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Dick Sidbury
Nov 11, 2011, 2:48:00 PM11/11/11
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I just ordered a Drobo (4 bays, usb+FW800) and will need to get some
disk drives for them. I would like to poll the readers of this group to
see whether you're using "green" drives or "performance" drives in your
Drobo and if you've tried both, which you would recommend. Right now
I'm using some old 500gb non-green drives to try to see how the system
performs. So far it looks like it will take Time Machine about 25 or
thirty hours to back up my mac pro (about 1.7tb of stuff all of which is
on performance drives except for the SSD boot drive which has 80gb of
stuff).
dick
disk drives for them. I would like to poll the readers of this group to
see whether you're using "green" drives or "performance" drives in your
Drobo and if you've tried both, which you would recommend. Right now
I'm using some old 500gb non-green drives to try to see how the system
performs. So far it looks like it will take Time Machine about 25 or
thirty hours to back up my mac pro (about 1.7tb of stuff all of which is
on performance drives except for the SSD boot drive which has 80gb of
stuff).
dick
David Empson
Nov 11, 2011, 5:53:51 PM11/11/11
to
Dick Sidbury <DrJames...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> I just ordered a Drobo (4 bays, usb+FW800) and will need to get some
> disk drives for them. I would like to poll the readers of this group to
> see whether you're using "green" drives or "performance" drives in your
> Drobo and if you've tried both, which you would recommend.
I got my Drobo (same model) about two months ago, and so far I have a
> I just ordered a Drobo (4 bays, usb+FW800) and will need to get some
> disk drives for them. I would like to poll the readers of this group to
> see whether you're using "green" drives or "performance" drives in your
> Drobo and if you've tried both, which you would recommend.
couple of WD enterpise class "green" drives in it. My main reason for
having the Drobo is expandable storage capacity, not speed, so I don't
care if the drives are a little slower. Lower power consumption will
also help as I'm running the Drobo and Mac Mini Server via a UPS, to
allow orderly shutdown in a power outage (and avoiding shutdown in short
outages).
Enterprise drives rather than mainstream ones are theoretically a better
choice in a RAID as they don't try as hard to recover from errors, thus
allowing the RAID controller to discover the error before getting a
timeout, and deal with it by recovering the data from another drive (and
then testing and/or eliminating a bad sector).
> Right now I'm using some old 500gb non-green drives to try to see how the
> system performs. So far it looks like it will take Time Machine about 25
> or thirty hours to back up my mac pro (about 1.7tb of stuff all of which
> is on performance drives except for the SSD boot drive which has 80gb of
> stuff).
If so, how have you structured the TM backup? A standard local TM backup
on a non-partitioned drive will eventually expand to fill the entire
drive, and that will be problematic for a Drobo as its nominal capacity
is usually larger than its actual capacity.
The capacity used by a TM backup can be limited by partitioning the
Drobo (which has to wipe the Drobo, so should be done first), or by
arranging the computer to do a TM backup into a disk image (as it
normally does for networked backups), and then set the maximum size of
the disk image.
One point I've deduced with the Drobo is that you should avoid having
all four drives the same capacity, because it means you have to replace
two drives before you can increase the capacity, and you have to wait
for the first one to copy before the next one can be added.
I've started with two 2 TB drives. If I need more capacity I'll add some
smaller ones temporarily (I have 1.5 TB and 500 GB drives I could
reuse). Once I have four drives in the Drobo, I'll keep replacing the
smallest drive with something bigger than 2 TB, avoiding the "all the
same size" situation.
Optimal use of the hard drives occurs if the two largest capacity drives
are the same capacity.
With the current Thailand situation, I don't expect to be able to get
affordable 2.5+ TB drives for at least a year, but I should be able to
manage with smaller capacity drives in the meantime.
--
David Empson
dem...@actrix.gen.nz
Jolly Roger
Nov 11, 2011, 7:35:51 PM11/11/11
to
In article
<DrJamesSidbury-4EC...@news.eternal-september.org>,
I hope you're not expecting blazing speeds. The Drobo is built for data
redundancy, at the expense of speed. I use 5 2TB green Seagate drives in
my Drobo S. The speed is perfectly acceptable for file storage. I have
another 3 TB fast external hard drive I use for Time Machine backups for
all the Macs on my network. It's much faster, so lets Time Machine
backups complete much faster than the Drobo would, which is a necessity
when you back up a lot of data regularly.
--
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JR
<DrJamesSidbury-4EC...@news.eternal-september.org>,
redundancy, at the expense of speed. I use 5 2TB green Seagate drives in
my Drobo S. The speed is perfectly acceptable for file storage. I have
another 3 TB fast external hard drive I use for Time Machine backups for
all the Macs on my network. It's much faster, so lets Time Machine
backups complete much faster than the Drobo would, which is a necessity
when you back up a lot of data regularly.
--
Send responses to the relevant news group rather than email to me.
E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my very hungry SPAM
filter. Due to Google's refusal to prevent spammers from posting
messages through their servers, I often ignore posts from Google
Groups. Use a real news client if you want me to see your posts.
JR
Dick Sidbury
Nov 11, 2011, 7:40:24 PM11/11/11
to
In article <1kam98x.7jfw3phqy919N%dem...@actrix.gen.nz>,
My plan is to use it to back up my mac pro directly and to backup my
macbook pro over my home network. I will also be manually copying
several virtual machines (from VMWare Fusion) to the disk. I have put
my virtual machines on the do not copy list to save space. I am
currently looking around to see how I want to set up the drive. If you,
or anyone else has suggestions (via text or links), I'd welcome them.
image greater than the (current) size of the drive.
like six months or so ago, I bought 2 2TB drives (from Newegg I think),
for a total of about 125 dollars total. Now two 2tb drives seem to be
250 each or so.
dick
macbook pro over my home network. I will also be manually copying
several virtual machines (from VMWare Fusion) to the disk. I have put
my virtual machines on the do not copy list to save space. I am
currently looking around to see how I want to set up the drive. If you,
or anyone else has suggestions (via text or links), I'd welcome them.
>
> The capacity used by a TM backup can be limited by partitioning the
> Drobo (which has to wipe the Drobo, so should be done first), or by
> arranging the computer to do a TM backup into a disk image (as it
> normally does for networked backups), and then set the maximum size of
> the disk image.
>
Do you have a recommendation here? Can you set the max size of the disk
> The capacity used by a TM backup can be limited by partitioning the
> Drobo (which has to wipe the Drobo, so should be done first), or by
> arranging the computer to do a TM backup into a disk image (as it
> normally does for networked backups), and then set the maximum size of
> the disk image.
>
image greater than the (current) size of the drive.
>
> One point I've deduced with the Drobo is that you should avoid having
> all four drives the same capacity, because it means you have to replace
> two drives before you can increase the capacity, and you have to wait
> for the first one to copy before the next one can be added.
>
> I've started with two 2 TB drives. If I need more capacity I'll add some
> smaller ones temporarily (I have 1.5 TB and 500 GB drives I could
> reuse). Once I have four drives in the Drobo, I'll keep replacing the
> smallest drive with something bigger than 2 TB, avoiding the "all the
> same size" situation.
>
> Optimal use of the hard drives occurs if the two largest capacity drives
> are the same capacity.
Yes, I've figured out this but thanks for confirming.
> One point I've deduced with the Drobo is that you should avoid having
> all four drives the same capacity, because it means you have to replace
> two drives before you can increase the capacity, and you have to wait
> for the first one to copy before the next one can be added.
>
> I've started with two 2 TB drives. If I need more capacity I'll add some
> smaller ones temporarily (I have 1.5 TB and 500 GB drives I could
> reuse). Once I have four drives in the Drobo, I'll keep replacing the
> smallest drive with something bigger than 2 TB, avoiding the "all the
> same size" situation.
>
> Optimal use of the hard drives occurs if the two largest capacity drives
> are the same capacity.
>
> With the current Thailand situation, I don't expect to be able to get
> affordable 2.5+ TB drives for at least a year, but I should be able to
> manage with smaller capacity drives in the meantime.
When I started pricing drives I couldn't believe what I saw. It seemed
> With the current Thailand situation, I don't expect to be able to get
> affordable 2.5+ TB drives for at least a year, but I should be able to
> manage with smaller capacity drives in the meantime.
like six months or so ago, I bought 2 2TB drives (from Newegg I think),
for a total of about 125 dollars total. Now two 2tb drives seem to be
250 each or so.
dick
Kevin McMurtrie
Nov 12, 2011, 12:25:35 AM11/12/11
to
In article
<DrJamesSidbury-4EC...@news.eternal-september.org>,
Dick Sidbury <DrJames...@hotmail.com> wrote:
<DrJamesSidbury-4EC...@news.eternal-september.org>,
Dick Sidbury <DrJames...@hotmail.com> wrote:
--
I will not see posts from Google because I must filter them as spam
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