Drobo FS Network Attached Storage (NAS) Review

Ted,<br />

<br />

Most of the time 1GHz hardware is sooooo cheaply done that the speed is actually slower. Do some tests I did!<br />

<br />

For me it's simple how long does the Pure Music "Loading File into Memory" appear? With my thunderbolt drive most of the time that never even gets displayed!<br />

<br />

Thanks<br />

Gordon

but will take your lead and do tests. Three questions:<br />

1) how does one test the speed of each?<br />

2) what do you believe is the necessary speed for, say, 24/192k?<br />

3) if both tests show wayy better speed than needed for question two, what difference does it make? (not trying to be facetious; I'm really interested but internet chats don't show inflection )<br />

<br />

Thanks<br />

Ted

Don't be fooled by Drobo's 'simplicity' marketing, the concept is good but their implementation is horrible in terms of living with your Drobo. My Drobo eats disks like popcorn, my usage is spent 80% recovering due to hard disk failures and the other 20% of the time it does work. The larger your music collection grows, the longer it takes for Drobo to restore it's file system from a hard disk failure. Western Digtial knows me well as I have sent in countless hard disks under warranty to be replaced because Drobo complained of a hard disk failure. Of all the NAS out there, I think Drobo is at the bottom of the list in terms of reliability. It's all proprietary. You will be better off going with any major brand instead of Drobo.

To all those having regular drive failures: what drives are you using? I don't mean manufacturer, but are you using standard consumer/desktop drives or enterprise spec'd drives?<br />

<br />

Eloise

I've just used commercial consumer drives. Western, Seagate...all 7200, some green...some not...there does not seem to be any rhyme or reason to their failure and some drives seem (particularly Western...the warranty dept is familiar with me too) more prone to multiple 'failures' that are resolved by taking the drive out and shoving it back in. That has been my 'cure' to drive failures. It's an equal opportunity NAS. It doesn't seem to discriminate against killing a particular drive; it's just fine with killing them all. I would also add customer support is an interesting experience with much "We've never heard of this happening before" and lots of escalations for a solution that just requires yanking out a drive, waiting a sec, and shoving it back in. They use some kind of diagnostic tool that is readable only by tech support. Thus you are seriously at their mercy if something goes wrong and you can't fix it. YMMV of course. If you bought one remember the 'yank the failing drive out' solution as it may come in handy when the there is nothing actually wrong with the disc. That said I have yet to lose any information despite all that. So while I can't say it's the most ideal solution it has worked as advertised in terms of not losing my data. So that's um, well...it's...it's some consolation anyway...

Personally, I think Drobo is real garbage. One of the biggest disappointments I have ever had the displeasure of using.<br />

<br />

I have no dog in this fight, but have tried many different devices, more for my work than anything else and it doesn't get much simpler or dependable than Synology. I am sold. I have used everything from large industrial EMC products to QNAP and have never seen a worse storage product than Drobo, hence why I was a little surprised to see it recommended. <br />

<br />

The net seems to be filled with similar horror stories.

All of these comments make it seem like I received a special "reviewer's unit" without any issues :~)<br />

<br />

I'll continue using the Drobo FS for awhile to see if I experience anything like the online horror stories. Up to this point the unit has really worked excellent. <br />

<br />

How easy is the Synology to use in a Mac environment? Is it essentially plug and play? My Drobo FS just refused to boot up again last night. I need something else. Also which model for a direct connection to a Mac (quiet running) do you recommend from Synology?

Do you turn your computer (and Drobo) on and off or at least sleep? Also have you had to do any firmware updates to your Drobo? If not you may want to do that and wait for the next firmware update...<br />

Well Chris despite the horror stories I've heard and the couple little issues I've had with a particular drive--that and the ole revive shove for usable drives--I did add that it has yet to lose one byte of data even with 2 drives out of the 4 drive bay that I have. It is only supposed to work with 1 drive out at a time with my particular model. So while it's not fast, it's borked a drive, and sometimes I have to shove a drive in and out, the fact is it still has the same information on it from the very first transfer I made. Even with 2 drives 'failing' at the same time when doing the upgrade to lion before they ironed out the firmware (which would indicate it was my fault for not exploring that)--my data is still intact. So while it has it's issues...hey I still have my stuff. That's pretty amazing considering how many hdd's have failed inside my computers without a way to resurrect the data cheaply or reliably. At least with the drobo I have some comfort in the fact that my data is safe. Until it isn't of course!

>>How easy is the Synology to use in a Mac environment? Is it essentially plug and play? My Drobo FS just refused to boot up again last night. I need something else. Also which model for a direct connection to a Mac (quiet running) do you recommend from Synology?<<<br />

<br />

I found using my DS111, NAS, single drive a delight with an all mac network. It is a bit of a trick to setup remotely where you need to get through a firewall and want to administer it (open up port 5000 - not documented), but locally it was truly plug and play. A refreshing contrast to my constant struggles with the 2 Lacie NAS that I had. <br />

<br />

Not familiar with an "direct connection" models , but the NAS copied my 1TB music library in around 10 hours over CAT5 with gigabit switches and ports. <br />

<br />

Peter

I think those who have used a Drobo for any length of time will understand, thanks for the confirmation. I have a friend who has a lot of experience with NAS devices and he too recommends Synology DS series (DS411+).<br />

<br />

I'm at a loss of the initial cost of my Drobo, the thing is just plain UNUSABLE. I have to restore a disk before I can get my data (music store) off the thing, and that process literally takes days! It's been sitting in my closet for a couple of years now collecting dust, one of these days I need to fire it up to go through the restore process so I can get my music back.<br />

<br />

When it was under warranty, the manufacturer sent me a replacement unit and a new power supply, and the new unit behaved no differently that the original - they claimed to have fixed the issue.

we won't hold it against you.<br />

<br />

One thing I have learned with storage devices is to listen to as many endusers as possible. It is a statistical phenomena. Even if I hear of someone having no issues, if I see enough with complaints, that's enough.<br />

<br />

The same with drives. <br />

<br />

While SSD are changing the landscape, in the old days, when possible, it was always high end SCSI or SAS Seagates for me. In my large Synology, I spend a little more to get the better Seagates and haven't had one crash in over a year. I have 4 SAS 15K Seagates, running a RAID 5 for 6 years in my HP workstation and not one crash.<br />

<br />

On the other hand, I have heard of some real disasters with WD Green disks.

One of the problems with drobo as you might know is that their forums are only available for users who have a serial number. So unfortunately much of the information about drive failures and such aren't available to perspective buyers, only those who have already purchased the unit. Certainly there are other places on the internet where the negatives have shown up but there are also gobs of 'respected' computer review sites and magazines that gave the drobo rave reviews. So when I was researching it was hard to get a handle on what the 'real world' implications of purchasing one actually were. <br />

Actually the majority of problems I've had were with WD Green disks!<br />

Since the majority of the drives in the unit are now WD Green ones it actually has maintained much more reliability as of late. The mix mash of drives, one reason it was financially practical, seemed to be the source of most of my own grievances (aside from speed of course). So the one stand out feature was the biggest point of failure in my opinion--it wasn't until I'd spent some money putting more equivalent drives in the unit that it started becoming reliable.<br />

While it is slow I have no problem streaming Blu Rays, playing 24/192, or anything like that. I just wouldn't rely on it for say my Mac's home directory.

One of the issues that is rarely discussed when talking about NAS in audio is their noise and their cooling system.<br />

What is the noise of Drobo's NAS?<br />

I have a number of LaCie NAS, some are terribly noise (you can here the nosie from another room), others are quite silent.<br />

Did you measured the Drobo noise?<br />

Andrea Tubaro

Howdy Folks - It is obvious that many of you are passionate about your data and storage options which is great. I think Chris nailed it with this comment: "If you browse any NAS manufacturer's forum you'll see many unhappy users. This is just how things work. Happy customers rarely take time to post about their experiences." We have shipped over 200K Drobos and I can tell you the vast majority are very satisfied customers. <br />

<br />

There were great points brought up in the comments, so I thought I'd jump in to address some of the key ones and will be happy to respond to any others that pop up:<br />

<br />

Nottlv - UnRAID is a great product and does allow for some of the advantages we deliver with BeyondRAID. The key difference is that most Drobo customers - while they certainly could build their own - want a simple, turnkey solution which is what Drobo delivers.<br />

<br />

a2rt - As many have mentioned, Drobo does have some performance penalties associated with data protection. On top of that, the FS has to deal with network overhead which further reduces performance. For folks that need high-performance, we recommend our Drobo S (USB 3 / eSATA) which typically delivers 2-3X the performance of the FS. <br />

<br />

dschamis - Sorry to read about your troubles and I can assure you and the other folks here that your experience is in the very small minority. Even though we have over 200K arrays, there are very, very few documented cases of data loss where the Drobo was either partially or completely at fault. Most of the time it is double drive failure, file system corruption on the host, power surge/outage, or simple operator error (i.e. removing too many hard drives at once). I will say that we have helped many customers get their data back - even when the fault had nothing to do with the Drobo device. <br />

<br />

Jfkbike - Sorry to see you were disappointed in DroboShare End-of-Life. The Drobo FS was effectively a replacement for the DroboShare, so we did try to give reasonable time tune before sending formal EOL notices to customers.<br />

<br />

Jerico - Lion was a huge nightmare for all NAS providers. Despite having access to early Lion builds, there are no guarantees that Apple won't make last minute changes. We recently released new firmware (1.4.1) and Dashboard (2.1.1) for the FS which has addressed every known issue with Lion.<br />

<br />

Bleedink - We used to require a serial number to enter our support forums since many of our competitors were joining and simply throwing around FUD that was not productive to anyone trying to get help. We have since dropped this requirement, so anyone can join.<br />

<br />

Great discussion. I'll make sure to monitor and address any other questions that pop up.<br />

<br />

Best,<br />

Jim Sherhart<br />

Drobo

Hi Jim - Thanks for contributing.<br />

<br />

What is your feeling regarding using Desktop grade vs. Enterprise grade drives in your devices?

Jim we certainly appreciate your taking the time to address some of the concerns that were brought up by users and potential users. I personally was not even aware of the droboshare being discontinued until I read this column. Since I have the 2nd gen Drobo I am a bit dismayed about hearing the FS as the successor to the droboshare. By the time the 2nd gen Drobo came out, the kinks should have been ironed out and THAT should have been the successor to droboshare. That said I have yet to find a solution that provides anything more than about 10MBps throughput. Use of firewire, while helping with CPU, doesn't seem to drive the unit to higher speeds while the use of USB will most definitely slow the unit to a crawl. I had once tried to attach it to my Time Capsule via USB so that I could have a proper NAS without the droboshare (which in hindsight was a great thing NOT to have purchased) but it was so unbelievably slow that it was essentially unusable. I'm also a little dismayed to see the improvements to firmware and software for every unit but the Drobo gen 2. If the software helps these issues then it should be available for all drobos! Some additional features like the ability to power down the drive at certain intervals and such would be welcome. Is there some reason that a droboshare was required for apps when the drobo presumably has some kind of processor and such that is running your software? Couldn't you provide that functionality for customers with software rather than requiring a separate box?

jfkbike - for RAID enclosures such as Drobo, it is recommended to use enterprise drives. Having said that, we have many happy customers using consumer-grade and/or green drives with great success. The key to using consumer/green drives is to understand that (1) performance will be lower and (2) drive failures will be higher. <br />

<br />

bleedink - Lots of questions, so I hope I get them all:<br />

<br />

Drobo offers DAS, NAS, and iSCSI SAN products. The DAS products (Drobo, Drobo S) are block level, do not have a full file system, and therefore cannot run applications. The DroboShare was intended to turn a DAS Drobo into a NAS Drobo that has a full file system and can run apps. <br />

<br />

The challenge with the DroboShare was that it used USB to connect to the Drobo, so despite having FireWire and GigE, performance would always be limited by USB. We essentially combined Drobo with DroboShare when developing the FS and eliminated the USB bottleneck. That is why we consider the FS to be a replacement for DroboShare.<br />

<br />

Regarding firmware improvements, we do have recent releases for ALL products. The current 1.4.1 firmware for your 2nd Gen Drobo was just released in November. Continual improvement is something Drobo has always done and I don't see that changing.<br />

<br />

I hope that helps.<br />

<br />

Best,<br />

Jim<br />

I'll pitch in with another vote not to use the Drobo. I bought one of the second generation units and found it painfully slow. It was impossibly slow to use with the Droboshare but copies to and from it were so painful that I couldn't use it for anything. I gave up the Droboshare and went to a Firewire connection, but even that was ludicrously slow. <br />

<br />

I initially had dreams of it holding a media library but I found it unacceptable to have to wait minutes to copy an album to a disk. Playing video was simply impossible. Adding a new drive typically took days. I tried to use the Drobo for backups, but I wound up in a situation where I would literally not be able to back up data to the Drobo at a rate fast enough to keep up with the changes on the computer being backed up. It was awful. The noise level was just terrible too. I would say more like 45db, or at least that's what it seemed like. I had it in my office and it was the loudest single noise source there, much louder than my Mac Pro. Finally, yes, it would lose all the data on it from time to time. The company has a short window in which they provide warranty support, which is really unfair for a unit that costs this much and is this buggy. Anything short of lifetime support is not acceptable for the Drobo. <br />

<br />

All this after it received glowing reviews. Drobo has great marketing and packaging, but please run the other way if you're thinking about buying it. I read reviews like Andy Inkhato's, saying that it is to storage what the iPod was to portable music players. That may be the ambition, but no, it's more like the Zune, or what HP's WebOS or the Newton were to tablets. But even those have redeeming points. <br />

<br />

I have a hard time believing that a very small minority of users have trouble with these units. These units are like something out of the early 1990s when it comes to speed and noise. I read the Computer Audiophile religiously, but this review is surprising to me as is the prospect that these are still around. I simply cannot imagine it could function in any environment that relied on media. Perhaps if you back up a few word files a day to it, you may be ok, but then you'd have to live with it periodically making loud noises that would drive you out of your mind. Plus you'd lose all your data from time to time. <br />

<br />

I think mine is still sitting in my basement somewhere. It'd be too mean to sell it to another person on eBay. I'm glad a Drobo rep is here. Maybe Drobo is willing to pay for a refund? It's been a few years since I purchased it and over a year since it wound up in the basement. I'd welcome it. Frankly, a refund would be the only fair solution. This product should never have seen the light of day. Someone on Amazon mentioned a class action lawsuit. I'd be all for it, that's for sure.

My only questin is why you didn't return it. <br />

<br />

After I saw how useless the Drobo was it went back almost as fast as it came. <br />

<br />

IMO there are many better choices.

Simple: I was an idiot. I wanted to believe in it. By the time I gave up on it as unusual, it was too late. I'm curious to see what Chris thinks in a few months.

Jim - thanks for chiming in to the discussion. It's good that manufacturers stay in touch with the user community.<br />

<br />

RE: OS X Lion, I do understand some NAS manufacturers had issues with the release. Surely some blame is due Apple, but that doesn't absolve manufacturers from blame, especially those who market Mac support (and that is what developer releases are for). That said, wasn't AFP the primary issue with Lion and various NAS units? I had the same connectivity issues using AFP and SMB with the Drobo, both through my router and directly connected to my Mac.<br />

<br />

The Lion issues weren't all connectivity issues. It borked 2 drives insisting one was beyond redemption. A software update resurrected the drive but resulted in about 3 days of rebuilding the RAID array. Incidentally the connectivity issues were the least significant of what I experienced.