I know that the number of "gear heads" is relatively small, but I was wondering if anyone has implemented a Drobo solution yet? I'm really interested in the Drobo FS because it allows for 10TB of drive space (less if you use RAID architecture), it's Mac, Linux, Unix, and Windows compatible, has plug-ins available that allow you to do such things as turn it into an iTunes server, make it web-available, Time Machine extensions, etc. But, the FS, specifically is has a gigabit ethernet adaptor which would allow me to hang it off of my network and all my different machines could tap into it. Right now, I'm tired of figuring out which external drive has what pictures and some drives are a pain to haul around others are not. ; But, when my wife wants access to a picture, she's tired of hearing, "I don't know where that is" and she'd like to fire up her ASUS Netbook and get it herself.
Ray, I don't own a drobo, but I'd love to have one. Right now the price is keeping me from buying one. That said, a good friend of mine swears by his drobos! He doesn't have the FS, he has the original model and uses droboshare so he can use it as network attached storage. He uses his for all sorts of things and loves that if a drive dies it can easily be replaced with a new one of different size and/or model. I don't know any downsides to the drobo FS when compared with other NAS options (besides price), but if anyone knows some I'd love to hear about them!
I absolutely love Drobo storage and been using them for years. Currently, I own a regular Drobo FW800 and a Drobo Pro. The Drobo pro is configured for iSCSI on my Mac Pro at home. I use the Drobo FW800 for offsite remote backup, of critical files, by using RSYNC and a Lan-Lan tunnel with my parents house. The Drobo FW800 is connected to the network with the Drobo network adapter. I have had drives fail while in use and the repair of the array has been seamless and without data loss. The only consideration ,on a 4 bay Drobo, is that it only provides fault tolerance for single drive failure. The Drobo's with 5 or more bays allow for 2 drive failures in the array and still be able to maintain tolerance. I do not have any experience with using the 3rd party apps, but have heard good and bad feedback about them.
I have quite a bit of experience with RAID arrays (but not Drobo). There was only one time that I had two drives fail in quick succession. ; It turned out that all of the drives were manufactured on the same day. ; Needless to say, I replaced them all after the second one failed. Sadly, it was a relatively new server and I assumed that it came configured from the factory with a hot spare. ; I was wrong. ; Not even RAID-5 can save your data when two drives fail. I'm planning to get one of the five-drive Drobos Real Soon Now, and I'll configure it as four-drive RAID 5 with one hot spare.
I have the original Drobo with the DroboShare and love it. ; I use mine as my onsite backup for my photos and music. ; The only complaint that I have is that when sharing it over a 100mb network it seems a little slow when opening files, especially large photoshop files. ;
