Drobo FS - Any Users With Feedback?

[Anthony Parsons]

Well.... today is a really hot day, and now the fan has upped the noise a bit more, though still no HDD noise or such. Saying that... I am also still transferring all the data over to it and not allowing the HDD's to power down at all.

With it sitting 2 meters away, I can hear the fan, but my typing on the keyboard still makes more noise than it.

 

[Anthony Parsons]

Hmmm... turned the aircon on to cool the room to 25 degrees celcius... now more fan again... no noise at all.

I think its a winner!

 

[wickedstangs]

Hmmm... turned the aircon on to cool the room to 25 degrees celcius... now more fan again... no noise at all.

I think its a winner!

How is your Drobo doing after a couple of years? Looking at getting one for my home use...

 

[Anthony Parsons]

Still going, still amazing with zero failures or issues. We actually got another now... one dedicated to my wives work stuff (5 x 1TB drives) and one dedicated to all our media (5 x 3TB drives).

The one thing I have learnt from all of this, is that if you want to have several computers (3 or more), including networked TV's and associated equipment, all pulling from a single drobo, then you want a drobo with two LAN ports, not one. This is why we got another and split business from personal, so business isn't ever awaiting access due to massive media file writing / reading via single LAN port due to people watching different movies streamed across Apple TV around the home. Handles multiple viewing like that well... but when you add business reading / writing to a single device, things get a little slower.

 

[dutchbb]

Cons

• Expensive (in comparison with RAID)
• Proprietary format for data
• Heavy (but I didn't compare with other solutions, so...)
• A bit noisy if on your desk

... and this has recently caused a total data loss for me. One drive failed, I replaced it following instructions, no success. Post reboot all drives showed red lights, data gone. Costs €8000-€16000 to recover. Drobo, never again.

 

[Anthony Parsons]

Odd... I had two drives fail over the past years, turned it off, dropped them out, put new ones in, turned on... it rebuilt and kept going as it should. Two drobos and both flawless in operation with no failures.

 

[WoodiE]

... and this has recently caused a total data loss for me. One drive failed, I replaced it following instructions, no success. Post reboot all drives showed red lights, data gone. Costs €8000-€16000 to recover. Drobo, never again.

I've heard of these same issues with Drobo. I've been using a Synology for the last few years now and highly recommend them. Mine is running in a RAID 10 and being backed up via Crashplan.

 

[Digital Doctor]

Anyone use UnRAID ?

 

[-GR-]

I've heard of these same issues with Drobo. I've been using a Synology for the last few years now and highly recommend them. Mine is running in a RAID 10 and being backed up via Crashplan.

We have had our Synology now for a couple of years. It is the 5 bay version, with dual LAN. I can't remember the model number. Frequent updates on the OS and the interface continues to improve. I have had two drives fail during the time we have had it and had flawless recovery once new drives were installed. I have been thinking about either getting another one or getting the expansion bay.

I use our's for all the movies and I also use it to rsync our dedicated server to. Been using Percona XtraBackup to backup the databases twice a day and rsync all the files once a night. Also rsync all the home directories.