0 (which isn't really RAID). If you use RAID 5, you can lose any drive and retain all your data (you will lose one drives worth of space to do this however).
 
MrHood22 said:
I'm not very knowledgeable with networking but I feel comfortable learning it.

So a NAS is pretty much just a computer that i'd put my 5 x 1tb HD's into and then share them out? What would I do about redundancy? RAID? I heard that if one hard drive fails in RAID then they all do. I don't know much about RAID setups either.
Click to expand...

It depends on the RAID type.

RAID5 with 3 drives allows one drive to fail and rebuild off the remaining 2 with no downtime.
RAID6 with 4 drives allows two drives to fail and rebuild off the remaining 2 with no downtime.
Then you can get into RAID5or6 with a hot spare that will automatically detect a failure and rebuild.

I think you should read up on RAID types before you make a decision.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels
http://www.acnc.com/raid.html

And about a hundred million more sites with info on RAID1/5/6 will be the most likely candidates for you, just figure out what sort of RAID you want to deal with. RAID5/6 have longer rebuild times due to parity, etc.
 
MikeTrike said:
It depends on the RAID type.

RAID5 with 3 drives allows one drive to fail and rebuild off the remaining 2 with no downtime.
RAID6 with 4 drives allows two drives to fail and rebuild off the remaining 2 with no downtime.
Then you can get into RAID5or6 with a hot spare that will automatically detect a failure and rebuild.

I think you should read up on RAID types before you make a decision.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels
http://www.acnc.com/raid.html

And about a hundred million more sites with info on RAID1/5/6 will be the most likely candidates for you, just figure out what sort of RAID you want to deal with. RAID5/6 have longer rebuild times due to parity, etc.
Click to expand...

So I could build a computer for about $400, put my 5 HD's in it, and then set it up and RAID and that will accomplish the same thing a drobo does?

So would a NAS be faster then a Drobo because it's sharing data via ethernet?
 
MrHood22 said:
So I could build a computer for about $400, put my 5 HD's in it, and then set it up and RAID and that will accomplish the same thing a drobo does?

So would a NAS be faster then a Drobo because it's sharing data via ethernet?
Click to expand...

Drobo is a NAS, it really depends on the features and simplicity you want. eSATA would technically be faster due to it being connected via SATA.

But the short answer on the cost is, yes. RAID5 in a computer running something like FreeNAS would be much cheaper.
 
A NAS is just a regular computer running filesharing software.

The problem with the Drobo is that a. they tend to be slow, and b. you're locked into Drobo's disk format. So if your drobo conks out, then you absolutely have to buy a new drobo to get that data back.

The advantage to rolling your own NAS is that you're not stuck with proprietary software. As I recall, QNAP also uses a standard format for on-disk storage.

If you build a FreeNAS system, and the computer crashes, then you can just pull the drives out, fire up a livecd, and pull the data off. If the drobo crashes, then you need another drobo to even try and get the data off.
 
cymon said:
A NAS is just a regular computer running filesharing software.

The problem with the Drobo is that a. they tend to be slow, and b. you're locked into Drobo's disk format. So if your drobo conks out, then you absolutely have to buy a new drobo to get that data back.

The advantage to rolling your own NAS is that you're not stuck with proprietary software. As I recall, QNAP also uses a standard format for on-disk storage.

If you build a FreeNAS system, and the computer crashes, then you can just pull the drives out, fire up a livecd, and pull the data off. If the drobo crashes, then you need another drobo to even try and get the data off.
Click to expand...

Aren't RAID setups picky about what manufacturer hard drives you put in there and the capacities?

I know on 5tb, drobo only makes 4.5tb usable. I heard RAID setups don't give you as much usable space.
 
MrHood22 said:
Aren't RAID setups picky about what manufacturer hard drives you put in there and the capacities?

I know on 5tb, drobo only makes 4.5tb usable. I heard RAID setups don't give you as much usable space.
Click to expand...

You'll get 3.63TB usable on a 5-bay Drobo with 1TB drives.
http://www.drobo.com/calculator/5-bay/index.php

The same goes for pretty much any other RAID5 array, you lose space for parity; that's just how it works.



Here's a generic RAID calculator.
http://www.grijpink.eu/tools/raid/
 
MrHood22 said:
Aren't RAID setups picky about what manufacturer hard drives you put in there and the capacities?.
Click to expand...
It depends on whether you're going for a software RAID (OS based), true hardware RAID controller, or fakeRAID solution. The software RAID route (i.e Linux software RAID, FreesBSD RAID, ZFS RAID, etc) is generally not picky at all when it comes to hard drives and capacities. However current true hardware RAID and fake RAID controllers tend to be finicky about what drives can be used.
 
Again, if you don't need a NAS (i.e. need to access the stuff over the network) it's probably cheaper and simpler to either add the hard drives internally to your computer, or direct attach a small external enclosure
 
ChrisBenn said:
Again, if you don't need a NAS (i.e. need to access the stuff over the network) it's probably cheaper and simpler to either add the hard drives internally to your computer, or direct attach a small external enclosure
Click to expand...

They're already inside my computer. I want the Drobo to add a layer of protection incase one of the hard drives goes bad (which is bound to happen eventually).
 
MrHood22 said:
They're already inside my computer. I want the Drobo to add a layer of protection incase one of the hard drives goes bad (which is bound to happen eventually).
Click to expand...

You can do the same thing with RAID internally, without paying $400-$600 bucks for a Drobo or NAS device. Drobo = RAID
 
MikeTrike said:
You can do the same thing with RAID internally, without paying $400-$600 bucks for a Drobo or NAS device. Drobo = RAID
Click to expand...

So if I get a 5th 1tb HD and put all 5 x 1tb in a Raid 5. That will do the same thing a drobo will do minus 500gb.


Formula for Raid 5 usable space:
(N - 1) * S-Min

N = Number of hard drives
S-Min = Capacity of smallest hard drive (in the raid)


Raid: 4tb out of 5tb
Drobo: 4.5tb out of 5tb


Other then the 500gb, there won't be any other differences?
 
You will get pretty much exactly the same amount of usable space from a 5 disk Raid-5 array and 5 disk drobo array as long as all the hard drives are the same size.

The drobo calculator shows 3.63Tb usable with 5 1TB disks.

This random calculator google just found for me shows 3.72TB usable for 5 1TB disks in raid-5.

There really isn't going to be *any* practical difference assuming all the disks are the same size. An internal raid card will be faster and cheaper than a NAS. If you have another computer that needs access to these files (laptop, htpc, etc) then you would have to have your main computer runnign and sharing them out though. If this is the only computer that accesses them than the NAS is probably just overhead.

Also realize that if you went with the drobo or the internal raid setup and you plan on migrating data over that is already on the 4 1TB drives you have you will need to put the data somewhere first. (Adding the disks to the drobo or adding them to a raid-5 array internally) will destroy any data on the disks.

I don't have any idea what good current budget raid-5 capable cards are though, but I'm sure someone else in this forum does. They will be significantly cheaper than the drobol.
 
Those calculators are bogus, with 5x1TB rives in a RAID-5 you are going to get 4TB of space. It's just N-1 drives.

The calculators are just getting all hung up on the difference between Terabytes and Tebibytes.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=4+terabytes+in+tebibytes

So yes, you have 4 Terabytes of space or 3.63 Tebibytes, they are equal.

I would recommend some other solution than a Drobo, they are not known for their speed or features.

Feature-wise, I would recommend a Synology NAS for a similar price.

Price-wise, roll your own box, though you wont get nearly as good of power usage or as small of form factor or nice hot-swap bays, etc.

The biggest problem with Drobo is that you have to format the volume to a larger size than you have drives for if you ever want to expand the volume. So it will never report the correct free space unless you are using their proprietary software which only works if it's connected via USB/Firewire/SATA and not via normal LAN like Samba.

The big problem this causes is that when you cross about 75% actual capacity, writes to the Drobo slow down to a crawl, and we are talking less than 3MB/s, because the poor little micro-controller in the Drobo needs to find places to put more data because it doesn't know how much ffree space is actually available if you formated the volume larger than the space you actually have.

This probably isn't a problem if you just format it to the actual size of your drives, but then you can never expand the volume without starting over.

If you get a Synology, then you can use RAID1, 5, or 6 and expand the volume with no problems to larger disks when you need more space.


Another thing to note with a Drobo, is if the Drobo itself dies, your data is probably lost because they use a proprietary un-RAID system.

With Synology, you can easily pop out the drives and put them into any normal PC and mount the array from any Linux OS because Synology uses software MD raid.
 
Blue Fox said:
No, as it was pointed out, you'll lose just as much space with the Drobo.
Click to expand...

I was mistaken. On the drobo calculator I was looking at "Actual size" but when i was talking I was trying to reference the usable size (~3.7tb).
 
I think the concensus is to avoid Drobo all together. However if you wish to have an easy to configure (i.e. via clicking next on a wizard after choosing some options.)

Buy these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822107034
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148337

QNAP TS-410 + 4 x 1.5TB HDD's = about 4.2TB usable space in RAID5. It's easy and fast to setup and very reliable. I replaced my drobo with the exact same unit, except im using 4 x 1TB drives, those 1.5TB drives just happen to be on sale and are cheapr than the 1TB ones I have.

It's a better solution than drobo, many more features (if you want to use them). It gives you the option of eSATA "and" Gigabit Ethernet (2 x GbE ports to be exact). It also happens to be Linux based, so that's a huge plus right there if the unit itself fails. I'm also pretty sur eyou can use both eSATA and the Ethernet at the same time, so you'll get a whole crapload more functionality out of it's network features.

http://www.qnap.com/pro_detail_feature.asp?p_id=134#

Drobo sucks.

EDIT: Another thing I had problems with Drobo on was the fact that drives would randomly fall out of the array and need to be rebuilt. I have no idea why it did it, I even replaced drives a couple of times. Drobo was just an all around piece of garbage for the money I spent on it. I bought the QNAP and have not looked back since. If you want simple, good featured, easy to configure and reliable; just get the QNAP.
 
MrHood22 said:
I'm trying to keep expenses down as much as possible. If the best solution is to spend $700 on a drobo S then I will but you guys are convincing me that there are cheaper and more effective ways around this.

Couldn't I just get one of these cards and call it a day? I won't even have to build another box

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115075
Click to expand...

No. It only adds two extra SATA 6.0Gb/s ports. How exactly does that help you?

Ok, what exactly are you trying to accomplish here?
Expand your current storage?
Get a backup for your current data? (Note RAID IS NOT BACKUP!)
Have a file server or NAS that shares data to all the PCs in your home?

What exactly do you want to accompish with all this?
 
Danny Bui said:
No. It only adds two extra SATA 6.0Gb/s ports. How exactly does that help you?

Ok, what exactly are you trying to accomplish here?
Expand your current storage?
Get a backup for your current data? (Note RAID IS NOT BACKUP!)
Have a file server or NAS that shares data to all the PCs in your home?

What exactly do you want to accompish with all this?
Click to expand...

I want to have a back up of my computer. I have a lot of data (~4tb and growing) but it's not practically to get another 4tb of hard drive space to copy it all on to. As I said, it will continue to grow so i'd like something that can expand.

Currently I have 6 internal hard drives (sata). 5 of them are plugged into the motherboard and 1 of them plug into a Esata/sata PCI card.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132014
 
MrHood22 said:
I want to have a back up of my computer. I have a lot of data (~4tb and growing) but it's not practically to get another 4tb of hard drive space to copy it all on to. As I said, it will continue to grow so i'd like something that can expand.]
Click to expand...
Then the QNAP that MikeTrike recommended is a good choice from a simplcity standpoint.

MrHood22 said:
plug into a Esata/sata PCI card.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132014
Click to expand...

That's a PCI-E x1 card, not a PCI card. Totally different connections
 
Danny Bui said:
Then the QNAP that MikeTrike recommended is a good choice from a simplcity standpoint.



That's a PCI-E x1 card, not a PCI card. Totally different connections
Click to expand...

The only problem is i'll have to get bigger drives. I have 4tb of stuff so i'd put 4 x 1tb in the QNAP. As I said, the size is constantly growing so i'm going to have to upgrade to larger drives. But I guess that's just unavoidable.
 
MrHood22 said:
The only problem is i'll have to get bigger drives. I have 4tb of stuff so i'd put 4 x 1tb in the QNAP. As I said, the size is constantly growing so i'm going to have to upgrade to larger drives. But I guess that's just unavoidable.
Click to expand...
It's not 4 x 1TB. You can always add 4 x 2TB drives, which are now in the $90 range instead. That's 6TB total in RAID 5. That should buy you some time.

Alternatively, you're looking at a DIY setup. But that will require some experience with Linux or FreeNAS or FreeBSD.
 
MrHood22 said:
The only problem is i'll have to get bigger drives. I have 4tb of stuff so i'd put 4 x 1tb in the QNAP. As I said, the size is constantly growing so i'm going to have to upgrade to larger drives. But I guess that's just unavoidable.
Click to expand...

The link I sent you was 4 x 1.5TB drives, 4.2TB usable after everything is all setup. That QNAP also supports RAID level migration so you can move to bigger drives pretty easily. Easier than the Drobo I would say due to the non-retarded filesystem that's used vs. what Drobo uses.
 
MikeTrike said:
The link I sent you was 4 x 1.5TB drives, 4.2TB usable after everything is all setup. That QNAP also supports RAID level migration so you can move to bigger drives pretty easily. Easier than the Drobo I would say due to the non-retarded filesystem that's used vs. what Drobo uses.
Click to expand...

Gotcha. So if I go the QNAP route...

4 x 1.5TB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148337

1 Gigabyte PCI Network Adapter
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833106121

QNap 410
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...-_-na-_-na&AID=10521304&PID=3891137&SID=194r0

~$690

That looks more attractive now. I can also keep my internal ones active.
 
MrHood22 said:
Currently I have 6 internal hard drives (sata). 5 of them are plugged into the motherboard and 1 of them plug into a Esata/sata PCI card.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132014
Click to expand...

You are going to have an issue migrating this data to whatever solution you choose though. You have 4 1TB drives say full of data now.
To put the drives in a Drobo, QNAP, (any NAS), internal Raid-5 (any raid) you are going to wipe all the data on the drives. You will need to either buy new disks (so you have something to copy the data to), or beg/borrow drives from your friends to temporarily hold the data.

Re Cards - the requirement to run 5 drives is going to punt you into the 8 connector range (your options are typically 1,2,4,8, and 16 connectors). My suggestion would probably be something like this
LSI 9240-8i (comes with cables that turn each of the connectors in the card into 4 Sata ports).
The cheapest option I see on newegg is HighPoint RocketRaid 2680

Edit: Saw all the new discussion while I was typing this. IMO go with one of the various 2TB drives floating around there. The NAS will be slightly more expensive in the end than going internal, but I'm thinking it will be a simpler workflow for you.
 
MrHood22 said:
Gotcha. So if I go the QNAP route...

4 x 1.5TB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148337

1 Gigabyte PCI Network Adapter
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833106121

QNap 410
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...-_-na-_-na&AID=10521304&PID=3891137&SID=194r0

~$690

That looks more attractive now. I can also keep my internal ones active.
Click to expand...



Go with the 2TB drives I linked, they are only $10 more per drive. Also you might not need that PCI network adapter if your mainboard already has gigabit ethernet on it.
 
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