Drobo Fully Automated SATA Robotic Storage Array 4 Bay USB 2.0
See it at Amazon.com for $399.99Average Customer Rating
(3.5 out of 5)
Amazon Customer Reviews
Most Helpful First | Newest First
(5 out of 5)Works exactly as advertised - Terrific!
I've been heavily using my Drobo over the past month, using it to host multiple databases. Ownership and operation of Drobo has been, in a word, anti-climactic.
But don't confuse "anti-climactic" with "disappointing"! Drobo works exactly as advertised and is ridiculously easy to install and use. There's no great sense of accomplishment when Drobo comes online, and even intentionally "failing" drives by removing them gets old after a few demonstrations. The thing just works, and hides all the technical magic behind clean black housing.
The front faceplate is attached via magnets. It's easy to pull off, yet plenty secure when attached. I think it's a great design decision over a hinged faceplate, as I can tuck the Drobo into narrower spaces or leave the faceplate off entirely. While most of the faceplate is opaque, there are transparent areas so the drive status lights can be seen. As an added safety feature, the faceplate will not attach properly if any of the gray drive catches are open (an indication that a drive is not properly inserted).
The back of Drobo is equally clean. Evident are the large air holes for the internal fan, and the two connectors: USB and power. No power switch or buttons anywhere; Drobo is a literal interpretation of a "black box." There is also a slot for connecting a laptop-style anti-theft cable (so you can lock Drobo to nearby furniture), and a hole for the reset button.
Drobo's fan is audible, but easily drowned out amidst normal office noise. I've since tucked Drobo inside a cabinet and I don't expect to hear it even when I'm the only person in the office. I also recommend using "silent" drives, otherwise the clicking of the read/write heads could be distracting.
There is some friction when inserting a drive, but nothing unusual. The main source of friction is the gray catch on the left side, which snaps into place once a drive is fully inserted. The drives do not pop out easily, even when the gray catch is pushed aside. Perhaps I don't know the secret yet, but it took some fumbling every time I attempted to remove a drive. While Drobo can utilize any 3.5 inch SATA hard drive, I opted to use a pair of their recommended drives.
Drobo connected easily via USB to my limited-account Win2K computer, installing as a generic USB Mass Storage Device. While it attached correctly, I could not use Drobo because my limited user account prohibits formatting any drives. Were it already formatted for NTFS (or I had Administrator rights for my work PC), it would have worked like a charm. I had no problems attaching or formatting with my home Windows XP or Windows Vista PC's (where I have full privileges).
Drobo connected just as easily to my nearby eMac running OS X 10.4.9. It took OS X about 10 minutes to format the drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) (aka HFS+). It appeared on the desktop as a generic USB drive icon, which I was able to easily change thanks to a supplied Drobo icon from the Drobo website.
The format step brings up my biggest concern for Drobo: portability between Windows and OS X. Drobo officially supports NTFS and HFS+, but not any version of FAT. This makes sense from a technical standpoint but can be an issue for those expecting to use Drobo across both operating systems. FAT, while common and compatible with nearly every current operating system, has limitations that can be frustrating to the unwitting user. These limits include file-size restrictions and the inability to format/use FAT partitions above a relatively low size. Neither NTFS nor HFS+ suffer these restrictions (yet), but Windows cannot easily read/write HFS+ drives, and ditto for OS X and NTFS. FAT can be used, but compatibility will be sketchy due to different versions of FAT and limitations/bugs in the operating system's implementation. In short, format as NTFS for Windows and HFS+ for OS X. I have not tested Drobo with *nix, but it should work with any modern build.
The USB interface should be plenty fast for most people, and it's wonderfully prevalent across the computing spectrum. FireWire, while technically faster, is primarily an Apple thing. FireWire is available for PC, but it's usually included as an afterthought on most motherboards. An eSATA connection would be ideal option for future versions of Drobo: SATA is designed for hard drive connections, motherboard and drive manufacturers have agreed upon the standard, and it is easy to boot from an eSATA device. I'd love to use Drobo as my boot drive, saving me from the headache associated with losing my OS partition. But USB is everywhere these days, so I understand their decision.
Drobo initially installs itself as a 2TB drive, regardless of actual drive capacity. 2TB (2000GB) is plenty huge, and actual capacity will probably be less than that. Case in point, I have two 250GB drives installed in Drobo, nowhere near the 2TB that Drobo reports to the operating system. This gives users plenty of elbow room to add new drives without having to alter any partition settings. I haven't tested what happens when Drobo hits the limit of the physical drives - will it report an "out of space" error, or will the data disappear into the æther? I may test this, but I doubt it will be worth my time. If the easy-to-read indicator lights warn me that Drobo is running out of drive space, I'll just add a bigger drive. If Drobo finds itself with more then 2TB of physical drive space, it will add another partition (aka "drive") to the operating system.
For those who have watched the Drobo promotional video, it takes longer than shown for Drobo to return to a safe state. I haven't really timed it, but definitely longer than the few seconds that is implied in the video. I have intentionally failed each drive by separately removing them from Drobo, and the data was still fully accessible. It's a slick system, and it works exactly as advertised. Even when I didn't make any data changes between removing and reinserting a drive, Drobo still took a while to incorporate the "new" drive. I suspect it's a safety feature to always wipe an inserted drive to ensure that there's no conflicting data between the drives.
$500 is a lot for an empty external drive bay. I understand that there's smart hardware and software contained within that housing, but I strongly hope there is another price drop down to $200 or $250 in the near future. As it stands, $500 will only appeal to a particular audience. At $200 or $250, I'd buy a Drobo for each PC in a heartbeat.
I want to emphasize that Drobo works exactly as advertised; that it is an effortless plug & play solution. My data is being backed up as changes happen, crashed drives can be replaced without any computing knowledge, and I never have to turn off Drobo or otherwise lose access to my data. Even better, I can increase Drobo's storage space by inserting additional drives. The fact that this can be done while Drobo is in use is tremendous.
A lot of smart engineering went into Drobo, and not just in their not-a-RAID algorithm. The metal enclosure is sturdy and sleek. The drive bays are exactly the right size for a 3.5 SATA hard drive. The nearly-opaque faceplate is easy to attach/remove, and does a great job at muffling drive chatter. The indicator lights are effective and intuitive. Drobo includes a small battery so it can quickly finish writing your data during a power outage. The optional software (Drobo Dashboard) is clean, communicates messages in plain English ("I cannot currently protect your data against a single hard drive failure."), and plays well with your OS. (And the Drobo Dashboard software is an optional install - Drobo works plenty well without it!)
Drobo's real worth will become apparent when one of the drives crashes. Instead of being hosed by data loss or requiring a tech-head to swap drives, Drobo keeps chugging along as if nothing happened while average Joe pulls out the dead drive and replaces it with a random SATA drive from the local computer store.
(3 out of 5)A clever product looking for a reason to exist.
Updated: August 2008
The new Firewire 800 model looks very interesting. I wonder how hard it is to add a Gigabit NIC and eSATA to it. This would make me buy the new one :-)
BTW I have had no corruption issues with mine yet. It is not usually on, only when I back up critical data, then its off.
UPDATE:
I won't re-edit the entire review below but some of what I am going to say now might well answer some of my questions below. Over the last 24 hours I decided to do a stress test to answer my 2 nagging questions. I hope it helps you.
Q1. What happens if you unplug the units USB connector during a RAID rebuild?
Q2. What happens if you cut POWER during a RAID rebuild?
These are the two most frightening scenarios for people who rely on this as their sole data storage. I could afford to do it for a test as I use my unit for back up purposes.
I did the test with over 80% of the capacity full, with a 500GB, 2x300GB and a 320GB installed. One of my red lights came on and I decided to replace one of the 300s with another 320. You would normally put in something much bigger, but the red flashing light was annoying me and this was all I had on hand :-)
No 1 Question was important as when you unplug the unit from a PC or MAC it usually drops to standby. Here we go Drive replaced and up comes the 15 hour rebuild. 5 hours into it I unplugged the unit. Took me that long to decide to do the test.
Answer: the unit STAYED ON! I switched off all my computers and let the thing rebuild plugged into a UPS. It took 12 hours, and once completed went into stand by. When tested on both MAC and PC it worked fine.
No 2 Question. If you have ever been in the middle of a STRIPED RAID rebuild when the power went off you will know it can be hit and miss as to what happened to your data (my experience has included catastrophic loss and a hunt for tapes). I decided to replace the other 300GB with a spare 320 I had on hand. I figured I needed to know the answer. The drive went in, I waited an hour (another 15 hour rebuild according to the supplied software) and then switched off the UPS. 10 minutes later I turned the UPS and DROBO back on.
It took a while...actually two power ons, before the units lights came on. My PC could not detect the drobo. Plugged it into my iMac. It EVENTUALLY appeared. I tried looking into the directories and some were empty...but some were not. I then unplugged the units USB (now I knew the unit would not slip into standby) turned off my iMac and left it.
4 hours later I checked it again. The empty directories were not empty. But they took a long time to read.
40 minutes ago it completed the rebuild. On the iMac I could read everything. Plugged into my PC. All could be read. I then ran my extensive synctoy backup preview which does a file compare of whats on my local drives and what was in the drobo. ALL files were complete on the DROBO.
Conclusions:
1. You can safely unplug your drobo from a computer during a RAID rebuild and it will NOT turn to standby until AFTER the rebuild. This is GOOD.
2. If you have a power outage: be very patient. Your data is likely going to be rebuilt...but it could take 10-15 hours, and your computer may not be able to read the drive until all the lights are green again. Again this is GOOD
ISSUES: The unit is sold as a very clever and smart solution which does not require user intervention. The manual reflects this with its minimalist approach.
However its lack of info for troubleshooting some of the worst case scenarios meant I, the end user, needed to go and run my own fault testing so I would have confidence in the unit.
I can see non-IT savvy folk, like my late Dad, using this and running into an issue, and panicking when these are not covered in the documentation.
I hope this helps you to decide on whether to buy this unit or not. I still wish it was cheaper, and had a built in gigabit LAN connector. The new LAN interface add on makes the unit even more pricey. I may actually get it so as to share my music, movie and photo collection with the family as I have already forked out for the main unit so the add on isn't "too much more" in my particular case. But if I was buying from scratch I would consider my options carefully.
Ok read my older review below in the light of this newer top bit
==========================
My background:
I work in IT and needed a solution to keep my data relatively safe in case of hard drive failure. I have had the unit nearly 2 months and have 800GB of storage in it now.
I understand that RAID is not a back up solution (I hope you do as well!), nor is it supposed to replace a back up solution. RAID is to ensure that when you have a hard drive failure that your work is not impacted and you can keep soldiering on until you replace the failed drive.
Having used MANY different hardware and software based RAID solutions I read the rave reviews on the DROBO.
The pros were that it is an ever expanding RAID box. You can keep adding hard drives to it. This is Extremely clever and deserves a hand.
The unit can use Fat32, NTFS and the MAC hard drive formats. If you work in a mixed environment stick to NTFS. Fat32 can be written to by MACs and PCs, BUT it is agonisingly slow (5x slower than NTFS in my testing with the unit), inefficient with massive hard drive capacities, and you will never be able to save any files over 4GB. This is a FAT32 issue, not the DROBOs. Think DVD ISO files and videos of the kids. Just AVOID FAT32 if you buy the unit.
This unit is great for what it does at an INTERNAL level, adding an expandable RAID to your computer. As an IT manager I have had to set up and repair a lot of RAIDs in the past. This is by far the easiest I have ever had to do. No arcane BIOS or proprietary cards. This is just crazy easy.
Why did I say "at an INTERNAL level". The ACHILLES heal of this unit is that it was limited to a USB 2 connector to the PC it is attached to. This oversight was a REALLY bad mistake. A RAID box is supposed to be your working drives. In all my servers it is, and in all of them SCSI or SATA provides rapid throughput. Any RAID will have overhead which generally slows performance. Opting for USB 2 (nearly the slowest interface around) kills the units functionality as a frontline storage box. Firewire 800, 100MB or 1GB LAN, and eSATA are ALL available now, and all would have made this box useful as an online storage bay.
If you watch the videos on the DROBO site the unit has no issues playing video, and rebuilding itself quickly when drives are added or removed. What a shame they did not fire up lightroom or Photoshop and open up a couple of hundred images all at once for a true look at the performance. Also I suspect they had only one movie on the hard drives. My experience of adding drives was nothing like it was portrayed.
Here's a real life "add drives" experience. READ BEFORE YOU BUY and make sure you are willing to tolerate this.
Originally I put in two 120GB drives and was happy with the initial build performance of the RAID. I added another 120GB drive (total of three) when I was running out of space. Again I was well pleased at the ease of adding drives.
I started running out of space again, so I added a 300GB drive (the fourth). This time the unit took 4 hours to rebuild. I have worked with BIOS RAIDs before and rebuilding time can be comparable.
Then I ran out of space yet again. So I decided to add another drive. The Drobo had a red glowing light next to the drive it recommended replacing so I popped it out and inserted another 300GB drive. I opened the DROBO software and it tells me I need to wait 17 (SEVENTEEN) hours.
SEVENTEEN HOURS!!!!
I must not turn off power during this time...and pray there is no power cut, and that my kids or cleaner don't flick the power during this time!!!!!ALSO I KNOW that if my PC turns off or needs a reboot, that I must NOT allow it to do so otherwise the DROBO will shut down. Initially I thought its auto shutdown when the PC shuts off was a cool feature. Now I see it is down right deadly.
So now we have two very deadly flaws.
1. The unit was given a pathetically slow interface suited only to using small documents or streaming videos.
2. The drive RAID rebuild necessitates the attached PC remains on during the rebuild.
How this product can be fixed:
1. Add a 1GB LAN interface (for free...the unit is already USD500 as it is)
2. Enable the unit to run INDEPENDENTLY of a computer. I can see a painful scenario for some users. A notebook user pops in a new hard drive and then leaves the unit on overnight. Next morning they have to leave for work/school...and can't for fear of what might happen if the unit shuts off before data replication has stabilised. I have searched the web and no one says definitively what is going to happen if you turn it off mid rebuild.
BTW If the unit dies, as in the box itself passes away, you will NOT be able recover your data on your own. I tested the ability to read data on an independent computer and the drive was identified as not initialized, so if the box dies your data is gone unless you buy a new unit. So you are locked in to Drobos unless you back up your data.
If you desire to back up your DATA it is much cheaper to buy an external hard drive and use Microsofts free download "SyncToy", or Apples "TimeMachine" to do your backups.
If you need a RAID get a RAID card for your computer and set it up inside the PC, or buy an external two drive unit with firewire or Gigabit Ethernet. The Drobos slow USB interface makes it impractical to work from.
I have relegated my unit to a near line back up device. I wanted the promises made regarding this unit, both on Drobos web site and in the glowing IT reviews to be true. But they are not.
The lack of a comprehensive manual detailing a lot of the issues I mention above is a GLARING omission. I want to know what happens if I stray a little from the path. The "secrecy" and lack of information about some of the features does not instill the confidence I would like the unit to give me..
CONCLUSION: Cleverly designed but hamstrung through some bad design decisions. As such it doesn't fit in as well as it could have. What could have been a killer RAID solution just isn't.
I feel I have been generous with my three star rating. If the price was lower (maybe 300USD with the LAN interface built in as standard) I believe I would have given it 4 stars.
UPDATE:
Drobo has now released a LAN connector box for the DROBO. Apparently it costs an additional USD200. This means USD700 for the unit+LAN, sans drives. Might be a better idea to look at HPs new Media server (HP EX470 MediaSmart Home Server) which is available here on amazon for USD600. It was released recently and has already received many good reviews. I bought my DROBO before its release but if I had my time over I would very carefully weigh up my choices.
(1 out of 5)Use Drobo at your own risk
Do not buy this product.
We bought this device after reading reviews. This product is a version 1.0 and it has a fatal flaw. Our Drobo ran for three days without a problem. On the third day the drobo was unaccessible. After working with Drobo tech support, it was determined that all of the data was lost.
Use this product at your own risk. In my professional opinion, this device is unreliable for either production or backup purposes. If you already own a Drobo, make sure you back it up. When it fails, everything disappears, and there is no possibility of recovery.
Fortunately, we had a full backup to recover from the mess created by the drobo failing.
(5 out of 5)Finally - An Easy to Use Disk Array!!
If you want a super easy way to have large storage capacity, or just want to elimate risk of disk failure, this is the device for you. Forget about RAID - this is perfect. Just add disks and you get more capacity. No need to worry about complex formatting, etc. Only downside is that the fan could be more quiet.
Can't wait for the NAS version. I'll pick up one of those as well.
(4 out of 5)Great device, poor connection...
PROS:
The Drobo is a great device; it's easy to use because it does everything for you, which means no RAID configuration! You don't even have to have the same brand/speed/capacity hard drives! Just add some SATA hard drives, and it'll configure them for you.
CONS:
It only has a USB 2.0 connection. This is a major problem for me as I need to back up several hundred high-res pictures as well as HD videos from when I photograph a wedding. Having eSATA would have been a major improvement. It would have been nice if you could use it as a standalone NAS device, but it lacks Ethernet too.
Other thought:
If Data Robotics were to add eSATA and Gigibit Ethernet connections, this device would rule the external storage market.