Drobo and Droboshare..
Tuesday, April 21, 2009 at 12:41PM 
Following on from my decision to move away from a pair of RAID 0 arrays for my backup solution (see previous post) I decided to try out a combination of a couple of mirrored drives for resilience and the ability to create offsite backups plus a Drobo based solution for long term storage (plus cloud backup, yada, yada....)
Well I ordered a Drobo MkII last week from Amazon and worked out I could reconfigure my existing config to free up 4 x 1TB drives to populate the Drobo.
Literally minutes after the order was dispatched from Amazon, someone on Twitter pointed me across to the eBuyer site where the same Drobo was on offer but with a DroboShare device thrown in for free (usually £169). The DroboShare is a device that allows you to connect your Drobo via Etehrnet to your network turning it into a NAS or Network Attached Storage device.
It was too late to cancel the order with Amazon but their policy is to accept returns within 7 days so I ordered the Drobo and DroboShare from eBuyer. Needless to say, the Amazon unit arrived several days ago but I left it unopened waiting for the other unit.
The second unit arrived today and I have to say, installation was a breeze.
Very nicely packaged with simple instructions! Basically:
- Unpack both the Drobo and Droboshare.
- Connect the DroboShare to my Gigabit ethernet switch with supplied cable
- Place the Drobo on top and connect to the DroboShare using the supplied USB2 cable
- Insert the 4 x 1TB Drives
- Power the two units from a single power supply using the supplied Y splitter
- Insert the CD into the Mac and installed the Drobo dashboard
- Once installed, the dashboard found the Drobo and realised that the disks were unformatted (note even if the drives are formatted or have data on, the Drobo will treat them as new disks and wipe them)
- Selected HFS+ as format and selected a 16GB volume (figured it was better to go for the maximum size to make upgrading easier later)
- Drobo then proceeded to format the drives and five minutes later, I had 2.7 TB of usable storage space!
Now before you ask, 4 x 1 TB does not equal 2.7 TB !
As can be seen from the graphic (click to see full size), because of the way drive manufacturers describe drive capacity, it's actually 3.63 TB in real terms. But this still isn't 2.7 TB?
In fact, 960 GB is reserved for protection and this is the beauty of the principle behind the Drobo.
In theory, I could copy up to 2.7 TB of data onto the unit, then remove one of the drives and still access the full 2.7 TB!
In the future, when 2 TB drives (or even bigger) are more common and more affordable, I could increase the available storage on the device (up to a maximum of 16GB) without having to move data around manually and reformatting. The Drobo will let me remove a drive, replace it with one of a higher capacity and just re-jig the data to fit!
Performance seems fine! I was a little worried about using the USB2 connection to the DroboShare as the unit does have a FireWire 800 connection, but this is only for use when directly connecting to the Mac itself. As this unit is only intended as a backup device, I've no real need for speed. Besides which, I'm currently playing a 4GB HD movie off the drive via DroboShare and at the same time copying another two HD movies across! The movie is playing just fine!
Update: I had a few requests to do a comparison between the direct connection compared to the DroboShare connected. Glad I did as the direct connection is nearly three times as fast! See the results here
A quandry......
Well you know that other Drobo unit, the one that's going back to Amazon tomorrow....
Nah, I don't need two Drobos at the minute, although I do have some spare drives without a home...
No, I need to stay sensible and send it back.....
Yes, I will!
BTW I have no affiliation with Drobo either directly or via MacBreak Weekly. I paid for the machines with my own hard earned cash at current retail prices!
Reader Comments (10)
Congratulation Don! I wish I had the same setup like you.
Don, if I were you I would keep the second unit now you have it. It will give you full peace of mind regarding your data because it spreads the point of failure to two places instead of one. On the other hand, you must not forget in order to get firmware updates in the future, you need to be on payed support of $125 per year per BOX!
So food for thought. Good luck with it. They look really cool.
Put all of your stuff on a Dro-obo.
Difficult to resist the macbreak ads!
Don -- Please comment re: Pat Mahon's revelation that firmware updates require a very expensive support subscription. Do you think that's reasonable?
Dave, I can comment. Pat Mahon is wrong. My Drobo is over a year old; I did not take up the extended warranty subscription and I still receive updates to both the firmware and also the Drobo Dashboard software. What I don't get is tech support nor any help if my Drobo fails.
Have to admit I hadn't got as far as checking out Pats assertion but it didn't sit right with me. Mike seems to have contradicted the premise which I'm much happier about!
I eventually decided to return the second box regardless as I couldn't really justify the second unit to use now. When the time comes to augment the existing Drobo, I would imagine there will be many more options available plus possibly even cheaper and more advanced solutions.
Quick thanks to Mike Bradbrook for correcting my earlier comments regarding the firmware updates. He is in fact absolutely correct as I miss read the support FAQ's.
I'm sorry if anyone conducted business on the basses of my misassumptions. What I didn't realise until Mike informed us though, is the fact that NO telephone support or help of any kind will be offered once warranty has passed and extended Drobo Care has been passed up! I find it a bit off putting to think that a company would be that callus. This may well be not the case come the time someone actually phones with a problem. At least I hope not!
Glad to clarify things, Pat. For extra info, if you pass up on the offer to take the extended warranty before first your year is over, you can still extend the warranty later - but it costs you more ($129 rather than $49. I still get the reminder to take the extended warranty whenever I start up the Drobo Dashboard but no way am I paying $129.
I have a question/concern. There have been some reports of failing Drobo units - which is fair enough. Nothing's indestructible. However, from the (admittedly limited) reading that I've done, it would SEEM that the warranty period can only be extended within the first 3 years of purchase.
Now, if I were to spend around $1500 on the DroboPro (the larger unit), then it would be very costly if it broke in the 4th year or beyond, as I would have to replace the entire thing outright.
Now, my issue is this: 3 years ain't that long. If I want to replace drives and continue using this device for the foreseeable future, then that 3 years peace-of-mind is going to seem very short.
For a proprietary device which I would be completely dependent on - and is pitched as something one can use almost indefinitely - the means to extend the warranty considerably beyond this period would mean a lot. I would even go so far as to say that hardware manufacturers that are very secure in their products are often willing to provide a lifetime warranty.
Any thoughts from anyone? Am I incorrect about the limit on warranty extensions?
Want to know if anyone has come across a setup guide for setting up a droboshare for a family network. Looking for a best practices to allow multiple users to have their own volumes as an Active Directory concept on a home network.