All things Drobo + iTunes + Mac

[compaudio1]

Here is my situation. I have a 2nd Gen. Drobo with a FW connection (FW 400) to my iBook G4 (1.33 GHz Power PC + 1.25 GB Memory). I use Drobo exclusively for music. Currently I have (4) 1 TB Western Digital Green HD in Drobo (WD 10 EADS). I have 1.9 TB of media on Drobo (mainly AIFF), with 806.28 GB of free space. I am up to date with the Drobo dashboard (1.6.0) & Drobo firmware (1.3.5). I have been monitoring this site for some time, and actually Computeraudiophile is what lead me to getting my first USB Drobo a year ago, which I upgraded to the FW Drobo earlier this summer. I have been reading on this site since my purchases about the performance of Drobo. I would catch these insights here and there throughout the site and would like to see if I can get this info consolidated on this tread, specifically.

 

In my situation, I am getting the Mac spinning ball quite often when trying to access a playlist in iTunes (I do my playlists/music by albums so I have a lot of playlists). Sometimes this all works fine, but increasingly it's happening more frequently (spinning ball/delays/etc.). This hinders the ability to update metadata on my playlists (adding performers name and other info, e.g. producers name, when recorded, remastered, etc.). For example, I have to wait to access the "get info" menu in iTunes. Then the editing itself will have delays, e.g. getting the spinning ball etc.

 

Playback seems to go well, but there are certain times when playback will be effected by long delays between songs. I definitely have a problem importing CDs to iTunes on Drobo. It takes up to 45 minutes to import a normal size CD. I have been able to work around this by creating a second library which I use for importing. I import CDs onto my iBook hard drive, then after importing a certain amount of CDs I am able to move them over to my iTunes library on my Drobo by dragging them over, then deleting the music from my iBook import library. It takes only a few minutes to import a CD onto my iBook hard drive & not long to drag a batch of music from my import library into the Drobo.

 

Is the performance problem strictly the Drobo's limitaitons or is a combination of factors? Is the iBook with only 1.25 GB of memory causing the problem? Is the problem because I only have ~ 30 GB available on my iBook hard drive (out of 120 GB)? Is it due to using Western Digital Green Drives? Would I get remarkable better performance with WD Caviar drives? Is it due to a large library or amount of media on Drobo? Is the performance issue due to iTunes solely?

 

I look forward to any and all insights.

 

[EatMoreCarrots]

I also have a firewire drobo with 4 WD TB drives (the package deal drives offered with the drobo). I have nearly as much on my as you do at this point (still importing) and I also use AIFF. My entire library rests on the drobo drive which is set up as a single 16TB volume by my Mac.

 

The only difference is that I use a Mac Mini (not the ones that came out like a week ago, but a recent one). It has a Firewire 800 that goes to the Drobo, 2.26 processor, 4gig Ram, and 320g harddrive. I don't use it for anything but my media stuff and I have no problems at all. Importing, tagging, playing, are all a breeze.

 

I'm therefore inclined to believe it is your computer which is the weak link. I don't know what all you have on there or what else you use that computer for, but for starters, you could always swap out the firewire for a USB connection to the Drobo to eliminate that possibility. Then i would think a good disc clean-up might be good; the October issue of Mac Life has a great article listing a number of tips and tweaks to maintain operational efficiency on your Mac (I'm sure you could find the article online). Then after that, if you're still experiencing problems, you should probably look into hardware upgrades (RAM, HD, new computer...).

 

[compaudio1]

I mainly use iBook for media, I'll surf the web now & then, but I get low performance even if all other programs are shut down & only iTunes up & running. If you mean to use disk utility and do a disk repair & permission repair I've done that. Or do you mean by a "good disc clean-up" cleaning the physical CD prior to importing? I do clean discs before importing & this sluggishness even happens on new CDs, too. I even did a reformat & reimported all my music after doing a reformatting of Drobo, per Drobo support request. Drobo support also had me do a disk read/write test a number of times with a AJA System Test. I get low performance readings. After reformatting I had better AJA test results when hard drives where empty, but back to the same boat when I refilled with my music. Even took Drobo to Genius Bar at Mac and even with a new Macbook Pro, using FW 800 and a much better processor they didn't get much improvement reading on the AJA Test. I get basically the same readings using either USB or FW. If you too are using the WD "Green" drives could I possibly have defective drives? I bought my Drobo(s) empty & bought drives separately. I'd hate to buy a new computer to find out it's either defective drives or defective Drobo. I'd like to check out all avenues before I purchase a newer computer. Seems to me since the Genius bar got basically the same AJA readings it's either A. Drobo limitation/defect or B. Hard drive (s) limitation/defect. Has anyone ever did the AJA test? What kind of read/write readings do you get? It is encouraging to hear you get good performance, although. It'd be nice if I could figure out what is limiting my performance so I could make a wise investment if need be.

 

[BigHat]

Hi,

Use a MacBookPro (4 GB of Ram) and a FW Drobo (4 1TB green drives) and haven't had the problems you are experiencing. My music file is small though. Only "beach balls" I experience is coming out of sleep mode on the laptop as the Drobo fires up and that's not too bad.