The one advantage Drobo has is it allows you backup similar to raid 5 without you having to use all identical hard drives to maximize the space.

I think people who would buy such a product would have a higher than average understanding of computers/network, and those same people would know that hard drives are extremely cheap now (1TB for under $200), and paying $500 for this thing is wayyyy too much.

Kobe_No_Means_No

Why the DROBO is good:
It dynamically manages the disks you put in to provide the most protected storage possible. For example, let's say you put in two 500 GB drives, a 750 GB and a 1 TB. The DROBO will use the first 500 GB of each disk to make a RAID5, the rest of the 750 and 250 of the 1TB to make a RAID1 and then just make the last 250 of the 1TB available as regular storage.

All of this gets presented as a single disk to Windows, with warnings when you fill it enough that you are starting to use the unprotected space. What makes it REALLY good is you can upgrade on the fly. As long as you are not using any unprotected space you can yank out any of the drives, put in a new bigger one and the unit will automatically reconfigure for the new layout without any data loss.

Why it is not so good:
It is USB. There is a network adaptor, but it is expensive. Actually, the whole thing is expensive. Also, last time I checked it did not play nice with any OS but Windows. Because it is not meant for network file sharing I have heard of plenty of issues getting it to work with media centres and media extenders.

So, good fire and forget solution if you have a lot of cash for backing up one computer, but makes a lousy media storage system. That said these are the types of problems that Open Sourcing the whole box might actually solve.

I suspect that as network storage goes more mainstream we will see the DROBO's disk handling features, which are quite nice, start to show up in other products that are a little better all around.

Ryan H

My kingdom for a Firewire / E-SATA Drobo. I mean, USB? *come* *on*.

ctthoqqua

Agree with that too,, drobo is wayyyyy expensive for what you get

collin8579

I was considering a NAS device recently and looked at the drobo as a possibility,,
But the more I looked at it,, the less enthused I became,,
The main type of connection is USB,, Even with the droboshare, which you can get in Gig Ethernet (I think), you still bottleneck severely with the USB connection,,
Ugh
Best options is something with built in Gig Eth connections, such as Synology DS508 (Drool), or the Thecus N5200 Pro ,, Both 5bay with everything from usb connection to Gig ethernet and esata,, Yum

collin8579

I just don't get this. I had an enclosure at one point very similar to this, but I UPGRADED from that to a home-built server with an SATA PCI card and set up two RAID1 arrays.

Altogether I spent maybe $700 on the setup (including the 4x 500GB WD hard disks), so why would you spend $500 on a lesser setup with NO drives included???

TendoMentis

The drobo doesn't have a network port so you will need to buy the droboshare device for all the network-centric examples given. This is good in a way, if all network aspects are handled by the droboshare device and not the drobo itself, the the drobo can concentrate on protecting your data. Besides, it's slow enough already without any more processes bogging it down.

badbob001

well then forget the iPhone, i'm buying a Drobo.

wait, what?

tucker

There's no point to the Drobo. With Synology and Qnap products out there at basically the same price but with networking built in and out of the box support for all the stuff Drobo is relying on the community to develop (360 / PS3 streaming, BitTorrent, iTunes, etc.) I just can't see why anyone would buy this.

TheChaz

Drobo works fine with OS X...

Dr Eric

Eric Aitala

@badbob001: Yeah thats the whole reason that I actually didn't end up buying one. You pay $500 ($449 after rebate now) for a drive, then you have to pay $200 more just to get network connection. The worst part of it all is that you go from gigabit ethernet to USB to eSATA. If Drobo fixed this, I would consider buying it. Until then, Netgear NV+!!

Joseph

@TheChaz:
Well, the disk handling is very nice. Most RAID solutions don't handle mismatched disk sizes or partial upgrades very well. For instance, if you have 4 500GB disks in a conventional RAID enclosure upgrading that can be a pain. If you replace two of those with 1TB disks some solutions won't be able to include them in the array at all and most of the will treat them as two 500GB disks. Even assuming it does rebuild and you then replace the other two disks with more 1TB drives getting the array to rebuild to use the new larger size without losing any data can be a real pain.

Basically, with most RAID enclosures the only way to safely upgrade is to copy everything off to another storage medium and then start from scratch again.

So, a solution that is completely disk agnostic as far as mixing sizes and models go and that also offers graceful failure and upgrading has a lot to offer.

My issue with DROBO is that it has wonderful tech behind it but is stuck in a box that almost goes out of its way not to appeal to 95% of the home storage market. I mean, how many people want great expandable storage capable of gracefully dealing with terabytes of data but don't want to stream any large files from the drive or be able to access from more than one computer at a time?

Ryan H

I read through TONS of reviews on this unit. Too many people claiming their unit would die for no good reason creating a need to FORMAT and start from scratch. So basiclly what I do now with my QNAP once a month!

Add the fact that the unit is slow, I don't see how it's a good idea to add more processing on the unit.

As was mentioned, add the NIC device and WOW you have one heck of a RIP OFF solution.

JEmlay

I almost got a Drobo+share as a home NAS solution until I found our windows home server does all the same disc tricks that the drobo does.
I got an HP Mediasmart EX470 (one 500gig drive) for just under $600, and then I found a 750gig drive on sale for $90 and popped it in. Now I'm waiting for a terrabyte drive
Backs up all the computers on my network automatically every night, has gigabit ehternet, eSata and usb for external drives and peripherals, a DNLA server, and iTunes server built in. There's also a thriving development community making add-ins (no to mention it's basically MS server '03 so you can install almost anything). It also is reachable over the internet so you can get to your files remotely, and acts as a gateway for remote desktop to any computer on your network.
So basically, I loves it *gush*.
And to all the haters - the fix for the data corruption bug is going to be released within the next couple of weeks.

pete

I just picked up a Netgear NASDuo and it's fantastic. Easy to install, stuck a second disk in and it's all RAIDed up.

It's got a bittorrent client built in, as well as online file sharing, FTP, http/s access. All too easy. [www.readynas.com]

Maxwells_Nylon_Hammer

The ability to mix drives is really nice, seeing as how drive capacities usually outpace hardware failures. The fact that you don't have to deal with any RAID tools is also mighty convenient.

But... USB only, no FireWire, and the $200 NAS option allows for -one- user password? Sorry, no go.

sodakar

I admit I don't really see the point of DroboShare since you can get a cheap PC for the same price but I love my Drobo. The fact that it takes mismatched disks let me make use of several SATA disks I already had my files on and only had to buy one new disk instead of four so for my situation it was quite a bit cheaper than anything mentioned here as competition (under $550 all-in vs. ~$800 for any other 4-bay RAID appliance I could find with the same amount of starting storage). True, it is USB only but I have a PC that hosts my bittorent and Slimserver so I just share it thorough that. I do wish Drobo were faster but when I looked at the real-world benchmarks I saw in some reviews for the QNAP which was the other finalist for me (using SMB as I would use it) it is just as slow or slower than what I get over USB with the Drobo. As for reliability, I can't comment except to say I've had no problems so far but I'll keep you posted.

mike0456