Review: Drobo Storage Robot
Image provided by Data Robotics, Inc.
In this digital age, I’m a big fan of redundancy & backup. I discussed my backup strategy a few months ago in a previous post. I think it’s important to have a plan. One aspect of mine was a product that I had read a lot about for a few years, but only started using as of this past December. That of course is my Drobo. It has been an integral part of my redundancy & backup strategy, and I want to share what I have discovered to be my likes and dislikes about the Drobo over my last 4 months of use. Keep reading to find out more.
To say that I have been super pleased with my Drobo would be an understatement. This little device has been great. It’s by far the best external hard drive that I have ever owned. For those that are not familiar with Drobo product line, let me give a little explanation. In the world of the IT nerd there exist a standard called RAID. RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disk. That is a fancy way of saying that you can use a bunch of hard drives to look like one big hard drive. Usually you have to use some sort of software or expensive hardware controller cards to create RAID storage. There are various forms of RAID, but most people that setup a RAID do so because it is able to write a single file to multiple hard drives at once. This means that if one hard drive dies that another drive should have the same data on it and you are still able to access it. So not only does it prevent you from losing the file but it also allows you to access it so you don’t miss a deadline. For a long time setting up a RAID was a complicated process. Rarely was it turn-key. You had to be pretty tech savvy and have lots of time to get everything just the way you wanted it. Drobo changed all that.
The Drobo setup has to be the most simple and fastest RAID build I have ever completed. From the time I opened the box to having an accessible hard drive on my PC was less than 15 minutes. No one was more shocked by this than me. After pulling the device out of it’s box, you see it has instructions built right into the packaging so you don’t miss them. There are 4 bays on the standard model that I bought. I installed a drive into each bay to get started. By “installed”, I mean that I slide it into the front openings until it locked into place. No cables, no power cords, no opening the device, no screw drivers, no mounting rails, and no playing with jumpers. The Drobo is made for the hard drives to be hot swappable, which means that they can pop in and out for replacement without having to disconnect the power or taking down access to the drive.
Once the hard drives were in place, I installed the software provided by Drobo. This only took a moment, and once installed the software started prompting me as to what steps to take next. When it was ready, it told me to connect the power to the Drobo, and then to connect the Drobo to the PC. It then recognized the Drobo was connected but was not configured. It went straight into asking me how I wanted to set it up. I was already familiar with the settings I wanted to use, but it had great prompts for laymen who might not already know how they want to format the drives. Basically, anyone that can read could set this up in no time. In minutes I had an icon on my desktop that was ready to use.
So, now that I was setup I just had to use it. My Drobo is used to keep all of my photography files, all of my personal financial content, all of my family video, and all of my backup Lightroom files. Needless to say, this means that I access it often and with lots of data. As such I’ve had the chance to put it thought it’s paces and get what I feel is a pretty real world view of it’s strengths and weaknesses. So, first up are the strengths. Aside from awesomely easy setup, the best thing about the Drobo is that it just works. I’ve had 2 software updates for it. One was an update for the desktop software that accompanies it, and the other was a firmware update for the device itself. Both installed and updated perfectly. No complaints here. Second, it looks good and only has useful information displayed. The front has 10 blue LEDs across the bottom. They light up to show you the percentage of the disks that are full. At the moment, I have 4 lights lite up meaning that I’m using about 40%. A quick look into the Drobo Dashboard software confirms that I am 37% full. It also has a status light for each of the drives that are installed. Green means it running and it’s healthy. Healthy means that the data on it is secure and the drive is not full. It also has Amber and Red indicators as well that tell you when there is a problem. The Dashboard software even has email alerts that I can configure to give me instant info when there is an issue that I should attend to. One aspect that I love a lot is that it is expandable. When you format the drive, you tell it you format so that the computer sees a 16 TB drive. That is 16 x 1000 GB. Even though you may not have that much storage space in it now, the Drobo acts like it does so you can upgrade to larger drives down the road when you need more space. AWESOME! So to sum up the positives, it’s easy, intuitive, it just works, provides just the right amount of info when needed, has a great software suite to support it, and is expandable/upgradeable.
So, with all of these positives there can’t be any negatives right? Well, almost. I have a few little nit-picky things that I would be remiss not to tell you. I will preface this by saying that I don’t see any of these are reasons not to use a Drobo. I love mine even with it’s few short comings. That said, let’s get to the nitty-gritty. First, it is constrained by its bus speed. This means that it is only able to move data as fast as the type of connection you use. The base model like mine comes with USB 2.0 or Firewire 800 connections. Neither of these are slow, but they are not as fast as eSata or GigE. You will notice this when you have a large amount of data to move. Basically the same speeds as any similar external hard drive you might have used. Drobo released a new model about 5 months ago called the Drobo S. It now includes both a 5th drive bay and an eSata connector for much faster transfers. It also cost 2 – 2.5 times as much as the standard Drobo. I personally don’t find the speed constraints to be a deal breaker, but for those that want it to be as fast as an internal hard drive might consider the Drobo S option. For me this option made almost no sense at all being that my iMac does not have an eSata port. While we are discussing price, I will mention that the Drobo lineup is not cheap. The base consumer model like mine is about $350 for the device without hard drives. If you figure another $400 for 4 -1TB hard drives and you’ve got a cool $750 into it. Those that have looked at RAID storage know that this is not a bad price for this type of solution. Moving to the Drobo S easily puts you over $1000 mark. So while I think this is not incorrectly priced, there is no doubt that it is a serious investment. Next, the thing is not quiet. Again, not a deal breaker, but something to know. I mean, this should be expected to some extent. It has 4 spinning disk and a fan to keep them cool so you do know it is there. For what it does, I would say that the noise is low but not inaudible.
Lastly, and the only thing that really drives me nuts, it has a staggered hard drive spin up and power saving spin down. This means that when the computer wants to access the disks, that if they are not already spinning, the Drobo will start up one hard drive at a time. While starting all the disk at once can put one heck of a power spike on the unit’s power supply, the staggered start up means that I have to wait a few seconds every time the PC need to access it. I emphasize the PC needing to access it because often I’m trying to open parts of applications that want to ask me where to save a file or where to open a file, and while I know ahead of time that the Drobo is not the device or location that I’m looking for, the application waits for all the disk to be spinning for me to be able to proceed. Basically, I have to wait 4-5 seconds till the Drobo is accessible again for any of these apps to move forward. If the Drobo is not accessed for 15 minutes then all the drive will spin down (or stop spinning) to save power. While the Drobo Dashboard software is very useful, it has no setting that allows me to adjust either of this issues. My biggest hope with future releases is a way that I can manage this pet peeve.
Update: After some research, I have found out that the Drobo Pro series and Drobo S now have options in the Dashboard to adjust the spin down time, to the point that you can prevent it from ever spinning down. This would mean the disk are always accessible and eliminate the problem. Both versions of the original Drobo do not have this feature. Upon further investigation, I found some “hacking” that you can do to prevent the Drobo from spinning down. Here is an article I found on how to do this in Windows, and another for OSX. Obviously this adjustment is not for everyone, but something to help the adventurous until Drobo develops a fix on their own. As a disclaimer to cover my own rear-end, Dan Edwards is in no way responsible for anything that may happen to your Drobo by you attempting either of the hacks in these linked articles.
So past the limitations that I expected and my one little spin up annoyance, I think the Drobo is a very sturdy device and worthy of use an about any computer setup. If you are a photographer, or are in any other field that creates large amounts of data and needs constant access to that data, then you need a Drobo. You want a Drobo. Trust me. It has managed a ton of my data so far and come through with flying colors. I expect it to be a part of my data management for a long time, and is certainly a recommended solution as a part of yours.
To read more about the Drobo product line, visit http://www.drobo.com/products/index.php
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