Lian Li EX-50 or Drobo..

D

Dark Prodigy

Jawbreaker
Joined
Mar 10, 2006
Messages
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I'm currently in the market for an external 4-5 bay RAID 5 storage box. I like the features of the Lian-Li and plus it matches my V1200b perfectly, plus it's a bit more economical. I simply have not heard much about it. The Drobo I heard can be hit or miss and a little slow but I'm not looking for speed records either. After much searching I've narrowed it down to these two. Anyone have any experience with either of these?


Lian Li EX-50

Drobo
 
of the 2 I would probably do the lian li.. That being said if it were me I wouldn't actually do either.. There too expensive compared to making a standalone NAS (something like an Atom D510 with a gig of ram in a Lian Li PC-Q08 running freenas or some other NIX should come inbetween the 2 in cost, but give a hell of alot more flexibility)
 
I dealt with drobo's first gen unit at work and swore never again. even bought their "ethernet adapter" which amounted to no more than a a USB -> Ethernet adapter and the transfer speeds blew herds. we're talking single digit MB/s reads and writes. I realize they've come a long way since the first gen unit, but their business practices rub me the wrong way. things like charging a yearly fee for their desktop software to continue operating without limitations, firmware upgrades, etc.

bottom line they're charging bigtime prices for mediocre performance and they want more money every year for the privilege. fukkem.
 
I would avoid the drobo and its proprietary raid and get a nas that is linux based using standard linux software raid (most nas products are this). That way if the unit breaks you are not locked into another drobo. You can just put the drives in any pc and boot off any live cd and have access to your files in less than 5 minutes.
 
Just another "hell no" vote for Drobo.

I was one of the beta testers for their first product. It worked for storage... as long as you didn't need any speed from it. I tried using it as a storage pool for TV recording (only SD content) and it couldn't even handle two recordings at once without corruption in the data streams.

Then, when we needed additional storage for a disk-to-disk backup solution at work, my bosses were looking at the Drobo Pro. I voiced my concerns, but all they saw was the $$$ and decided to put one in the environment. The device couldn't even handle the being a backup unit due to the speeds. Anytime the backup CommVault software tried to write to the unit, it took so long that it backed up all the other other job queues. We are still working with CommVault to figure out how to remove it from the system so we can chunk it (after I strip the 5 2TB drives from it :) ).
 
not to mention its overpriced. $700 for a 5-bay NAS with no drives is pathetic, especially considering all the gotchas.
 
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Skip the Drobo. There was a bunch of hype surrounding them after their release, but a lot of owners haven't been happy with them. I'd look at the EX-50 or a NAS from Synology, Qnap, Netgear, etc.
 
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