Drobo reliability

Isn't the Dobro USB attached? I doubt the speed will be comparable.

DROBO would be good for archiving, not for editing storage. As pointed out, it is a USB connection only. Besides, it wasn't designed for the pressure of video editing.

Shane

Although I can't speak from experience with DROBO, I have been looking to buy one for my own needs. They recently released a FireWire 800 (400 compatible) version which should be a lot faster. I have seen many positive reviews of both the older and newer DROBOs and I'm not aware of anything comparable in terms of ease of use and price. If anyone does then please do let me know 🙂

Shane Ross wrote:
DROBO would be good for archiving, not for editing storage. As pointed out, it is a USB connection only.

The new Drobo has:

Two FireWire 800 ports (FireWire 400 compatible)

One USB 2.0 port

Redundant data protection

Hot expansion up to 16TB

Ability to take advantage of mix and match drive capacities

If I may butt in on this thread, it looks to me like Drobo with the firewire could be used as a scratch disk for final cut express. Am I right? Boy, I hope so, as this would simplify my life an awful lot.

As a professional I would not rely on it. It isn't designed for video capture, but as data backup. There are huge technical reasons behind this that I can't begin to go into, but trust me, it won't be reliable as media storage.

Shane

There are huge technical reasons behind this that I can't begin to go into

oh go on Shane ... humor us 🙂

Me = Creative editor. With enough technical know how to know that this works, and that doesn't. Even the guys on Mac Break Weekly, who are sponsored by Drobo, say that it is good for backup, but not for media usage, such as editing.

Shane

Thanks, Shane. Yeah, I figured it was too good to be true. I am new to final cut express, but I love it. What video stuff I do is usually of classes I teach. This is usually an hour-long class shot with two or three cameras, but sometimes it is an intensive class of 15 hours or so, so with just two cameras, this is 30 hours of video. My last project pretty much filled up a 320 GB HD, and I backed that up to another 320 GB HD. These were both firewire drives, but I guess I could've gotten away with a USB drive for the backup. The only thing I can think of is to just get some more firewire drives. Bigger ones, I guess. 1 or 2 TBs. I would like to reduced my cost and simplify things as much as possible. All these drives and wires and stuff. . . Any suggestions? By the way, All my drives so far have been LaCie, and they've worked so far. Any recommendations of other manufacturers?
Thanks in advance.

Me = Creative editor

heheh heh . I know that Shane, I just wanted to make you squirm a little .. bwahahaha

Beware of purchasing Drobo. I purchased a Drobo2 last month. A week and a half ago It stopped mounting. Called Tech Support Waited 45min and finally gave up and left a message. I got a call back the next day. They said my drobo had a corrupt file system (Self Healing it is not). they said to use TechTool Pro to fix it. I purhased TechTool Pro 4.6.2. Ran the Structure test/repair and it failed.

Called tech support again, on hold for 1hr 28min, gave up and left a message. Been over a week now and still waiting for a return call. I would say read their forum before you purchase but you can't even do that without a SN# from a drobo. You have to pay for firmware updates also. There is a lot of people waiting for call backs and unresolved issues.

Drobo tech support: 1-866-426-4280

Message was edited by: Tony Brave

Thanks for the warning. The Drobo seems too good to be true - but I've read a few comments like yours that make me very wary of their company. I even sent a few pre-sale enquiries and whilst I got quick replies - they didn't exactly answer my questions, and their replies were fairly illegible. The Drobo is a fantastic idea, and I really hope that a company with a solid reputation bring out an equivalent product.

It might be too late to post this but I purchased the Drobo FireWire 800 version for my photography studio about 1 week after it went on sale.

This is my first RAID-like external production storage device. My team and I have put this unit through quite a bit in regards to photography (not video sorry) and all I can say is our systems have never had a single hiccup in regards to read/write, mounting, dismounting, or have any issues with transfer speeds. (Again we're not using video.)

We conducted the following stress test:

Having 4 macs (Mac Pro (connected directly to Drobo via FW800), PowerMac G5, 15" Macbook Pro, and 20" iMac) networked via gigabit ethernet.

-Each machine exporting 300 (12 - 21MP) photos in Lightroom from the Drobo and back.
-Each machine playing a 640x480 resolution XViD files

No discernible lag or hiccups were noticed on any of the machines.

The specs of the Drobo I'm using are as follows:

Drobo FW 800 (using the Firewire 800 connection only)
- 2 Seagate Barracuda 3.0Gb/s 750GB SATA drives
- 2 Seagate Barracuda 3.0Gb/s 1TB SATA drives

I have a total of 2.26TB for data, and about 937GB for protection.

I hope that "balances the equation" so to speak. 🙂

Thanks for sharing your experiences. Good to know that it works on your end. The main issue, is whether you can use it for editing without dropping frames, which will require real time performance. From the tests, you're hitting the limit for single stream ProRes HD playback (which means that if you include the overhead for the interface, you're likely to drop frames even with ProRes).

Also, archival or back up? They may mean different things. Back up- reliable back up for your editing drives, which you may have to store for a few months while editing. Archival- at least 3-5 years of reliable storage, in case a client comes back with changes for a production. Store a drobo in a dark storeroom and pull it out 1 or 2 years later because the client wants to change the end product graphic and air the commercial again?

Not sure if your question was directed towards me or someone else. For me, it's a production storage device.

I don't use it for archival / backup purposes per se. I personally use it for collaborative mass-storage with redundancy.

You could store a drobo in a dark storeroom and pull it out a couple of years later. But then you run into a physical hard drive problem. Drives are suppose to be spun up at least once every three months to prevent any possible seizing.(I haven't seen this problem but it's supposedly a precaution you're suppose to take.)

So the answer I think is, yes and no (in regards to archive / backup). And that may have to do a lot more with the actual hard drives than the Drobo itself.