Drobo end days.

[Alan Browne]

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
It was the surety of backup redundancy and the risk of single point
failure...

I am selling my first gen (2nd edition) Drobo. I can't find a partner
nearby with a similar (or compatible, at least) Drobo in case the
electronics goes T-U on this one.

I've ordered two Thermaltake dual drive SATA docks (USB 3.0) to replace
the current Drobo and my USB 2.0 based dual drive dock.

I'll sell the Drobo (with 1 and 2 TB drives) and keep the two 3 TB
drives for the new USB 3.0 docks.

As a side note I've bought an Anker 7 port USB 3.0 hub as well - but the
USB 3.0 drives will both go directly to the iMac. My prior 7 port USB
2.0 hub was becoming intermittent.

--
Privacy has become an essential personal chore that most
people are not trained to perform.
- Jaron Lanier, Scientific American, 2013.11.

[Jolly Roger]

On 2014-02-19, Alan Browne <alan....@FreelunchVideotron.ca> wrote:
>
> It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
> It was the surety of backup redundancy and the risk of single point
> failure...
>
> I am selling my first gen (2nd edition) Drobo. I can't find a partner
> nearby with a similar (or compatible, at least) Drobo in case the
> electronics goes T-U on this one.

If mine goes out, I'll just purchase a replacement. I'll be back up and
running in a matter of days, which is perfectly sufficient for me. And
if and when it becomes insufficient, I'll just purchase a second Drobo
to run along side this one.

> I've ordered two Thermaltake dual drive SATA docks (USB 3.0) to replace
> the current Drobo and my USB 2.0 based dual drive dock.

That's a definite step down, IMO; but whatever floats your boat.

You could have done better purchasing two Drobos. So I guess it's really
about money for you.

> I'll sell the Drobo (with 1 and 2 TB drives) and keep the two 3 TB
> drives for the new USB 3.0 docks.

I'm sure whoever buys it will enjoy the data redundancy it offers.

--
E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my ravenous SPAM filter.
I often ignore posts from Google. Use a real news client instead.

JR

[Alan Browne]

On 2014.02.19, 18:09 , Jolly Roger wrote:
> On 2014-02-19, Alan Browne <alan....@FreelunchVideotron.ca> wrote:
>>
>> It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
>> It was the surety of backup redundancy and the risk of single point
>> failure...
>>
>> I am selling my first gen (2nd edition) Drobo. I can't find a partner
>> nearby with a similar (or compatible, at least) Drobo in case the
>> electronics goes T-U on this one.
>
> If mine goes out, I'll just purchase a replacement. I'll be back up and
> running in a matter of days, which is perfectly sufficient for me. And
> if and when it becomes insufficient, I'll just purchase a second Drobo
> to run along side this one.
>
>> I've ordered two Thermaltake dual drive SATA docks (USB 3.0) to replace
>> the current Drobo and my USB 2.0 based dual drive dock.
>
> That's a definite step down, IMO; but whatever floats your boat.

I don't see the "down" at all. I can manually swap drives around and
have the redundancy (while maintaining TM for short term bu).

> You could have done better purchasing two Drobos. So I guess it's really
> about money for you.

Indeed part of it. Given the cost of hard disks, it's cheaper in any
sense to simply rotate hard disks in and out using a hard disk dock and
for that matter making two copies at a time. Further with USB 3.0 the
copy times are going to be relatively short.

(The Drobo for all its glory is not esp. fast - even with FW-800. Only
a hair faster than the USB 2.0 docks/drives that I have for direct copying.)

There's really no "gain" in going with the Drobo or buying a new one and
retaining the single point of failure. Buying 2 is out of the question.
I have much better places for that cash.

>> I'll sell the Drobo (with 1 and 2 TB drives) and keep the two 3 TB
>> drives for the new USB 3.0 docks.
>
> I'm sure whoever buys it will enjoy the data redundancy it offers.

Until it fails. I've had zero replies on Craigslist (indeed I should go
refresh the advert. It's probably expired). But the local computer
repair shop will happily put it up for sale. I sold my other iMac there.

--
Those who have reduced our privacy, whether they are state
or commercial actors, prefer that we do not reduce theirs.

[Jolly Roger]

On 2014-02-20, Alan Browne <alan....@FreelunchVideotron.ca> wrote:
> On 2014.02.19, 18:09 , Jolly Roger wrote:
>> On 2014-02-19, Alan Browne <alan....@FreelunchVideotron.ca> wrote:
>>>
>>> It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
>>> It was the surety of backup redundancy and the risk of single point
>>> failure...
>>>
>>> I am selling my first gen (2nd edition) Drobo. I can't find a partner
>>> nearby with a similar (or compatible, at least) Drobo in case the
>>> electronics goes T-U on this one.
>>
>> If mine goes out, I'll just purchase a replacement. I'll be back up and
>> running in a matter of days, which is perfectly sufficient for me. And
>> if and when it becomes insufficient, I'll just purchase a second Drobo
>> to run along side this one.
>>
>>> I've ordered two Thermaltake dual drive SATA docks (USB 3.0) to replace
>>> the current Drobo and my USB 2.0 based dual drive dock.
>>
>> That's a definite step down, IMO; but whatever floats your boat.
>
> I don't see the "down" at all. I can manually swap drives around and
> have the redundancy (while maintaining TM for short term bu).

You don't see any difference between the data safety features of the
Drobo and a standard drive dock or enclosure? That makes me wonder why
you ever purchased a Drobo to begin with. I can only surmise the ability
to add and swap drives of varying size, replace bad drives, and so on
with zero interruption and zero loss of access to your data must not be
very valuable to you. You won't get the same level of redundancy or ease
of use with drive docks or plain enclosures. It's perfectly fine if you
don't appreciate the benefits of the Drobo; but there are rather
significant benefit none the less. Those benefits are extremely valuable
to me, which is primarily why I purchased and love mine.

>> You could have done better purchasing two Drobos. So I guess it's really
>> about money for you.
>
> Indeed part of it.

Seems like a major part of it.

> Given the cost of hard disks, it's cheaper in any sense to simply
> rotate hard disks in and out using a hard disk dock and for that
> matter making two copies at a time. Further with USB 3.0 the copy
> times are going to be relatively short.
>
> (The Drobo for all its glory is not esp. fast - even with FW-800.
> Only a hair faster than the USB 2.0 docks/drives that I have for
> direct copying.)

If you bought a Drobo for speed, you bought the wrong solution. The
majority of the Drobo's features are geared towards data safety - not
speed. Older models such as yours have always been known to be rather
slow compared to plain hard drives. Newer models that include SSD
support are blazing fast though. Anyhow, I find my DroboS plenty fast
enough for all of my needs, and relatively worry-free in comparison to
plain hard drives.

> There's really no "gain" in going with the Drobo or buying a new one and
> retaining the single point of failure. Buying 2 is out of the question.
> I have much better places for that cash.

All well and good. You're choosing to sacrifice the primary benefits of
the Drobo to save a buck. That doesn't magically make those benefits
vanish into thin air though.

>>> I'll sell the Drobo (with 1 and 2 TB drives) and keep the two 3 TB
>>> drives for the new USB 3.0 docks.
>>
>> I'm sure whoever buys it will enjoy the data redundancy it offers.
>
> Until it fails.

Your logic is confusing. If and when your Thermaltake fails, you'll need
to buy another on of those as well. Same issue there. So you haven't
improved that problem one bit - except for cost, which seems to be your
primary motive. All you've done is saved yourself some money, and in the
process, dropped all the benefits of the Drobo. That's cool, if that's
what you want; but it doesn't mean the Thermaltake is equivalent or that
the benefits of the Drobo are non-existent.

> I've had zero replies on Craigslist (indeed I should go
> refresh the advert. It's probably expired).

I bet you'd have much better luck on eBay. I got $425 for my Drobo 2nd
gen on eBay back in 2010 which went towards a new DroboS. Great upgrade!
: )

> But the local computer repair shop will happily put it up for sale. I
> sold my other iMac there.

Cool. Good luck.

[Kevin McMurtrie]

In article <bml6l3...@mid.individual.net>,

The problem is what happens when the Drobo itself dies out of warranty.
The current model of 4-bay Drobo uses laptop drives so it's not
compatible with the FW800 model. That means you need a $600 5-bay Drobo
to restore your RAID. Having the purchase a new $600 gizmo might clash
with the idea that RAID 5 is for reducing hassles.

Another selling point of a Drobo is that you can expand it by replacing
the drives rather than buying a whole new RAID. If you do the math,
buying a new RAID can be cheaper.


The Drobos are awesome enclosures but they're not always economical. (I
have two Drobos and two plain RAIDs.)

[Jolly Roger]

That's something you should consider up front *before* purchasing one,
is it not? ; )

> Another selling point of a Drobo is that you can expand it by replacing
> the drives rather than buying a whole new RAID. If you do the math,
> buying a new RAID can be cheaper.

I don't see how. You can sell the drives you take out of it, if they
still work, making up for the cost of the new drives.

> The Drobos are awesome enclosures but they're not always economical. (I
> have two Drobos and two plain RAIDs.)

Right. If cost is your primary concern, you probably shouldn't buy a

[Bread]

On 2014-02-20 01:03:16 +0000, Alan Browne said:

> (The Drobo for all its glory is not esp. fast - even with FW-800. Only
> a hair faster than the USB 2.0 docks/drives that I have for direct
> copying.)

"not esp. fast" is an understatement. I love my Drobo. But it's
downright slow. Copies to/from a USB*2* connected drive are much
faster than the Drobo at FW800. The bottleneck is not the interface.

Similarly, I just saw a great deal on a USB3 128GB memory stick. I
have a USB2 one and it's a fraction of the speed of using USB2 with a
hard drive, so, again, I wonder if they're working hard to speed up
parts which really aren't the bottleneck at all.

> There's really no "gain" in going with the Drobo or buying a new one
> and retaining the single point of failure. Buying 2 is out of the
> question. I have much better places for that cash.

Drobos don't mean you don't need to back things up. Or, in my case,
the Drobo *is* the respository for backups and much faster (singular)
drives are the primary working drives.

> Until it fails. I've had zero replies on Craigslist (indeed I should
> go refresh the advert. It's probably expired). But the local computer
> repair shop will happily put it up for sale. I sold my other iMac
> there.

Hrm. What's a used Drobo go for these days? (not really asking - I'll
take a look on eBay to satisfy my own curiosity).

[Jolly Roger]

On 2014-02-20, Bread <BreadW...@Fractious.net> wrote:
>
> Hrm. What's a used Drobo go for these days? (not really asking - I'll
> take a look on eBay to satisfy my own curiosity).

You'll find they have a pretty good resale value.

[Alan Browne]

My data (valuable to me) won't be any more at risk.

When last year, I had three 1 TB drives go TU over the course of 6
months, it was very _convenient_ to simply slip in a new (larger) HD and
let the Drobo work out the details.

But - it was not _ESSENTIAL_ to have that convenience.

And given that I don't have a 2nd Drobo in case this one dies, there is
no safety. I'm not laying out another $500+ just to cover that gap.

Going to a redundant backup and if one of those drives fail, then I will
lose no time with the other drive. It will be there ready and waiting.
And I'll have TM running on yet another drive for short term recovery
if needed. (That at least is convenient when rolling back a major edit
if one hasn't kept older versions).

No loss of time other than every couple weeks rotating out drives to
store offsite (something I used to do and I have not been doing for a
few years other than project DVD's).

> of use with drive docks or plain enclosures. It's perfectly fine if you
> don't appreciate the benefits of the Drobo; but there are rather
> significant benefit none the less. Those benefits are extremely valuable
> to me, which is primarily why I purchased and love mine.
>
>>> You could have done better purchasing two Drobos. So I guess it's really
>>> about money for you.
>>
>> Indeed part of it.
>
> Seems like a major part of it.

You seem intent on harping at the $ cost. This is not a professional
operation here. I'm not made of money. I'm not a 1%er. I have to
allocate discretionary money and I want to protect my past (personal)
work. If I choose to get effective backups at less cost, that's a
personal "business" decision.

>> Given the cost of hard disks, it's cheaper in any sense to simply
>> rotate hard disks in and out using a hard disk dock and for that
>> matter making two copies at a time. Further with USB 3.0 the copy
>> times are going to be relatively short.
>>
>> (The Drobo for all its glory is not esp. fast - even with FW-800.
>> Only a hair faster than the USB 2.0 docks/drives that I have for
>> direct copying.)
>
> If you bought a Drobo for speed, you bought the wrong solution. The

Nope. I bought it as a local, short term backup. But I've been lulled
into false security because of its proprietary storage scheme that means
w/o a compatible Drobo available the data on the disks is useless if the
unit itself fails.

> majority of the Drobo's features are geared towards data safety - not
> speed. Older models such as yours have always been known to be rather
> slow compared to plain hard drives. Newer models that include SSD
> support are blazing fast though. Anyhow, I find my DroboS plenty fast
> enough for all of my needs, and relatively worry-free in comparison to
> plain hard drives.

It's not worry free for me for the several times cited single point of
failure issue. OTOH, using the disk docks is quick and will provide
more than ample backup - that is also rotatable - something not
practical with the Drobo.

>> There's really no "gain" in going with the Drobo or buying a new one and
>> retaining the single point of failure. Buying 2 is out of the question.
>> I have much better places for that cash.
>
> All well and good. You're choosing to sacrifice the primary benefits of
> the Drobo to save a buck. That doesn't magically make those benefits
> vanish into thin air though.

The primary benefits of the Drobo are not returning any value to me. I
don't need a hot swappable storage/backup utility. It's overkill for my
needs.

The benefits of using plain disks docks will cover the necessary backup
need at far less cost. That is much higher value as I have no realtime
requirement to be at a "perfect" state. The money saved can go to more
useful things.

>>>> I'll sell the Drobo (with 1 and 2 TB drives) and keep the two 3 TB
>>>> drives for the new USB 3.0 docks.
>>>
>>> I'm sure whoever buys it will enjoy the data redundancy it offers.
>>
>> Until it fails.
>
> Your logic is confusing. If and when your Thermaltake fails, you'll need
> to buy another on of those as well. Same issue there. So you haven't
> improved that problem one bit - except for cost, which seems to be your
> primary motive. All you've done is saved yourself some money, and in the
> process, dropped all the benefits of the Drobo. That's cool, if that's
> what you want; but it doesn't mean the Thermaltake is equivalent or that
> the benefits of the Drobo are non-existent.

You're applying your logic to my situation - guess what? Doesn't fit. I
don't expect the disk docks to be Drobo like in behaviour at all.
They're external storage. Period.

Again: my primary issue with the Drobo is that it uses a proprietary
file system. If the electronics fail you have to have the unit repaired
(mine is out of warranty) or find another compatible unit to recover the
data. And then you still have a dead Drobo to get repaired or replaced.
Or recycled.

OTOH, plain disks in plain docks can be recovered on any brand plain
dock that is SATA-III compatible. I can run over to a store a few km
away and have that in my house within 30 minutes or order online and
have it the next day.

But I won't need to do anything urgently because I've bought two
external dock systems - and I'll keep the USB 2.0 dock too (resale value
isn't even worth the time to sell it) as a further eqt. backup.

>> I've had zero replies on Craigslist (indeed I should go
>> refresh the advert. It's probably expired).
>
> I bet you'd have much better luck on eBay. I got $425 for my Drobo 2nd
> gen on eBay back in 2010 which went towards a new DroboS. Great upgrade!
> : )

That's 4 years ago. I notice there's a 5 bay on sale, w/o disks, for
$390 here and it's not going anywhere. The latest Drobo's are just too
sexy I guess.

I don't want to deal with ebay - or rather S&H - big waste of time for
me. Let 'em come to the door.

--
Privacy has become an essential personal chore that most
people are not trained to perform.

[Alan Browne]

On 2014.02.19, 23:53 , Bread wrote:
> On 2014-02-20 01:03:16 +0000, Alan Browne said:
>
>> (The Drobo for all its glory is not esp. fast - even with FW-800.
>> Only a hair faster than the USB 2.0 docks/drives that I have for
>> direct copying.)
>
> "not esp. fast" is an understatement. I love my Drobo. But it's
> downright slow. Copies to/from a USB*2* connected drive are much faster
> than the Drobo at FW800. The bottleneck is not the interface.

When copying from the Drobo to a Ram Disk, the Drobo is about 30% faster
than the USB 2.0 dock/drives I have;

But copying from the Ram Disk to the Drobo is about 3X slower than the
USB 2.0 docks I have. (Timed on an 800 MB video file).

> Similarly, I just saw a great deal on a USB3 128GB memory stick. I have
> a USB2 one and it's a fraction of the speed of using USB2 with a hard
> drive, so, again, I wonder if they're working hard to speed up parts
> which really aren't the bottleneck at all.

USB Flash drives come in a range of speeds with the very simple
equation: faster = more expensive.

SATA III HD's are very fast. My iMac HD is writing north of 200 MB/s
and reading much faster than that. (And more so when 'Fusion' kicks in).

So I look forward to the USB 3.0 docks where I hope the write speeds to
be in that vicinity. The HD's won't write as fast as USB 3.0 will
deliver. On read, the HD's will probably be faster than the USB 3.0 can
move the data. I'll measurebate when able.

>> There's really no "gain" in going with the Drobo or buying a new one
>> and retaining the single point of failure. Buying 2 is out of the
>> question. I have much better places for that cash.
>
> Drobos don't mean you don't need to back things up. Or, in my case, the
> Drobo *is* the respository for backups and much faster (singular) drives
> are the primary working drives.

Sure. I'm just taking the Drobo out and putting HD's out there and in
rotation to return to an offsite backup scheme. I'll retain TM as short
term recovery as well - but on another external drive.

>> Until it fails. I've had zero replies on Craigslist (indeed I should
>> go refresh the advert. It's probably expired). But the local
>> computer repair shop will happily put it up for sale. I sold my other
>> iMac there.
>
> Hrm. What's a used Drobo go for these days? (not really asking - I'll
> take a look on eBay to satisfy my own curiosity).

I see one in Montreal (5 bay, no addition disks) for $390 (Craigslist).

I'm selling mine (4 bay, with two disks (1 + 2 TB) for $390 (Craigslist
and local computer store).

I see lower priced ones (4 bay, no HD's) on ebay as well.

These are CAD $, which at present go for ~91 cents/US $.

--
Privacy has become an essential personal chore that most
people are not trained to perform.

[Jolly Roger]

On 2014-02-20, Alan Browne <alan....@FreelunchVideotron.ca> wrote:
> On 2014.02.19, 21:12 , Jolly Roger wrote:
>> On 2014-02-20, Alan Browne <alan....@FreelunchVideotron.ca> wrote:
>>> On 2014.02.19, 18:09 , Jolly Roger wrote:
>>>> You could have done better purchasing two Drobos. So I guess it's really
>>>> about money for you.
>>>
>>> Indeed part of it.
>>
>> Seems like a major part of it.
>
> You seem intent on harping at the $ cost.

It's just obvious that's the major driver of your decision, which is
perfectly fine. Drobos are more expensive than plain drive enclosures
and docks. I'm certainly not debating that.

[Jolly Roger]

On 2014-02-20, Alan Browne <alan....@FreelunchVideotron.ca> wrote:
> On 2014.02.19, 21:12 , Jolly Roger wrote:
>>

>> The majority of the Drobo's features are geared towards data safety -

>> not speed. Older models such as yours have always been known to be
>> rather slow compared to plain hard drives. Newer models that include
>> SSD support are blazing fast though. Anyhow, I find my DroboS plenty
>> fast enough for all of my needs, and relatively worry-free in
>> comparison to plain hard drives.
>
> It's not worry free for me for the several times cited single point of
> failure issue. OTOH, using the disk docks is quick and will provide
> more than ample backup - that is also rotatable - something not
> practical with the Drobo.

Rotatable because you have another dock (or a dock that holds two
drives). You'd have the same functionality with two Drobos.

What you won't have are all of the additional features of the Drobo (the
convenience factors, the ability to mix and match drives of different
sizes easily to create logical volumes larger than the drives
themselves, and so on).

And that's fine, of course.

[Jolly Roger]

On 2014-02-20, Alan Browne <alan....@FreelunchVideotron.ca> wrote:
> On 2014.02.19, 21:12 , Jolly Roger wrote:
>> On 2014-02-20, Alan Browne <alan....@FreelunchVideotron.ca> wrote:
>>>
>>> There's really no "gain" in going with the Drobo or buying a new one
>>> and retaining the single point of failure. Buying 2 is out of the
>>> question. I have much better places for that cash.
>>
>> All well and good. You're choosing to sacrifice the primary benefits
>> of the Drobo to save a buck. That doesn't magically make those
>> benefits vanish into thin air though.
>
> The primary benefits of the Drobo are not returning any value to me.
> I don't need a hot swappable storage/backup utility. It's overkill
> for my needs.

Cool. Apparently you don't need to build logical volumes from multiple
hard drives either. I use mine partially as storage for a home media
server; so I do need it. Consider yourself lucky. : )

[Jolly Roger]

I wouldn't expect the resale value of any device like this to remain
static for four years. That said, it looks like you can reasonably
expect to get anywhere from $150 up to $300 for one right now, according
to recently completed listings:

<http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=drobo+2nd+generation&_in_kw=1&_ex_kw=&_sacat=0&LH_Complete=1&_udlo=&_udhi=&_samilow=&_samihi=&_sadis=200&_fpos=&_fsct=&LH_SALE_CURRENCY=0&_sop=12&_dmd=1&_ipg=50>

<http://preview.tinyurl.com/kbcfhq7>

> I don't want to deal with ebay - or rather S&H - big waste of time for
> me. Let 'em come to the door.

That's cool. Good luck.

[Alan Browne]

On 2014.02.20, 18:41 , Jolly Roger wrote:
> On 2014-02-20, Alan Browne <alan....@FreelunchVideotron.ca> wrote:
>> On 2014.02.19, 21:12 , Jolly Roger wrote:
>>> On 2014-02-20, Alan Browne <alan....@FreelunchVideotron.ca> wrote:
>>>> On 2014.02.19, 18:09 , Jolly Roger wrote:
>>>>> You could have done better purchasing two Drobos. So I guess it's really
>>>>> about money for you.
>>>>
>>>> Indeed part of it.
>>>
>>> Seems like a major part of it.
>>
>> You seem intent on harping at the $ cost.
>
> It's just obvious that's the major driver of your decision, which is
> perfectly fine. Drobos are more expensive than plain drive enclosures
> and docks. I'm certainly not debating that.

The major driver is single point of failure - that leads to the rest.

New docks are up and running. Testing them out for a few days before
decomm of the Drobo - though I have removed 2 drives and it's sorting
out the rest. (I removed the 1 TB drive and the Drobo went to orange
for a couple minutes then back to steady green. Removed the 2 TB drive
and it's been chewing on that for a couple hours now (two 3 TB drives
left) - should be ready tomorrow I guess..)

--
... it may be that "in the cloud" really isn't the best term
for the services these companies offer. What they really
want is to have us "on the leash."
-David Pogue, Scientific American, 2014.02

[Alan Browne]

On 2014.02.20, 18:48 , Jolly Roger wrote:
> On 2014-02-20, Alan Browne <alan....@FreelunchVideotron.ca> wrote:
>> On 2014.02.19, 21:12 , Jolly Roger wrote:
>>> On 2014-02-20, Alan Browne <alan....@FreelunchVideotron.ca> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> There's really no "gain" in going with the Drobo or buying a new one
>>>> and retaining the single point of failure. Buying 2 is out of the
>>>> question. I have much better places for that cash.
>>>
>>> All well and good. You're choosing to sacrifice the primary benefits
>>> of the Drobo to save a buck. That doesn't magically make those
>>> benefits vanish into thin air though.
>>
>> The primary benefits of the Drobo are not returning any value to me.
>> I don't need a hot swappable storage/backup utility. It's overkill
>> for my needs.
>
> Cool. Apparently you don't need to build logical volumes from multiple
> hard drives either. I use mine partially as storage for a home media
> server; so I do need it. Consider yourself lucky. : )

With the Thermaltake's it's not a direct option. With my old iOmega
drive case I could span 2 drives and there are other systems as well -
though you wouldn't approve of their more common RAID approach.

Should the need arise (not in sight) I'll get an appropriate RAID NAS.
Might even be a Drobo.

My "home media" is now Apple TV as an HDMI converter with this iMac
providing Netflix or stored Video. Occasionally music. Still renting
Blu-Rays and buying the occasional disks too.

--
Those who have reduced our privacy, whether they are state
or commercial actors, prefer that we do not reduce theirs.

[Alan Browne]

On 2014.02.20, 18:45 , Jolly Roger wrote:
> On 2014-02-20, Alan Browne <alan....@FreelunchVideotron.ca> wrote:
>> On 2014.02.19, 21:12 , Jolly Roger wrote:
>>>
>>> The majority of the Drobo's features are geared towards data safety -
>>> not speed. Older models such as yours have always been known to be
>>> rather slow compared to plain hard drives. Newer models that include
>>> SSD support are blazing fast though. Anyhow, I find my DroboS plenty
>>> fast enough for all of my needs, and relatively worry-free in
>>> comparison to plain hard drives.
>>
>> It's not worry free for me for the several times cited single point of
>> failure issue. OTOH, using the disk docks is quick and will provide
>> more than ample backup - that is also rotatable - something not
>> practical with the Drobo.
>
> Rotatable because you have another dock (or a dock that holds two
> drives). You'd have the same functionality with two Drobos.

2 docks (4 HD's): $138.00 (tax and shipping included).

Redundancy: Yes.

Scheduled backups: Yes (T-M and whichever of CCC or SD I choose - not
clear yet which is better for my plan).

Non-proprietary recovery if the docks break: Yes.

> What you won't have are all of the additional features of the Drobo (the
> convenience factors, the ability to mix and match drives of different
> sizes easily to create logical volumes larger than the drives
> themselves, and so on).

I can still have any disk sizes I want. Indeed, I'll have two 2 TB and
two 3 TB drives in there to start with. I don't have the need to span
drives (referring to your other post).

>
> And that's fine, of course.

As I've pointed out I have no "real time" convenience needs. Whether
the redundancy is in the clever Drobo ability to immediately deal with a
failed drive or in two drives, one that fails and one that doesn't - it
makes no difference in the end - all of my data is secure.

[Kaltsas]

I retired my 2nd Gen Drobo a few months ago for a Synology NAS DS1512+.
The drobo 2nd Gen has always been slow, about 12 MB/s under USB and
maybe a squeek over 20 MB/s on FW800. I know another guy who has a 2nd
Gen Drobo his tests out almost identical, I don't think I had a lemon,
I think were just that slow.

I typically was having CCC make nightly backups of all my drives to the
Drobo. One clocks in at 1.2 TB, One clocks in at 1.4 TB, and one clocks
in at 700GB.

I also use crashplan to sync certain directories to a freinds NAS but I
like the whole disk images, easy to get back up and running.

Given how slow the drobo is I thought I would do a test restore to
another machine, I'd be waiting days to get back up and running should
I have a drive failure. Some good that would be. Piddled around a bit
and settled on a Synology, they are well supported and have some great
features for building out additional storage. I wouldn't say they for
everybody, I'd probably suggest a QNAP device over a synology for most
folks.

I have used some of the newer drobos at work and they are faster,
especially with an MSATA ssd but for what I spent on that 2nd gen and
how awesome they touted the damn thing (edit live video and photos
right off this device!) Drobo as a company has kind of left a sour
taste in my moutn.

They are dead simple for the layman but for anyone with a modicum of
computer skill I'd go with a different storage solution like a QNAP.

-alex-

[Jolly Roger]

On 2014-02-27, Kaltsas, Alexander G <Kaltsas> wrote:
>
> I retired my 2nd Gen Drobo a few months ago for a Synology NAS DS1512+.
> The drobo 2nd Gen has always been slow, about 12 MB/s under USB and
> maybe a squeek over 20 MB/s on FW800. I know another guy who has a 2nd
> Gen Drobo his tests out almost identical, I don't think I had a lemon,
> I think were just that slow.
>
> I typically was having CCC make nightly backups of all my drives to the
> Drobo. One clocks in at 1.2 TB, One clocks in at 1.4 TB, and one clocks
> in at 700GB.
>
> I also use crashplan to sync certain directories to a freinds NAS but I
> like the whole disk images, easy to get back up and running.
>
> Given how slow the drobo is I thought I would do a test restore to
> another machine, I'd be waiting days to get back up and running should
> I have a drive failure. Some good that would be. Piddled around a bit
> and settled on a Synology, they are well supported and have some great
> features for building out additional storage. I wouldn't say they for
> everybody, I'd probably suggest a QNAP device over a synology for most
> folks.

I find it quite amusing that a few vocal folks seem to have purchased
Drobos for speed when data integrity was their *primary selling point*
to begin with, and they never claimed their older models were
particularly fast.

> I have used some of the newer drobos at work and they are faster,
> especially with an MSATA ssd

They are *quite* fast, and have even more ease-of-use and data integrity
features as previous models.

> but for what I spent on that 2nd gen and how awesome they touted the
> damn thing (edit live video and photos right off this device!) Drobo
> as a company has kind of left a sour taste in my moutn.

Maybe that sour taste is just coming from your sour puss. I read one or
two reviews and it was crystal clear to me that the 2nd Gen Drobo wasn't
a speed demon when I purchased mine just after they were released. But
then speed wasn't my primary objective - I wanted the ease of use and
data integrity features more than that. If speed was that important to
you, reading one or two reviews should have been enough to convince you
to purchase something else.

> They are dead simple for the layman but for anyone with a modicum of
> computer skill I'd go with a different storage solution like a QNAP.

...as if skill has anything to do with whether one might appreciate
Drobo's features. You're just being silly and bitter.

[Alan Browne]

On 2014.02.27, 16:15 , Jolly Roger wrote:
> On 2014-02-27, Kaltsas, Alexander G <Kaltsas> wrote:
>>
>> I retired my 2nd Gen Drobo a few months ago for a Synology NAS DS1512+.
>> The drobo 2nd Gen has always been slow, about 12 MB/s under USB and
>> maybe a squeek over 20 MB/s on FW800. I know another guy who has a 2nd
>> Gen Drobo his tests out almost identical, I don't think I had a lemon,
>> I think were just that slow.
>>
>> I typically was having CCC make nightly backups of all my drives to the
>> Drobo. One clocks in at 1.2 TB, One clocks in at 1.4 TB, and one clocks
>> in at 700GB.
>>
>> I also use crashplan to sync certain directories to a freinds NAS but I
>> like the whole disk images, easy to get back up and running.
>>
>> Given how slow the drobo is I thought I would do a test restore to
>> another machine, I'd be waiting days to get back up and running should
>> I have a drive failure. Some good that would be. Piddled around a bit
>> and settled on a Synology, they are well supported and have some great
>> features for building out additional storage. I wouldn't say they for
>> everybody, I'd probably suggest a QNAP device over a synology for most
>> folks.
>
> I find it quite amusing that a few vocal folks seem to have purchased
> Drobos for speed when data integrity was their *primary selling point*

Nobody (myself included) claimed we bought them for speed. But having
other, faster, options makes the 2nd gen Drobo look positively slow.

(Or negatively fast if you think that way).

And that, over time, may become an issue.

There is also the issue of single point of failure (as I've mentioned).
Buying another Drobo to backup a Drobo soon falls out of the cost
effective spectrum. (As I've mentioned).

[Jolly Roger]

On 2014-02-27, Alan Browne <alan....@FreelunchVideotron.ca> wrote:
> On 2014.02.27, 16:15 , Jolly Roger wrote:
>> On 2014-02-27, Kaltsas, Alexander G <Kaltsas> wrote:
>>>
>>> I retired my 2nd Gen Drobo a few months ago for a Synology NAS DS1512+.
>>> The drobo 2nd Gen has always been slow, about 12 MB/s under USB and
>>> maybe a squeek over 20 MB/s on FW800. I know another guy who has a 2nd
>>> Gen Drobo his tests out almost identical, I don't think I had a lemon,
>>> I think were just that slow.
>>>
>>> I typically was having CCC make nightly backups of all my drives to the
>>> Drobo. One clocks in at 1.2 TB, One clocks in at 1.4 TB, and one clocks
>>> in at 700GB.
>>>
>>> I also use crashplan to sync certain directories to a freinds NAS but I
>>> like the whole disk images, easy to get back up and running.
>>>
>>> Given how slow the drobo is I thought I would do a test restore to
>>> another machine, I'd be waiting days to get back up and running should
>>> I have a drive failure. Some good that would be. Piddled around a bit
>>> and settled on a Synology, they are well supported and have some great
>>> features for building out additional storage. I wouldn't say they for
>>> everybody, I'd probably suggest a QNAP device over a synology for most
>>> folks.
>>
>> I find it quite amusing that a few vocal folks seem to have purchased
>> Drobos for speed when data integrity was their *primary selling point*
>
> Nobody (myself included) claimed we bought them for speed. But having
> other, faster, options makes the 2nd gen Drobo look positively slow.

No, clearly above he said "I know another guy who has a 2nd Gen Drobo

his tests out almost identical, I don't think I had a lemon, I think

were just that slow" indicating he expected faster speeds. In contrast,
I purchased one when they were first released, and knew after reading
just a couple reviews exactly what sort of speed to expect; therefore I
was not disappointed with the speed. Caveat emptor definitely applies
here.

[Alan Browne]

Then limit your sentences about 'a few vocal folks ...'...

Or take a malware survey so we can get some serious wisdom from you.

--
Those who have reduced our privacy, whether they are state
or commercial actors, prefer that we do not reduce theirs.
- Jaron Lanier, Scientific American, 2013.11.

Privacy has become an essential personal chore that most
people are not trained to perform.

- Jaron Lanier, Scientific American, 2013.11.

[Jolly Roger]

On 2014-02-27, Alan Browne <alan....@FreelunchVideotron.ca> wrote:
> On 2014.02.27, 18:32 , Jolly Roger wrote:
>> On 2014-02-27, Alan Browne <alan....@FreelunchVideotron.ca> wrote:
>>> On 2014.02.27, 16:15 , Jolly Roger wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I find it quite amusing that a few vocal folks seem to have purchased
>>>> Drobos for speed when data integrity was their *primary selling point*
>>>
>>> Nobody (myself included) claimed we bought them for speed. But having
>>> other, faster, options makes the 2nd gen Drobo look positively slow.
>>
>> No, clearly above he said "I know another guy who has a 2nd Gen Drobo

>> his tests out almost identical, I don't think I had a lemon, I think

>> were just that slow" indicating he expected faster speeds. In contrast,
>> I purchased one when they were first released, and knew after reading
>> just a couple reviews exactly what sort of speed to expect; therefore I
>> was not disappointed with the speed. Caveat emptor definitely applies
>> here.
>

> Then limit your sentences about 'a few vocal folks ...'...

"A few vocal folks" is exactly what I said, Alan.

[Kaltsas]

I never said I bought it for speed. It's hard to remember, but back
when they first launched they had a ton of marketing with Cali Lewis
going on about how you could edit photos and videos right from the
device and pull a drive and look you are still going. They certainly
wern't suggesting these were the slowest devices.

As my backups have grown the viablity of a 2nd gen drobo lessened.
Based on my testing if I ever had a failure I would be days recovering
with the Drobo.

I've used newer Drobos with an mSATA card. They are much faster, but
the 2nd gen left a somewhat sour taste in my mouth. I don't think they
are bad but now there are better options on the market. At the time of
the 1st/2nd gen drobos there was very little consumer/prosumer stuff
that could compete. Now theres a wide variety to choose from.

[Kaltsas]

On 2014-02-27 21:55:41 +0000, Lewis said:

>
>> I typically was having CCC make nightly backups of all my drives to the
>> Drobo. One clocks in at 1.2 TB, One clocks in at 1.4 TB, and one clocks
>> in at 700GB.
>

> There's incremental backups. They work very well.

The incremental backups in CCC work great, I cant imagine backing up to
that Drobo fully everynight. my issue was when I did a test restore, at
20 MB/s I'm waiting a very very long time to get back on my feet. This
would have been acceptable when I had a couple hundred Gigs but now at
Terabytes of data, at best its painful.

[Kaltsas]

Maybe we should have waited for reviews but I bought mine at launch,
because drobo was plugging the thing as the next messiah of storage.
And they were claiming a significant speed boost over the 1st gen.
Which, technically 20 MB/s was I suppose. I'm not trying to get into an
argument here, I'm just stating that as my backups grew 20 MB/s
transfer rates became unacceptable should I ever need to actually
restore. The unit was in use for 5 years, I've never regreted the
purchase. And at the time there was little else on the market to
compete.

Now, the market is a different place, there's a lot of devices avalable
and I don't think drobo brings as much to the table as they did in
2008. A QNAP TS-420 at under 400 dollars offers a lot of bang for your
buck.

[Kaltsas]

On 2014-02-20 15:30:28 +0000, Lewis said:

> I've not been at all impressed with USB3. Drive often vanish for no
> reason (Mac or PC, makes no difference, any manufacturer). The only USB3
> device I have that is mostly stable is the Mediasonic. It rarely drops
> off (but it has done so, probably once a month-6 weeks) and is the
> fastest of the USB3 drives. I've have seagate and third party external
> USB3s and I just don't recommend them for most users.

I chalk this up soley to the manufactures. I have a LACIE drive with
thunderbolt and USB3 which is rock solid on either connection. I have
two Seagate GoFlex USB3 drives that, anicdotally, are much flakier in
terms of performance. Scientific study, perhaps not. But I'll buy
another one of these LACIE drives at a higher price before I grab
another Seagate.

[Kaltsas]

On 2014-02-27 22:42:29 +0000, Alan Browne said:

>> I find it quite amusing that a few vocal folks seem to have purchased
>> Drobos for speed when data integrity was their *primary selling point*
>
> Nobody (myself included) claimed we bought them for speed. But having
> other, faster, options makes the 2nd gen Drobo look positively slow.
>
> (Or negatively fast if you think that way).
>
> And that, over time, may become an issue.

This, I never said I bought it for speed but it's never been as fast as
Drobo's marketing would have had you believe. The unit was in use for 5
years, I've never regreted the purchase but as I've moved from 500 gig
drives to 2TB drives in it, it would take me days to restore from my
backups.

All things considered 5 years is a good run for any modern piece of
computing equipment. All I'm saying is now, in 2014 there's a lot of
devices to meet this sort of need on the market and Drobo isn't the
clear winner with SAN/NAS technology for the layperson (or lazy person
like me) anymore. In 2008 it was pretty cut and dry. If I knew then
what i know now, given what was on the market I would still have bought
the Drobo.

[Alan Browne]

On 2014.02.28, 09:21 , Kaltsas wrote:
> On 2014-02-27 22:42:29 +0000, Alan Browne said:
>
>>> I find it quite amusing that a few vocal folks seem to have purchased
>>> Drobos for speed when data integrity was their *primary selling point*
>>
>> Nobody (myself included) claimed we bought them for speed. But having
>> other, faster, options makes the 2nd gen Drobo look positively slow.
>>
>> (Or negatively fast if you think that way).
>>
>> And that, over time, may become an issue.
>
> This, I never said I bought it for speed but it's never been as fast as
> Drobo's marketing would have had you believe. The unit was in use for 5
> years, I've never regreted the purchase but as I've moved from 500 gig
> drives to 2TB drives in it, it would take me days to restore from my
> backups.
>
> All things considered 5 years is a good run for any modern piece of
> computing equipment.

Much agreed. No regrets on Drobo - but its days are done here...

> All I'm saying is now, in 2014 there's a lot of
> devices to meet this sort of need on the market and Drobo isn't the
> clear winner with SAN/NAS technology for the layperson (or lazy person
> like me) anymore. In 2008 it was pretty cut and dry. If I knew then what
> i know now, given what was on the market I would still have bought the
> Drobo.

NAS drives I've tried have been pretty slow as well - and that includes
the completely incompetent Drobo Share. Sold it. I had the D-Link NAS
(early one) and it wasn't too bad (not fast either), but you could not
set permissions for folders. Insane stupid. (Nice thing about Best Buy
- no question returns...)

I look forward to the day when Thunderbolt drives are less expensive...

--

Privacy has become an essential personal chore that most
people are not trained to perform.

[Alan Browne]

On 2014.02.20, 10:30 , Lewis wrote:

>
> I've not been at all impressed with USB3. Drive often vanish for no
> reason (Mac or PC, makes no difference, any manufacturer). The only USB3
> device I have that is mostly stable is the Mediasonic. It rarely drops
> off (but it has done so, probably once a month-6 weeks) and is the
> fastest of the USB3 drives. I've have seagate and third party external
> USB3s and I just don't recommend them for most users.

Under 10.9.1, the USB 3.0 drives were disconnecting at random (1 hour -
4 hours typically).

I've spent hours on the phone with Apple (getting bumped higher and
higher in the support tree).

They sent me an app to record data.

Then the 10.9.2 update came out - they said " ... oh update away ..."

Immediately after first starting 10.9.2 two of the USB 3.0 drives
disconnected. Once.

But since then they've been solid. (I wrote a program to write reams of
data to them (and read back at about 5% of the write rate), and all 4
drives are fine. No disconnects in nearly 2 non-stop days (I delete
files on occasion to keep the programs running...). Each file is a
random size between 1 to 20 GB (filled with random numbers).)

Hopefully it's been nailed.

Half migrated Time Machine from the Drobo (eg: both being used for TM
and all drives but one have been removed from the Drobo).

Will tryout CCC this weekend (30 day trial).

Also bought a USB 3.0 hub (Anker) and it's been very solid - but I haven
used it for disk drives (other than a brief curiosity test - no issues
but not a long test either).

[Bread]

On 2014-02-20 22:24:32 +0000, Alan Browne said:

> On 2014.02.19, 23:53 , Bread wrote:
>> On 2014-02-20 01:03:16 +0000, Alan Browne said:
>>
>>> (The Drobo for all its glory is not esp. fast - even with FW-800.
>>> Only a hair faster than the USB 2.0 docks/drives that I have for
>>> direct copying.)
>>
>> "not esp. fast" is an understatement. I love my Drobo. But it's
>> downright slow. Copies to/from a USB*2* connected drive are much faster
>> than the Drobo at FW800. The bottleneck is not the interface.
>
> When copying from the Drobo to a Ram Disk, the Drobo is about 30%
> faster than the USB 2.0 dock/drives I have;
>
> But copying from the Ram Disk to the Drobo is about 3X slower than the
> USB 2.0 docks I have. (Timed on an 800 MB video file).

Now that I think about it, that sounds about right - *read* from the
Drobo is reasonably quick. Writing to it is what's painfully slow.
Pulling up a big directory listing on it seems slow, too.

Nevertheless, my iPhoto repository, for example, since it no longer
fits on my internal drive, lives on a FW800 single drive and gets
backed up to the Drobo (via TM and crashplan).

>
>> Similarly, I just saw a great deal on a USB3 128GB memory stick. I have
>> a USB2 one and it's a fraction of the speed of using USB2 with a hard
>> drive, so, again, I wonder if they're working hard to speed up parts
>> which really aren't the bottleneck at all.
>
> USB Flash drives come in a range of speeds with the very simple
> equation: faster = more expensive.

Still, it's just not obvious, at least to me, whether one will be
faster than another and it's certainly not as simple as USB2 vs USB3.

I may buy that USB3 one just to compare. Can't seem to have too many
of these handy devices anyway.

>
> I see one in Montreal (5 bay, no addition disks) for $390 (Craigslist).
>
> I'm selling mine (4 bay, with two disks (1 + 2 TB) for $390 (Craigslist
> and local computer store).
>
> I see lower priced ones (4 bay, no HD's) on ebay as well.
>
> These are CAD $, which at present go for ~91 cents/US $.

I've got my one Drobo and really haven't worried about a replacement.
I just checked Craigslist and there are three within an hour drive of
me, 2nd gen with FW800, all at around $150/ea. with no drives.

That's actually kind of tempting, just to have a backup for my main
drobo, though, as I said, even if mine died, its main purpose is as a
backup drive in the first place.