Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsVery important tips...
Reviewed in the United States on October 16, 2012
I work in a place with lots of Drobos. Here's some info (and opinion) to address common problems/questions...
IMPORTANT: Download and install the latest version of Drobo Dashboard software from Drobo's website before connecting the Drobo to your computer.
IMPORTANT: Use Drobo Dashboard to update the firmware in your new Drobo before inserting and erasing your drives. Firmware updates are potentially hazardous, so do them when you don't have data at risk. Then put the Drobo into Standby mode and unplug it before inserting drives in your Drobo.*
*I didn't take my own advice. When I powered up my new Drobo for the first time, I jumped the gun and had already popped new 3TB drives in my new Drobo. It reported that the drives were defective and blinked ominous red lights. I simply installed the latest firmware update via Drobo Dashboard and that took care of the problem. All green lights on reboot. No problem erasing the drives after the firmware update. A few lingering alert windows that had to be dismissed. It's working normally now.
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Many people don't know how to calculate the capacity of their Drobos. There is a calculator available on Drobo's website (do a Google search for "drobo capacity") that makes it very easy to see how much capacity will be lost to the parity information used when you set up the RAID, if one of the drives is replaced or if you add more drives.
When you first erase your drives with Drobo Dashboard you will be prompted to pick a capacity for your RAID. This is not the *actual* capacity of the RAID. It is a theoretical maximum capacity of the RAID assuming that you maxed out the storage. For most purposes, you'll probably want to pick 16TB as you can then expand the capacity of the RAID volume with new drives up to 16TB total without erasing it. Beware that this will cause the Drobo to report that there is 16TB of capacity to your operating system even though this number is false. (One reason to run the Drobo Dashboard software is that it will alert you to problems such as your RAID filling up.) If you pick a capacity that's less than the effective capacity of your drives then Drobo Dashboard will create a second volume for the extra capacity.
Drobos are slow. My new one is still running a modest copy operation that I started several hours ago. By my calculation, it will take more than 12 hours to copy 1TB of data to it via FW800. This seems to be about on-par or slightly faster than the speeds that most people get. Note that Drobos get even slower as they fill up.
Drobos are good as redundant backup devices, but I would not count on one as a primary storage device or sole backup. They are very very slow, they tend to make annoying rattling-noises and they have a pretty high drive-failure rate, but they're relatively cheap and it's not too great an expense to replace a drive in a Drobo vs the expense of professional data-recovery, so they have a place in a home or small business.
Just don't rely solely on the Drobo. Don't make it the sole repository of your data.
...And don't use "green" drives in a Drobo enclosure. I know that Drobo certifies green drives and it seems like a good idea to use those drives to save power, but they're just going to make your Drobo even slower and because they are not designed to work together in a RAID or to compensate for the vibrations in a multi-drive enclosure you're begging for trouble if you use green drives.
