Attention Drobo/DroboShare Users

[vortecjr]

Team, I recently purchased a DroboShare to add my drobo directly to my home network. I have not really had a chance to sit down and listen to it to see of I like it better this way, but have already discovered a problem worthy of sharing with the forum. I have the complete collection of bond on dvd and ripped it to my drobo for storage and playback via my HDX-1000. I then switched the HDX from the shared folder via my laptop to the DroboShare. The older movies play back fine, BUT the newer movies do not. Especially, Casino Royale as its heavy action packed! So being the paranoid audiophile, I start reseaching the DroboShare and it turns out the share is limited to only around 6MBytes/s of read and write! PS I confirmed it via a phone call to Drobo. It's also not posted in the specs on the DroboShare website....unless I missed the small print someplace:)

 

Then I found a review by Engadget that seems to confirm its speed between 6 and 8MB/s:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/14/droboshare-drobo-nas-mini-review/

 

Regards

Jesus R

www.sonore.us

 

Revised a bunch of times....sorry I want to get it write

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Wow thanks quite surprising Jesus. Can you run a test with 24/176.4 files to see if you have any dropouts. Mathematically is appears you will have issues, I just want to see if you can get the problems to happen. Thanks Jesus.

 

[vortecjr]

I need some time, but will do!

 

Jesus R

www.sonore.us

 

Revised:

I listen to some 24/192 and 24/176.4 and no real issue to speak of. The video actually plays, but has issues with some scenes. It's almost as if the bitrate is variable and it reaches a max, freaks out, then catches up and it's ok again. I guess the bitrate is variable for video and audio depending on whats going on. I can see the audio playing fine one moment and not another even though I did not hear any issues with the selections I made. I'm still not happy though!

 

I think I will add drives to the hdx and the audio pc and skip network streaming....

 

[Audio_ELF]

You are correct in noticing that Video is variable bit-rate Jesus - with Bluay it change change a lot depending on how much moving detail there is in a scene.

 

As for the slow DroboShare - just found a forum thread on macosx.com discussing exactly the same problem.

 

Eloise

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

I wonder if Jesus encoded some 24/176.4 audio in WMA format with VBR if this would have any effect.

 

It just occurred to me that the problem may be related to USB's CPU intensive (compared to FW) design and the fact that the Drobo likely doesn't have a powerful CPU. I believe the DroboShare still converts Ethernet to USB correct?

 

[HarryHWombat]

@Jesus

 

are you sure you mean bits per second and not bytes? I own a drobo so am obviously interested. Googling around "droboshare performance" show tests yielding 6MB write and 8MB read performance over gig Ethernet. This is not good for video editing but shld be fine for a 720p stream. Maybe your issue is elsewhere. Or I may have missed something.

 

[compaudio1]

I've been holding off on purchasing a Droboshare because of performance problems with FW 2nd Gen. Drobo hooked up to my iBook G4 via FW400 (hooked up via USB 2.0 might be better but I need to do more investigation). I have (4) 1 TB WD Green Drives (5400 rpm) with 1.97 TB used space (73%) and 743.90 GB free space (27%) for a total of 2.69 TB. I consistently get the Mac "spinning ball" throughout the day. I can select a playlist & the majority of the time it plays flawlessly, but more times then should be happening I get delays between songs & the colorful Mac beach ball begins to spin. This also will happen when I'm doing editing (putting release date, composer names, etc. in the info). I'm not saying this happens 24/7, but at somewhere between 30% - 65%, especially when I'm doing editing. I'll be adding a 2 TB Hitachi 7200 rpm drive to it shortly, maybe this will help the performance since I'm running out of free space + the faster rpm. Any thoughts?

 

[vortecjr]

We had a crazy electrical storm this morning and I'm only running on dial up:(

 

Elosie, thanks for your feedback and the link! Sorry if I was rough around the edges the other day regarding the little dell thing!

 

Chris, not sure of your question. The Drobo connects to the DroboShare via a usb cable. That is all you can do. If I run the usb into my laptop no issue with the video. If I run the usb into the DroboShare I have issues with the video. The playback of wav above 24/96 seemed fine in a quick test.

 

HarryHWombat, let me get back to you on this....I'm going to call them again after the Holiday!

 

compaudio1, I was using the usb up to the point when I added the DroboShare. So no info on the firewire. Actually, I have disconnected the Droboshare and Im back to usb to the laptop. Anyway, before I even did the video test I noticed the Drobo/DroboShare combo to be slower than the usb direct to the laptop. If it helps you I'm running two green wd 1tb and two green 1.5tb drives. Its split into two drive letters of 2tb and each has about 500gb used. It seems to me that the ripping into the Drobo/DroboShare was fine, but not sure if that is because of the laptop or the software adjusting for the speed into the Drobo/DroboShare. From time to time I have noticed what appears like the drives comming out of a suspended state. Being green it can be a lower power mode or spin down. I have to read up on it.

 

thanks all

 

Jesus R

www.sonore.us

 

Revised

 

[HarryHWombat]

The Drobo - my Drobo at least - will take maybe five seconds to come out of what I assume is a semi-sleep (a nap?) state . I have never noticed any pauses or gaps when streaming although tbh I mostly stream ripped TV and movies through the AppleTV so buffering may hide this issue if it exists.

 

@Jesus

 

6MB/s should be ample to stream movies ripped or otherwise. What speed network do you have and is it wired or wireless. Is it an "old" 10Mb ethernet?

 

[vortecjr]

not to discount what you said about being able to play back it back, but I does not work and the only thing I changed was the DroboShare vs the laptop.

According to Bob Hudson at Sign Video, 'DVD Video specifications say that the maximum combined bitrate for audio and video must be 9.8Mbps or less." That is 9.8 Mbits/s to be clear. The noted read/write range in my opening post for the Drobo/DroboShare combo (that I revised and then revised again) is around 6Mbits/s. I downloaded a bitrate program called 'Bitrate Viewer' and analyzed one of the vob files from Casino Royale and this is what I found. Average biterate = 4.784Mbits/s and max bitrate = 8.849Mbits/s. Looking at the chart the bitrate exceeds 6 and 6.5 and even 7Mbits/s many times over.

The lan connection is wired with cat 6 and cat5e cables and pretty sure it connects at 100Mbits/s.

It does not seem to be a function of the usb, firewire or the ethernet protocal that have much higher bitrates, but the DroboShare itself as Chris noted. It seems that ethernet connection of the DroboShare is limited to around 6MBytes/s even though it can be connected to a 10/100/1000 network. Its silly, but thats the deal. PS the direct usb connection is limited to around 24MBytes/s even though usb 2.0 is much more as you know. This is why many have noted that the units are slow.

 

Jesus R

www.sonore.us

 

Follow up with Drobo:

I spoke with Drobo twice today and they are sticking to a data transfer rate of around 10MBytes/s for the Drobo/DroboShare combo. They also informed me again that the combo is not meant for fast transfer rates. I asked about the video bitrate being much less then the 10MBytes/s data transfer and they insist that you can't simply do the math on this. I don't know what to think because I don't understand the logic! As for hi resolution audio they advised a test....

 

Anyway, I am returning the DroboShare and dropping an extra sata drive in the audio player and will stream the video via my laptop.

 

[HarryHWombat]

Clearly something is wrong somewhere as you have seen for yourself the independent tests showing 6MB/s write and 8MB/s read - more than enough for (probably) multiple high definition streams. I would guess it can only be either a faulty DroboShare or a faulty network. have you tried just a raw copy between two computers and see how fast this goes? Do you have an old ethernet hub somewhere which is stalling the network down to 10Mb/s ... ? The 6Mb/s you see is mighty, mighty close to what one would expect to see over a 10Mb/s network - could be a coincidence, of course, but also a mighty hint.

 

[catastrofe]

FWIW, I run a Drobo/Droboshare and have not had any problems streaming music files up to 24/192.

 

[vortecjr]

I had the DroboShare in the return box ready to go and opened it agian for some final tests. I ran video on the laptop via ethernet and no issue. I ran video directly on the hdx and no problem. I ran video on my sonore 2 player on the video partion via ethernet and no problem. Then I ripped a 50% copy of the Casino Royale movie into the Drobo and played it on the HDx via ethernet and that played just fine. Well the video looked crappy...hehehe. I conclude that the HDX just does not like the way high bitrate video comes directly from the DroboShare for what ever reason.

 

catastrofe, how is it going....have not seen you in a while. We pretty much rules out the audio being a problem. I started out thinking it might be an issue due to some mixed up units/data, but it seems to be fine.

 

Jesus R

www.sonore.us

 

[catastrofe]

Going well thanks. I've been enjoying my music/system so much (thanks to everyone on this site) that I just don't spend much time on the forum anymore.

 

 

[vortecjr]

First, return the the DroboShare to its maker:) Sorry Drobo, but it does not work for "me".

Second, build an alternative! Yes, you heard me right! Lets build an alternative. I desided to install Ubuntu in one of my fanless computers (you can use an old pc) and share the drive on the network. It was actually pretty easy. These are the steps:

1. Download Ubuntu

2. Burn the image on a cd/dvd using nero or clonedvd or other dvd burning software.

3. Insert the cd/dvd and install the operating system. You will need to give the pc a name and password. I picked DroboShare....hahaha.

4. When Ubuntu first start up it will want to update, but nothing complicated....just let it be.

5. Connect the drobo or what ever else your using to a usb port and let Ubuntu auto find the drives.

Note: It's best to have a mouse, but you should know the mouse is a strange thing in Ubuntu. You have to press the ctrl button to see where the pointer is. If anyone knows how to fix this let us know:)

6. When Ubuntu finds the drive and places it on the desktop double click on it to explore it. Then right click on the folder you want to share and select the sharing option. In this dialog box I selected to share the folder and allow guests to share, but not to allow users to change the folder. So again select the first and third check box only IMO.

7. At this point you may get an error asking the administrator (fyi that's you) to make a change to the smb.config file. Copy the phrase it asks you to insert into the smb.config.

8. Open the terminal by clicking at the top the desktop on Applications/Accessories/Terminal.

9. In the terminal type sudo gedit /etc/samba/smb.conf and insert the phrase into the section named "global settings" I made it the next line under [global]. Save and exist the editor. Then exist the terminal.

10. Repeat step 6 and you should be golden.

 

I tested my HDX with the Casino Royale and BAMM!

 

Jesus R

www.sonore.us

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Great to hear Jesus.

 

If you're feeling nerdier you can try FreeNAS. It's based on BSD and can install to the smallest flash drive you can find if you want, or any hard drive.

 

http://www.freenas.org/

 

[vortecjr]

LOL and the crazy thing is I actually did feel like a nerd....hahaha. I think the flash drives are to slow though and you would be better off with a small partition on the HDD.

 

Regards

 

Jesus R

www.sonore.us