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Here's why you should not buy a Drobo

jan.rychter.com

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Re: Here's why you should not buy a Drobo

#11

Post by jwr »

silencio wrote: post #9

I'm not sure on how to reply, because experiences with a Drobo seem to be extremely hit or miss and it is all very anecdotal. My drobo with all WD green drives is as silent as my Mac minis and MBP are, while a friend of mine has one also with similar drives that's so loud it's very difficult to sleep in the same room with it (and yes, it rivals his Mac Pro in terms of noise). I've not had a single problem with my dro…

Well, in my case the failures are obvious and objectively present. You can't really discuss expectations if your device just lost all your data due to filesystem corruption. You don't discuss "infallibility" if your device tells you:

Buffer I/O error on device sda1, logical block 422806282 scsi2 (0:0): rejecting I/O to dead device

SCSI error : return code = 0x70000 end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 4533105544

HFS+-fs: WARN: Turning journaling back on even though Journalling was not on at mount. HFS+-fs: WARN: We may be setting the Journal bit on an unjournalled filesystem but it is OK.

So please don't soften the issue — it fails. It failed for me multiple times already and I expect it to fail again.

I guess it's OK to use a Drobo if you get another one as backup for the first one — but then, what's the point?

Re: Here's why you should not buy a Drobo

#12

Post by hawflakes »

I've been very happy with FreeNAS running on a recycled PowerEdge 400SC. I boot it off a USB thumbdrive and it manages to spin up and down the six SATA drives I'm using with even even with a cheapie 4-port PCI SATA card.

My workload is pretty light though as it hosts media and I only stream it from two devices max at a time.

But it's hard to beat the price and comprehensive protocol support. FTP, Samba, NFS, AFP, Time Machine backups, iTunes sharing, etc.

http://www.freenas.org/

Re: Here's why you should not buy a Drobo

#13

Post by rdl »

I knew from other people that the Drobo was worthlessly slow, but thanks for the info about the other problems.

I'm a big fan of either building a linux-based server, or using a QNAP. QNAP is a bit pricey per disk and per GB, but it just works.

For large disk requirements, I use a linux server with Areca 12-port RAID as secondary storage, and external eSATA+expander trays for tertiary storage (probably could put 50-100 drives on this with no problems). Overkill for most home use, though.

It's 2010, and I'd use iSCSI, not SMB, unless I wanted direct-attach FW800.

Re: Here's why you should not buy a Drobo

#14

Post by archgrove »

I've had my Drobo 18 months without a hiccup - It's not silent, but it's not noisy either. I've never had to contact customer support, so I can't really comment on that. I am marginally concerned by the fact that its death would mean I must have another Drobo to read the data, but this really isn't any different from most other hardware RAID controllers/NAS boxes, where the death of the card almost always means purchase of another identical card/driver combination to get your data back.

The point here is, Drobo/RAID/NAS are disk redundancy solutions - they cater for the fallibility of spinning magnetic platters, and never promise 100% reliability. Just like any solution, if you want to avoid data loss, you need to have an orthogonal backup system for when the other fails at a system level.

It sucks that he's had such problems with his Drobos, and it looks like the support he's got is subpar. This is not, however, the universal experience. Based on my experience, I'd be happy to recommend the Drobo to most people I know who want a simple and easy to setup solution for hard drive failures, with the big caveat that they still need at least one other backup solution.

Re: Here's why you should not buy a Drobo

#15

Post by agperson »

tomstuart wrote: post #5

Stories like this are why I didn't buy a Drobo. Instead I got a ReadyNAS NVX and have been incredibly satisfied with it. It's been rock solid so far and hasn't given me any hassle at all. (Incidentally, Netgear UK are doing a "free 2 x 500GB drives" promotion until the end of June: http://www.netgear.co.uk/freedrives_nvx.php )

I have also had a ReadyNAS (NV+) for some time and have been extremely satisfied with it. The device does not come cheap, and it isn't silent, but it is very capable, offers decent performance, and lets you access your data in a wide variety of ways (NFS, Rsync, AFP, CIFS, etc). It is relatively open as well, including allowing full root SSH login, and has various software add-ons as well.

Until an equivalent OEM product comes along that supports something like ZFS, the ReadyNAS is probably one of the best options available.

Re: Here's why you should not buy a Drobo

#16

Post by pibefision »

hawflakes wrote: post #12

I've been very happy with FreeNAS running on a recycled PowerEdge 400SC. I boot it off a USB thumbdrive and it manages to spin up and down the six SATA drives I'm using with even even with a cheapie 4-port PCI SATA card. My workload is pretty light though as it hosts media and I only stream it from two devices max at a time. But it's hard to beat the price and comprehensive protocol support. FTP, Samba, NFS, AFP, Tim…

Are you using zfs?

Have you anyone tries to use freenas as a time machine destination?

Re: Here's why you should not buy a Drobo

#18

Post by shpxnvz »

rdl wrote: post #13

I knew from other people that the Drobo was worthlessly slow, but thanks for the info about the other problems. I'm a big fan of either building a linux-based server, or using a QNAP. QNAP is a bit pricey per disk and per GB, but it just works. For large disk requirements, I use a linux server with Areca 12-port RAID as secondary storage, and external eSATA+expander trays for tertiary storage (probably could put 50-1…

I'm very curious how well the online disk changes work with something like the QNAP NAS. Is it really as simple as changing out the disks one at a time and waiting for the RAID to rebuild?

Re: Here's why you should not buy a Drobo

#19

Post by loewenskind »

silencio wrote: post #9

I'm not sure on how to reply, because experiences with a Drobo seem to be extremely hit or miss and it is all very anecdotal. My drobo with all WD green drives is as silent as my Mac minis and MBP are, while a friend of mine has one also with similar drives that's so loud it's very difficult to sleep in the same room with it (and yes, it rivals his Mac Pro in terms of noise). I've not had a single problem with my dro…

If the experience is so hit or miss that speaks against trying your luck, no?

Re: Here's why you should not buy a Drobo

#20

Post by pclark »

My main beef with Drobo is the way the file system works. You specify a faux file size of the drive that Mac OS recognizes, but it doesn't relate to the actual file size of the drives.

It turns out you should make this faux file size as large as you can (16TB) as the faux file size restricts the actual file size, so I made my faux file size 2TB and now actually have 2.5TB of storage, to make my drobo recognize it I have to reformat all the disks and lose the data. Daft.

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