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Kardonxt Thanks for the reply. Did these people say that the reliability of the Drobo systems got worse or better after a while?I know two people who use them. They loved them at first and now they hate them. Frequent corruption and crashes. Support has gone above and beyond in the past to help recover data when this happens but it's really not something they should have to deal with ever let alone a couple times a year.
I always heard great things about them previously. Two people isn't a huge sample size, but that's two more people than I have ever heard of having trouble with Synology systems.
Kardonxt Thanks for the reply. Did these people say that the reliability of the Drobo systems got worse or better after a while?
Kardonxt I was actually thinking about picking up a used Drobo off eBay cheap. Maybe there is a reason why these units are so cheap on eBay.Worse over time. I don't think they had any issues for the first year or so.
Newer units may be more reliable. These are both fairly old systems purchased when Drobo was really popular or at least heavily marketing (I would estimate 5+ years ago). Now when you say Drobo I just think "o yeah, I forgot about those guys. They were big for a while." lol
Well, I guess I ought to explain that I'm interested in a Drobo for a home setup, not a business. And sure as heck, I'm not about to pay for monthly maintenance. The only reason I'm interested in Drobo is that it will work with disks of different sizes, unlike a regular RAID box. And my needs are pretty basic. (1) Set it up once. (2) use it. (3) back it up.You always have to hate when its fully propitiatory.
They talk about backup but how good is it really. Sure you have hardware on the cheap off eBay, but what does the monthly service run you?
Have you calculated out the cost of regular service and just how covered you really are. A NAS or DAS is great until they fail. Then how much work does it take to recover. Support may be great but that's true of many others. How long are you down? Is it a solution that is robust enough to have data accessible almost immediately? If not then it may not be the solution for you.
MY customers work with me on a solution that not only proivides the file share and integration with AD and others but also has built in Backup orffsite and geo diverse on top of it. Also, recovering and access data is a snap and very easy to get to. Just because its cool doesn't mean it will meet the real need. Thanks to the rest hwo chimed in. Great data.
just make sure you don't get SMR drives as Drobo will throw fits at you if you try (double check to make sure the ones you are buying are not SMR if consumer drives)Well, I guess I ought to explain that I'm interested in a Drobo for a home setup, not a business. And sure as heck, I'm not about to pay for monthly maintenance. The only reason I'm interested in Drobo is that it will work with disks of different sizes, unlike a regular RAID box. And my needs are pretty basic. (1) Set it up once. (2) use it. (3) back it up.
I get that for a consultant or a business user, Drobo may not be a good as say Synology. But my needs are simple here, and I'm on a bit of a budget. I have get signoff from my "chief financial officer." Now if Drobo is truly a disaster, then I'm going to forget the whole thing.
If I build my own box, is there software that would fully utilize disks of different sizes? I just upgraded my desktop rig, and I have this perfectly good but old motherboard/CPU/RAM just sitting in my garage.
likeman Are there any general rules here? For example, any 3.5" drive more than X TB will probably be SMR? Or some WD "colors" are or are not SMR?just make sure you don't get SMR drives as Drobo will throw fits at you if you try (double check to make sure the ones you are buying are not SMR if consumer drives)
unfortunately if its consumer drives they don't disclose it, but having 256mb of cache is often telling its an smr drive as normal drives will have 64/128mb depending how big it is (but high end gaming drives or other consumer drives might not be SMR as well, one note i have not seen a SMR drive been used in 7200RPM should you could mostly assume your getting a normal HDD if its 7200RPM but you still should check the model number of the drive to make sure)likeman Are there any general rules here? For example, any 3.5" drive more than X TB will probably be SMR? Or some WD "colors" are or are not SMR?
This almost makes me reconsider buying Seagate again. I can't believe I just wrote that. (smacks his forehead, very hard).unfortunately if its consumer drives they don't disclose it, but having 256mb of cache is often telling its an smr drive as normal drives will have 64/128mb depending how big it is (but high end gaming drives or other consumer drives might not be SMR as well, one note i have not seen a SMR drive been used in 7200RPM should you could mostly assume your getting a normal HDD if its 7200RPM but you still should check the model number of the drive to make sure)
seagate ironwolf NAS drives and toshiba NAS do N300 and are non SMR (and both don't seem to have plans on sneaking SMR into NAS drives)
WD red little bit more complicated, as they now call non SMR drives red plus (5400 ish PMR) and red pro (7200 PMR) (but some sites/ebay selling the drive might still have the non plus , WD RED ones that are mixed with SMR and PMR drives)
WD red "NAS ready" with SMR is a joke and worse not telling anyone they did it (i believe its 2-6TB that use SMR but that can change)