Adding music to Drobo FS is super slow

[eggers]

I have a Drobo FS attached to my Mac Pro with Gigabit Ethernet. The iTunes library is located on a volume on the Drobo FS. Adding music files by drag'n'dropping them on iTunes is almost always extremely slow, and I can't figure out why. Adding MP3s and MP4s are usually fast, but larger files like ALAC rips og high-res ALAC almost always copy extremely slowly. Copying the same files from the Finder gives the expected speeds of around 20 MB/s.

 

Drobo Inc. have been utterly unhelpful. Have anyone experienced this before, or have an idea of what is going on?

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

I talked with the Drobo guys Tuesday and have a Drobo FS on the way for review. I may be able to help once the unit arrives.

 

 

 

[Akapod]

For reasons I can't explain, Dual Disk Redundancy really slows down data transfers on my DroboPro. My solution was to turn it off until the initial full back-up was completed, and then turn it on.

 

[eggers]

I only have single-disk redundancy on mine, so that's not the issue here. Time Machine back-ups are mega hyper slow as well. A Time Machine incremental back-up of the boot-disk is 5+ hours.

 

And regarding the Drobo support: Expect snooty replies and absolutely no solution from Drobo. Despite the many months they had the Lion beta available they didn't develop a fix for these issues. Lame!

 

[Bones13]

If I understand the Drobo concept correctly ( I also run a DroboFS, and have a couple of non-NAS units), is that in addition to having your file transferred to disk space on the Drobo, the small computer chip in the Drobo makes an additional copy, in compressed format, in the system. Additionally, this compressed copy has to be put on at least two of the disks in the Drobo.

 

If you think about it, thats the only way that the unit could recover from losing a HDD, and lose no data.

 

Might explain why the slowness. IMO the Drobo units trade speed for reliability and ease of use.

 

[eggers]

To quote my original post:

Copying the same files from the Finder gives the expected speeds of around 20 MB/s.

 

So no, that is not the reason in this case.

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi eggers - I tried to reproduce your issue using several different NAS units including the Drobo FS. I believe the issue is related to iTunes. When I use the add to library function the file copies are much slower on all my my units than when I use a straight file copy using Finder.