# Drobo



## JBtheLD (May 28, 2008)

I have all my RAW files stored on a brand new external Western Digital World Edition RAID 1 NAS drive, connected via a Network cable to my Windows Vista PC.
My lightroom catalogue(s) are stored on my local drive.
LR 1.4.1 really struggles with this set up.
I believe that this is down to the Network interface / software RAID etc. of the drive, as previously discussed in these forums.
Anyway it's so slow as to be almost unusable.

So given this background, has anyone any experience of the Drobo storage drive system? www.drobo.com

It sounds like this may be the long term solution to all our storage needs, if it is quick enough.

Can anyone recommend it for storage of RAW files, and for using with Lightroom?

John


----------



## Braders (May 29, 2008)

John

My understanding it is not recommended to run LR via a network.

http://www.lightroomqueen.com/community/showthread.php?t=1497&highlight=network+drive

Might be why its slow.


----------



## JBtheLD (May 29, 2008)

Hi Braders, thanks for your reply and comment.

The use of a network drive isn't my question - as you have pointed out that has been fairly well covered previously, even in some very detailed threads of mine some time ago. (Apparently, software RAID controllers also can have an impact on speed / usability.)

Specifically, I'm asking for comments from users of DROBO (www.drobo.com) - "the world's first robotic storage system", which is not a NASD. Drobo houses up to 4 SATA drives of any capacity, even mixed capacities, to be combined in a housing connected to PC, Mac or Linux systems via USB 2. The 2, 3 or 4 drives appear as one large drive to the system, it doesn't use RAID, and yet as the individual drives fill up or start to fail they can be hotswopped out, without tools, for any bigger drive without loss of data - check out their website: www.drobo.com The website shows a movie continuing to play off the drives while individual drives are added and removed, without dropping a frame, suggesting to me that the system must be pretty quick.

So having bought a NASD and found it to be somewhat slower than I would like, I don't want to purchase a replacement for it (possibly Drobo) and then discover that other users have found problems with it. Hence my request for recommendations from Lightroom users who are using Drobo.

Many thanks,

John


----------



## DavidZvi (Jun 7, 2008)

I have the setup you describe, I just finished setting it up. I'm happy so far.

But I am not using this configuration for "current" projects. I shoot a wedding, create a catalog for that event and work on the files locally. Then when I am done and deliver the event I import that catalog to my generic wedding catalog. The generic one is setup with jpg, raw, and psd's on the drobo while only the catalog is local. 

Another thing to notice though is the specs of my new system. As I said I am happy so far, but I have a bit more horse power to handle the data so the only bottleneck I have is the usb speed. If they could only come out with an eSATA version I don't think they be able to keep up with the sales.


----------



## DavidZvi (Jun 7, 2008)

If speed is your main concern the get an eSATA external and card (some come with then).


----------



## JBtheLD (Jun 7, 2008)

David,

Wow that's some spec!

Thanks for your replies.

I think I may hold off until there is an eSATA version of Drobo.
I sent an email to the people who make the Drobo, but unfortunately I haven't had a reply yet.

John


----------



## DavidZvi (Jun 8, 2008)

JBtheLD;155'6 said:
			
		

> David,
> 
> Wow that's some spec!
> 
> ...


 
I would think they are getting requests for eSATA daily if not more often.


----------



## rcannonp (Jun 8, 2008)

I looked at the Drobo when I was looking for a backup system. That it is USB only was a major turn off, but I also didn't like that I don't know what the thing is doing. Maybe I didn't read the description enough times. I ended up getting a 2 bay unit and cloning one drive to the other. It may be a little more work on my end, but I feel better knowing exactly what is going on with it. I end up with two drives that are exact copies of each other and can deal with them as I see fit. I was never clear how the Drobo deals with the info as the drives fill up. It seems that you end up with 3 or 4 drives that may have varying data on them. If you want to make a copy of your data and take it off site, how does it deal with something like that?


----------



## DavidZvi (Jun 8, 2008)

From a system stand point Drobo is seen as one large drive. So copying your data for an off site backup is straight forward.

As for knowing what it is doing, I had the same feeling to a point. Then I started to read about Microsofts home server. This also does not use "standard" RAID, but something else that they have come up with. I do DVD backups for off site and have an external that use to be my main local backup before I got Drobo. So I have 2 local copies and one off site. I try and do the local backup every to every other week and the DVD once a month. So I should be covered. Anything that is within a week to a month is also still on my internal drive, hence the external and off site timing.


----------



## rcannonp (Jun 8, 2008)

DavidZvi said:


> From a system stand point Drobo is seen as one large drive. So copying your data for an off site backup is straight forward.



Well, I guess that's my problem with it. I don't know how all of the pieces fit together into that and how the data is arrayed onto them. Would you need another HD setup to make a separate backup or can the Drobo handle that? Is there one particular drive in the setup that is the backup and can be popped in and out as needed? It seems like there would be issues with redundancy and cataloging the the backups.

It all makes my brain go fuzzy in a way that simply cloning one hard drive to another doesn't.


----------



## DavidZvi (Jun 9, 2008)

*LET ME PREFACE THIS BY SAYING A COMFORT LEVEL WITH TECH IS A PERSONAL THING.* There is nothing wrong with buying a computer at the big box store if you need the ability to pick it up and bring it back and say fix this. Just because I enjoy playing with chips doesn't mean everyone does or should. There are different supply chains for tech for a reason. Now that I've gotten that out of the way.

It seems to me to act as a raid 1 raid 5 like system, creating one final volume out of the parts.

If you use the Drobolator Capacity Calculator with 2-5'' and 1- 25' you a total usable space that is about 3-25''s in a raid 5 (giving 5'' available) and the rest of the 2-5'''s as raid 1 (giving another 25' of stoarge). Totalling 696.5 of available storage *





From the drobo site:*OS and hard drive manufacturers use different systems for measuring hard drive capacity. Disk manufacturers use 1 GB = 1'''3, while most operating systems use 1 GB = 1'243. This means a 5'' GB rated drive will only provide 465 GB actual capacity​RAID has been around a long time but would you really feel better knowing how the data is handled if the system failed? You can get a bad copy of a controler card and lose all your data just as easily even if you do know that there should be 2 bits on one drive and a parity bit on another. And if you have a large RAID volume you have the same limitations for backing that up. Either another large volume or multiple smaller ones. 

Back to my statement above, if you really want something with a good amount of storage, data safety, eSATA speed, easy of use then look at one of these: Lacie 2Big Dual (2-disk raid) The 2 external units I was using before Drobo where LAcie product and I've not had any problems with them.


----------



## marktyler (Feb 19, 2009)

*Linux software RAID*

One of the first things I did when I moved to a mac was take my old tower PC and convert it to a file server. I did this by installing ubuntu linux on it, adding some extra drives (it currently has 2x5''GB, 1x75'GB, OS on separate drive) and creating one big RAID 5 array using software RAID - i.e. mdadm. This solution has the advantage of   


Using existing equipment
Better fault tolerance
If the hardware (non-hard disk) fails then the drives can be moved to another machine, re-arrayed and read as the software RAID method is widely understood. Drobo, ReadyNAS et al will only work if put into another such device.

Extra functionality. I have installed
Samba for network sharing
webmin for browser based remote admin
ktorrent for file downloading
firefly media server for music sharing with iTunes

I think if you want easy, point-click, nothing to do then go with a Drobo/ReadyNAS etc or if you have the kit available go with the linux solution as it's more expandable, dependable and recoverable.



DavidZvi said:


> *LET ME PREFACE THIS BY SAYING A COMFORT LEVEL WITH TECH IS A PERSONAL THING.* There is nothing wrong with buying a computer at the big box store if you need the ability to pick it up and bring it back and say fix this. Just because I enjoy playing with chips doesn't mean everyone does or should. There are different supply chains for tech for a reason. Now that I've gotten that out of the way.
> 
> It seems to me to act as a raid 1 raid 5 like system, creating one final volume out of the parts.
> 
> ...


----------



## Andrew Hayton (Mar 31, 2009)

I have just got the new Gen 2 drobo that has Firewire 8'' and usb2. It seems quite good but does get slow when it gets nearly full. There are pro's and cons to using it but I have found out that you need to use it as a primary source and not as a backup. You need to back it up using a raid system for best file safety.


----------

