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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

#31

Post by imajes »

archgrove wrote: post #14

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 purch…

I'd echo this experience; I have a drobo fs with the new wd caviar greens. It works like a treat and is very quiet. I'm next looking into a tape backup solution for longer term storage, but for now- the drobo is an excellent way to work with.

Tip: don't buy the old drobo, get the new one. Don't get the drobo share, use an airport extreme or similar disk-sharing network device.

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

#32

Post by ff0066mote »

javanix wrote: post #26
ff0066mote wrote: post #24

Not related to Drobo: I use a cron script which runs rsync each hour and synchronizes my / and /home/ with my /mnt/mirror/. Ever since I've set this up, I've had a reliable backup which I don't have to think about. I've even migrated my system to it once, because I needed to swap the primary hard drive out. What's the big deal about backing up? Why buy a dedicated unit anyway? Am I missing something fundamental?

Well, that works well. The draw of Drobo is a RAID setup though - in some cases, RAID provides a significant performance boost, and, at higher levels, it'll survive more than one drive failure.

Ah, I didn't think of that and it makes sense. Thank you.

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

#33

Post by andrewvc »

Dirt_McGirt wrote: post #23
jwr wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 H…

> 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? RAID is _not_ a backup. If you don't understand this, you'll never be satisfied with any RAIDish products.

True. RAID is about reliability and performance, and it seems the Drobo isn't winning points there either.

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

#34

Post by andrewvc »

ff0066mote wrote: post #24

Not related to Drobo: I use a cron script which runs rsync each hour and synchronizes my / and /home/ with my /mnt/mirror/. Ever since I've set this up, I've had a reliable backup which I don't have to think about. I've even migrated my system to it once, because I needed to swap the primary hard drive out. What's the big deal about backing up? Why buy a dedicated unit anyway? Am I missing something fundamental?

If speed isn't a concern, that's great. I really like linux software raid, mdraid. It's FAST and it makes the drives portable between hardware.

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

#35

Post by Terretta »

agperson wrote: post #15
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 pro…

Also thrilled with ReadyNAS NV+ for all the same reasons, but especially to support Macs, TimeMachine, and remove WebDAV access.

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

#36

Post by jmount »

ff0066mote wrote: post #24

Not related to Drobo: I use a cron script which runs rsync each hour and synchronizes my / and /home/ with my /mnt/mirror/. Ever since I've set this up, I've had a reliable backup which I don't have to think about. I've even migrated my system to it once, because I needed to swap the primary hard drive out. What's the big deal about backing up? Why buy a dedicated unit anyway? Am I missing something fundamental?

Unless such a backup is versioned it seems all you have is a system that automatically erases your backup one to two hours after a soft failure.

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

#37

Post by rdl »

shpxnvz wrote: post #18
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?

Generally, if you set auto-rebuild, yes. It's RAID5 though, so you're only protected from single drive failures. I use RAID6 on Areca cards (or better) for "critical" data, or remote servers -- single drive failures all too often become double drive failures before the RAID finishes rebuilding.

The other issue is that write (and sometimes read) performance is hurt during rebuild. For timing-sensitive systems, people often turn off auto-rebuild or scale back rebuild percentage of writes, so their application's performance isn't so affected. Of course, if the second failure happens during the rebuild...

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

#38

Post by illumin8 »

I think his problems with the Drobo are mainly the way he's using it. I've had a Drobo for a couple years now and have not had problems with it, but I have noticed a few strange things:

1. Regarding the fan noise - I used to keep my Drobo in a warm house with no air conditioning. Temperatures in my office would regularly reach 78-80 degrees, and anything in the high 70s would cause my Drobo fan to go into "vacuum cleaner mode," which is really annoying. Solution: Don't keep your Drobo in a hot room. This is a sensitive piece of electronic equipment with lots of spinning platters stacked on top of each other. Drobo is more sensitive to heat than other pieces of technology. Since then I keep my office air conditioned and at 72 degrees, the Drobo is silent other than the hard drive seeking itself.

2. Filesystem support - This is a problem with any "cross-platform" storage and the fault is not Drobo's. I use my Drobo on both an OS X 10.6.4 system and a Windows 7 system. The only filesystem I can use that supports both seamlessly is FAT32. Unfortunately, FAT32 doesn't support some character sets that Mac does, which I found out when I was trying to back up my iTunes library there. Another limitation of FAT32 is that your filesystem can't be larger than 2TB, and you can't store files larger than 4GB. My other option was to go with HFS+ or NTFS but either of those solutions are Mac or Windows only.

The two main issues he has: Heat and filesystem compatibility, can be solved by simply using the Drobo differently. Drobo is not without it's limitations. The speed is slow, and it's sensitive to heat. But if used properly, it works fine as a large data storage device.

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

#40

Post by bradleyland »

Dirt_McGirt wrote: post #23
jwr wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 H…

> 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? RAID is _not_ a backup. If you don't understand this, you'll never be satisfied with any RAIDish products.

It's true that RAID is not a backup, but backup strategies are rarely any good if they back up data "instantly", which is what redundancy provides. So you're stuck with a catch 22. If you back up instantly (without versioning), you may backup bad data. Boooo! If you backup, say, daily, you still stand to lose a days work when your array fails. Boooo!

RAID should increase reliability, not decrease it. Any RAID solution that results in a net increase in data loss is not a good solution.

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