Drobo – nothing but problems
We got a Drobo hoping for it to be a good solution for our department NAS. Four drives later, and a lot of lost data, I can’t recommend it.
We had the second drive in the RAID consistently go out. Finally CDW sent us a new Drobo main unit, and I moved the working drive and a new drive in. It then failed both drives and it appears wiped all my data out. I’m trying to figure out how to get the data off the one good drive, now digging up a SATA cable…
This is four drives and two units later, and no joy. I’m getting a ReadyNAS and can’t recommend this product. Their support hasn’t been especially helpful, just “contact the place you bought it from”
Check out the Thecus N5500 but be aware a 7 drive (N7700) and an 8 Drive (19″ rack mount N8800) are just around the corner so you may want to hold off for 4 weeks or so.
Cheers,
Dean
P.S. Anyone running Openfiler? Would love to hear your comments.
I ran a ReadyNAS NV with four drives for nearly two years in my home office. Had nothing but problems with it. Dropped shares, wacky admin interface that locked up, and loud fan noise that ran constantly. It also occasionally marked drives as bad (when subsequent drive tests showed they were fine).
Finally gave up and switched to a Drobo last month hooked up to an Intel Mac Mini with Leopard Server. It uses the same SATA drives as ReadyNAS and has worked like a champ. Easy access from MacBook Pro (including file sharing, printing, screen sharing, iTunes, and Time Machine). File shares are also accessible from ThinkPad and Sonos.
For extra protection, I also set up a Western Digital 1TB drive with ChronoSync mirroring the Drobo’s main shares once a day. But with a Mac Mini, you can also use Time Machine running on the server for more frequent snapshots.
If you’re using the Drobo as a NAS, I’m guessing you’re using DroboShare. That might be the problem. I had lots of problems with DroboShare and ended up (after a short debate with Drobo support) sending it back.
Using a MacMini as a server has lots of advantages, including built-in group wiki, MySQL, Apache, and iChat servers. But especially cool is remote Bonjour via something like ShareTool (from YazSoft) so you can access files and services when you’re on the road.
Glad the drobo worked for you. we had 4 bad drives, two bad head units and lost tons of data. NEXT!
Here’s a vote for the ReadyNAS NV+, I’ve been running mine at home for a year or so. Not had a single problem with it (but the fan is a bit loud). I have multiple shares and users, and access from both Mac and Windows. I haven’t tried any of the additional features like the FTP server, or media streaming though.
I really fancied a Drobo when I bought the ReadyNAS, but I wanted the storage to be connected directly to the network (and they wouldn’t ship it to the UK at that time)
I cannot recommend the ReadyNAS NV+ from NetGear.. went through two of them.. NewEgg was nice enought to take both back.. I know we’re not madfe of money, but if you need a good, small solution you can’t beat:
- Mac Mini running 10.5 Leopard Server
- Newer Tech Guardian Maximus (hardware Raid 1 with USB & FireWire)
Over GigE, we get 40Mb/sec transfer.. that pretty much spanks Drobo and ReadyNas..
more expensive – YES!
but you get what you pay for!
Ethan,
I love my DLINK DNS323. It’s a 2 drive hackable NAS, but I think DLINK was releasing a 4 drive version too if you want to do RAID 5.
Very fast, Gigabit speed, and a nice web interface. It’s never failed and I use it with my time machine to wirelessly back-up my MacBook Pro.
The only downside of the NAS: file permissions and folder sharing are not very intuitive.
Check out the solutions from Adaptec/SNAP
servers; old skool, but works like a charm. Adaptec also has an iSCSI NAS solution for under $2K called the 4500. Haven’t tried it yet, but if it’s anything like the 520 I would highly recommend it.
SNAP server 520 also comes bundled with BakBone software for 500GB VTL license.
You should check out the QNAP TS-509. It’s a 5-bay very quiet NAS with lots of prosumer options for home and business. Available right now on Newegg for $899 diskless.
My Drobo just lost an entire storage volume. Poof! Just like that, it now appears as RAW and unformatted. 1TB of family holiday videos and media files gone just like that. The drives are not dead, it just decided to lose all data.
Ready NAS 1100? Fuhgedabout it! I have had no end of problems. A firmware update that locked mine up. Lost a bunch of data. Good drives reported as bad. The web management software screws things up or behaves intermittently. It is anything but a stable platform, it is fine…until you make a change, update anything or replace a drive. When you do that, look out!! I am swapping mine for a Drobo.
!! Always backup your data. NAS and RAID devices can NOT be used as your only file store !!
If you want a fast and cheap NAS, built one using generic computers parts and a RAID controller. I got a 8 drive 6TB Raid 6 setup thats achieves 90MB/s on a gigabit network. No NAS device can beat that.
Just bought DROBO hooked up to WinXP with USB2.0. Now I can’t even boot into WinXP. Nothing but problems. Even when it did work, file copying was very slow. Keep looking if you’re in the market.
I had a similar bad experience. Multiple USB devices (one at a time) without any problems. Drobo screwed up, over and over again. Lousy experience with support – everything was to blame apart from the device. I believed they wanted to just keep using my time trying non-drobo solutions until i gave up.
I did give up. I gave up using the Drobo. No more hangs, locks, freezes. My machine works again.
The Drobo is a great idea, but the implementation is awful. Based on my experiences, stay away.
Well….you can’t do anything wrong with the Drobo basically. I have 2 by now Gen 1 and Gen 2 and both work great. You can even switch complete arrays into another Drobo and it recognizes all the data on it. I wonder how anyone can have 2 defective units in a row and lose data.
My only negative critic goes to the speed. If empty you get up to 20MB/s if 70-90% filled you get 1-4 MB/s. Sometimes not even enough to play an HD Movie lagless.
So i’m using it mainly as a Data Safe…looking for a different solution with any software running on PC Hardware….promising myself more performance of that.
I was using a FireWire Drobo unit for our Surveilence system with four 2TB drives. Within two weeks it said one drive had failed so did a hot swap with a new drive. The drobo said it was going to take 278 hours to rebuild the RAID!!!! It also said I was able to access the data but wouldn’t mount the volume. I’m now looking into using something different.