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"A well designed/unique storage device"
4.5 starson by davidcwPros: Uses ALL the space on different harddrives from different manufacturers
Cons: Is NOT network-attached (similarly priced NAS support networked servers/applications)
Summary: I own a Drobo and 2 ReadyNAS NVs (what some would cite as a competitor). Both are great storage solutions that support automatic RAID expansion as drives are inserted. What makes the Drobo unique is its ability to USE ALL of the space on different sized drives: On every home-qualtiy NAS unit that exists today, you can stick in 2x 500GB drives and 2x 1TB drives and get 1.5 TB of RAID protected space. What happens to the remaining 500GB on each 1TB disk?... it's wasted. On the Drobo, this space is still accessible, just NOT RAID protected. This might sound like a loss, but let's say you own a NON-Drobo NAS with drive bays occupied by 500GB disks and you want to increase the storage, to do so you would need to buy FOUR** larger disks, before any RAID expansion occured.
The Drobo's firmware also supports 1TB SATA drives out of the box (and provided the LB Addressing scheme doesn't change I think* it can support even larger drives without firmware update). Currently the competitor's firmware (v3) only allows up to 750GB drives, with 1TB support promised in the next firmware release.
The Drobo's file transfer speeds are also better than the (ahem*) competitors.
A disadvantage of the Drobo is that it is NOT networked and is just a storage unit. The similarly priced ReadyNAS supports a variety of network based applications including FTP, UPnP streaming, auto USB-backup, and includes decent backup software.
Which one you should buy is up to your storage, access, and spending habits.
- 3 replies to this review
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Unfortunately you got the facts wrong. The only time Drobo will give you unprotected storage is when you insert only a single drive. As soon as you insert 2 or more drives, all storage will be inherently protected, and Drobo will give you as much space as it can, as long as it's protected.
In your example (2x500GB + 2x1TB) Drobo will use the drives like this:
500GB + 500GB + 500GB (half of the 1TB disk) for data storage, 500GB (half of the second 1TB disk) for backup (in striping+parity mode, like traditional RAID).
On top, it'll give you an extra 500GB (other half of 1TB disk), which it'll mirror on the remaining half of the second 1TB disk.
If you'd only have 3x500GB + 1x1TB, you'd waste half of the 1TB drive, because it can't be backed up anywhere. The Drobo calls that wasted space "Reserved for expansion". I.e. as soon as you swap one of the 500GB drives for a larger one and Drobo will be able to backup everything on the 1TB drive, it'll make that storage available. -
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you add two 500GB drives to a regular RAID system, then only 500GB is available and the other is used for backup. With Drobo it will allow full access to the 1TB, which I think is kind of deceiving, and here is why. Once you've used up 500GB, the other half will end up unusable in the long run anyway, because it's got to back it up somewhere. So you really aren't gaining anything here. The only benefit that I see is being able to add different sized hard-drives, but that is all. If you know how to use RAID, I think that you would be better off. It's been around longer, and Brobo still has some reliability issues. I've read other people's comments about their Drobo failing, and when that happens, you can lose all your data. This isn't the case with RAID. Drobo sounds nice, but it kind of cares me.
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Correct me if I’m wrong, but if you add two 500GB drives to a regular RAID system, then only 500GB is available and the other is used for backup. With Drobo it will allow full access to the 1TB, which I think is kind of deceiving, and here is why. Once you’ve used up 500GB, the other half will end up unusable in the long run anyway, because it’s got to back it up somewhere, right? The only benefit that I see is being able to add different sized hard-drives, but that is it!
