Drobo reliability

trust you? Ya gotta be kidding.

Hello

I just purchased the Drobo 2nd Gen with the 800 firewire... I have to say it is a slick machine.. I work with Final Cut Studio 2 editing every day. I am experiencing some issue with the Drobo like Shane mentioned. My system specs are 2.4Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo with 3GB of RAM... I have 2.2TB of storage in the Drobo. When I work in realtime the video plays back fine but the audio has an echo. So I move my files to my desk top and the issue was resolved. Before the Drobo I had 2 500GB Lacie drives and when the hard drive got down to 30 GB I would have audio issues again. So the next thing I'm planning to do is max-out my memory and see if it improves the playback. While I am cutting, adding transitions, graphics, etc.... I works fine. Also at some points I don't experience any issues, while I am playing back from the Drobo device... It is weird... Again I will upgrade the memory and see what happens....

If you have any questions I would be glad to answer them for you...


Courtney

My 2 bobs worth on ye drobo.. (or DODO I reckon) ... I think the application of the newer DROBO (FW800 version) for any kind of working *VIDEO archive will lead to tears and crying*.

Its rare I bag stuff on forums.. but this is an exception.

You might wanna consider my experience of troublesome lousy function, dreadful vendor support and generally disgusting performance of the DODO. So here we go...

After listening to Leo LePorte (cool and credible dude) one day singing the DROBO's praises and seeing one at NAB in some dude's booth I ordered one from OWC and had it sent here. The rest is just bad news.

I think the DROBO V2 is over-rated and overhyped for targeting archiving in the creative field and I will never praise this dreadful piece of junk.

I had two, the first DROBO V2 arrived DOA.. The DROBO V2 second was fine and in working order but then...... (yuck!)

My reasons for stating this is not good for video archiviing (and I use mostly DVCPROHD 1080P and soon R3D) are the following and I would not recommend it to anyone in this creative field except may me music/sound of photographic archive usage... where it seems to be ok.:

• it is *highly unreliable* and disconnects when it 'sleeps' causing offline errors and possible corruption of the its file system. So you must set it NOT to sleep.
• it *runs extremely hot* when I put 4 x 500GB WD 7200 SATA2 disks in it. SO hot I measure over 70C+ and I was unable to pick the disks up because was scalded . Yep. ( +I dont subscribe to the diatribe that running hot is good for disks.+. this is and mostly and always will be nonsense). I had the front of the DROBO V2 with a portable room fan blasting air through it constanly for fear that my disks would be cooked. The cooling system is a joke. In fact after the DROBO eerience 2 of the 4 x 500GB WD disks did fail. I replaced them and they sit on a shelf now gathering disk. SATA2- 9 months old.
• the true affect is when you have at least 3 x DDMs in there. 4 is best and the idea that it provides redundancy is good but fails a lot of the time when it recontricts in the background. *2 of the 4 disks disk indicator LEDs on the front panel and they go RED and its all over (data is lost).*
• the performance seriously degrades whilst it is reconfiguring itself on the background. As stated later it has a slow processor in it according to those in the know who own them. Data rates on it are slow enough.
• the *regular background reconstruction can take ages* especually with 500GB. I would only imagine the time for 4 x 1TB!
• the fragile plastic bay enclosure flaps fall off if you are not careful. THe springs that keep them closed fall into the DROBO V2 UNIT... (disgusting!). Both of these units did this.
• constant complaints on ther DROBO user forum (+closed to the public BTW+!) that the DROBO's processor is too slow.. I would agree..it is like snail.
• the data are is only FW800 and is about 32B/sec flat put .. it is so slow trying to dragsay 40 mins of DVCPROHD 1080p.. 35+ minutes. it is so frustrating
• worse, *the DROBO ROBOTICS support is awful unresponsive and rely* mostly on their user forum gurus for support which they naturally defend the DROBO to the end regardless of the problems one might have. Drobo Robotics support will come back to you is you make enough noise.
the DROBO forum is closed to the public. You need a DROBO serial number to register to get acces to read an update (Aug 2008). I know why now because there's so many issues with the +Dreadful Drobo.+

In the Drobo's defence, it is a very clever idea but I would never recommend it to anyone doing serios VIDEO work that needs to have an archive/recall for business continuity..

RESULT: I gave my 10 day old DROBO V2 away (free) with all leads and packaging including some of the disks to a mate who has business that uses windah's. He's happy because he can keep buying disks and adding to when the DROBO fills up. It works for him because he can sustain its outages and so forth that one expects from windows ( I might gest!) 🙂 I could not get rid of the piece of junk any quicker!

So I $USD500 wasted .. plus postage for USA

IMO, A smarter move by the DROBO guys would be the same enclosure using 60mm SATA2 laptop disks & not the larger HH 120mm klunkers we see everywhere now). These LAPTOP SATA2 DDMs are at 500GB so far. This use would keep the heat way down and can use the DROBO's lousy cooling system has. Also add a 3Gbs SATA connector at least to the DROBO!. (even the NEXTODI 2700 has one f these!). USB2 & FW800? .... not for video.

*Good News*: For video production archive workflow, I went with *Utrium LTO4 tape* and have never looked back. I have over 27TB of archive so far and growing all on multiple instances of Ultrium LTO4 all running on  OSX! Search these forums and RED and DVX for details if anyone is interested.

yep, I'm not a D/Robotics fan at all for the above reasons

FWIW
W

Bumping an old thread :

Shane (or anyone else knowledgeable)

since, you don't recommend drobo for editing purposes--what would you recommend?

Me: rookie editor that is running out of storage space. Running: iMac 2.1 intel C2D 2.5 g of ram. I also would like to have everything backed up. As echoed by others-I too have had media crash. 😟

Thanks for the input.

If you're using as iMac and you're looking for more storage (but can't use a DROBO for the above reasons), you may as well upgrade to a Mac Pro. I don't really see a point in looking at any kind of RAID system when you could get a much more powerful system while at the same time having a lot more storage.

check out the new Drobo, if you are interested. It has been specifically redone to support video editing. Dual parity, 100MB/s transfer speed, and dual hot swappable iSCSI drives. $1300 is not a bad price for this. I will be checking it out at NAB in a couple of weeks. On the outside, it looks pretty good...

thanks for the comments guys,

Any other suggestions that are a bit less expensive?

While, I'd love to upgrade my machine entirely but (at this point) my iMac seems to handle the job just fine. My reasoning is I'll wait to upgrade if and when I get more gigs and jobs to compensate the cost of the the new system.

Meanwhile, still looking for solutions for both storage, backup and running FCP studio setting scratch disk etc.

Avoid the DROBO for video editing. NO matter what they have done.

The DROBO uses a proprietary file management system, so if it goes south for ANY reason, you cannot use Disk Utility to repair it...nor Disk Warrior. Nothing. A friend has one as an archive and is now having a dickens of a time with now that. Still, besides that (failures can be rare) this is NOT good for editing.

G-Raid3, CalDigit VR, A good FW drive from OtherWorldComputing.com. Those are what to go for. But those are Raid 0, although the Caldigit can do Raid 1, but again, that is NOT a raid format to use with editing. If you want Raid Protection (Raid 5, Raid 6) then you need to look at something like the 5-12 bay units, like the HDOne or MaxxDigital EVO HD series. No, they do not connect via firewire. There is no RAID 5 option via firewire. You want protection? You need something more to edit on than and iMac.

Shane




DROBO=ARCHIVE.

thx for the feedback.

2 options:

1. cheapo get 2 1tb FW 800 drives and clone them with internal drive and existing External HD's.

2. Sell iMac and purchase a MacPro.

(I'm scanning ebay now I'm on a tight budget :banghead: )

The two hard drive option is the best bet. A practice I have done for quite some time. Working drive...backup drive.

Shane

Awesome-I <3 this forum. So much useful information and help from knowledgeable sources. Yhup the two hard drive option is my best bet (for now), cost wise it make a ton of sense but I noticed my little iMac barely runs some of the templates within Motion. (It skips and doesn't animate.) Activity monitor is telling me the CPU usage isn't even close to being maxed but I am nearly using all of the 2.5 gigs of ram.

At this point I am making zero $ from editing, but I'd like to start with learning motion and throughly understanding FCP.

I have a tough decision to make...