Just got my 1st Gen Drobo: Unboxing & Review

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TheSandman2236

2[H]4U
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Mar 30, 2006
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Hey guys, I just recieved my Drobo 1st Gen from Newegg along with 2 Seagate 500GB 7200RPM 32mb Cache Drives. Here's the unboxing, and a bit later my review. More pictures to come as well.

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Sandman, did it take drobo forever to ship your's? I just got a 1st Gen(didn't want or need firewire) and it took them a week to finally ship the thing even though they showed it was allocated and when I called they said they were in stock and that it should have shipped the day after I ordered. Was just curious if it was just me or not.
 
niccoli said:
Sandman, did it take drobo forever to ship your's? I just got a 1st Gen(didn't want or need firewire) and it took them a week to finally ship the thing even though they showed it was allocated and when I called they said they were in stock and that it should have shipped the day after I ordered. Was just curious if it was just me or not.
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It only took 3 days from ordering to my doorstep through Newegg.com ^_^ It might've just been your order.
Black-Tom said:
Wow, that device looks just way too cool. I would use something like that, but I don't need that much storage space lol. how are the transfer speeds?


For anyone who doesn't know what a drobo is: http://www.drobo.com/Products/drobo.html
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The transfer speeds are not as bad as everyone pegs them out to be. I had to transfer 300GB's of data to it in one single copy. Flawlessly and didn't take out my whole day. I dont remember exactly how long it took but it wasnt bad. Even with just plain USB 2.0 it's still pretty damn fast. Especially for what you're getting at that price.

I'll try to come to the table next time with some solid benchmarks when I get back to Chicago. (I'm on a mini-vacation)
 
Is there any major benefit from a Drobo over say a regular USB 4 drive RAID enclosure? Aside from good looks.

Can you run HD Tune or HD Tach on this thing?
 
TheSandman2236 said:
It only took 3 days from ordering to my doorstep through Newegg.com ^_^ It might've just been your order.


The transfer speeds are not as bad as everyone pegs them out to be. I had to transfer 300GB's of data to it in one single copy. Flawlessly and didn't take out my whole day. I dont remember exactly how long it took but it wasnt bad. Even with just plain USB 2.0 it's still pretty damn fast. Especially for what you're getting at that price.

I'll try to come to the table next time with some solid benchmarks when I get back to Chicago. (I'm on a mini-vacation)
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What's the transfer speed in MB/s typically say when you're transferring from Windows Explorer?
 
These are very interesting. If I didn't already have a WHS running, I'd probably go with one of these.
 
thebeephaha said:
Is there any major benefit from a Drobo over say a regular USB 4 drive RAID enclosure? Aside from good looks.

Can you run HD Tune or HD Tach on this thing?
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Advantages include ease of use and the ability to mix drive capacities. No messing around with raid configuration. Just plug in the drives and go. It may not exactly be RAID 5, for instance, but I know I had one drive fail and lost no data. For what it is, the Drobo, while pricey, isn't bad.
 
I've been happy with the one that I just got. 4 - 1 TB drives and droboshare. I have a client that we just took on, 2 of their 3 fileservers were infected with the most spyware/trojan/virii that I have ever seen. The old net admin thought giving the guest account domain admin privileges was a good idea. This was a K-12 school, all kids 9-12 have their own laptops....what a mess.

Overall the Drobo has been doing good, USB transfer's are pretty fast but the eternet xfer speeds were really slow. It's possible that the servers and network were the issue though.
 
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