I'm looking for an external box with room for two 3.5" SATA drives in a RAID 0 array. I had one of these. On the surface, it seemed like the perfect solution. Firewire 800, compact design, and sturdy. But, the fan is loud as hell and the external power brick died after less than 1 year of use.

I am looking for something similar, but with either no fan or an incredibly quiet one. Firewire 800 is preferred, but FW400 or USB2 is acceptable. I already have a Dlink DNS-323 doing the duty of the failed Galaxy box, but I don't entirely trust it and it doesn't appear as a local hard drive in Windows (important).

Any opinion of just using two individual external FW800 boxes and spanning a volume across the two drives in Windows? I have done this before in NT 4.0 and it seemed stable, but I don't know what the performance or data integrity issues might be. This windows box has a 2.4GHz P4 (non-hyperthreading) and 1GB of RAM.

The PC is compact, doesn't have internal SATA, and all expansion slots are populated. Bummer. The compactness is no longer needed, so it may be more realistic to just get a more up-to-date computer and stuff the drives inside.

I have been looking at the Drobo myself for a few months. It's pricey but the reviews I have seen say it's pretty quiet and fast. Also has the advantage you can scale it up with your future requirements.

Only problem is the cost of the unit, it's a little on the steep side

Cheers

Cris.

The drobo looks lovely, but it is incredibly expensive.

Some reviews say it's quiet, some say it's not. $450 is a lot of money to gamble with.

I think the early units had a noisy fan, but the newer FW800 boxes are much better.

They are closer to $600+ here, but it seems a great solution.

How about a DIY NAS Box ??? I use FreeNAS, and it has worked a treat for over a year now. I suppose the only problem there will be speed, even with Gbit Ethernet you won't be anywhere near FW800. But you would be able to select your fans etc... but I guess you may as well go with your own suggestion and build a new PC

I have never had much luck with anything with an external brick PSU, I just had the 2 I have fail on my mini ITX servers, I think they are flawed by design.

Cheers

Cris.

A friend of mine got a Drobo and ended up returning it because he felt it was unreliable. Dunno whether that was a fluke.

I've got two LaCie two-disk RAID gizmos that have Firewire and they've been pretty good to me over the past year that I've been using them -- one for all my bulk storage needs and the other as a TimeMachine backup. I never really notice the fan noise, although I do notice the noise of the disks spinning up when I sit down to use the computer. (Particularly since I'll type something like 'ls' and will need to wait ten seconds before the disk can respond.)

How about setting up a pc with some disks in it in RAID config, and then run OpenFiler on it? OpenFiler is free software based on Linux, and is capable of acting as an iSCSI target. You can then link to this RAID pc via your LAN. (iSCSI initiators are included even in Windows) The biggest advantage is then that this 'external' RAID setup will turn up as a local disk on your PC.

I have a NAS box now, but it's a Dlink DNS-323. It has gigabit ethernet, but I don't think the hardware has enough horsepower to even saturate a 100mbit connection. At least it feels incredibly slow with multiple disk operations going at once. It also sometimes won't detect my drives properly when booting from a power-off state. A reset always fixes that, but it doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy inside... especially since I'm already taking a gamble with RAID 0.

I know I could build a NAS box, but until Archeon mentioned iSCSI, it didn't fit the strong preference that the array appears as a local drive within Windows. I will look into that a bit, but running another computer isn't really practical. There is a power draw and added noise concern.


Those do look nice and I am open to a pre-populated box, but I currently have two matched 750GB drives with no home. I would rather put them to use than get something like that if possible.

How about this case then? Based on Mini-ITX, so it's small (10.24" x 5.51" x 10.24"). It also uses an external power supply (like a laptop does). It can house 5 disks though (4 x 3.5 and 1 x 2.5). This should about meet your needs.

interesting....

Well, I made a quick decision and bought the Drobo with FW800. Let me tell you how I arrived at this conclusion...

The device is $450 here which is expensive, but it looks really sweet. Sweet enough that Cris is pining over one and his total cost is closer to $600. I will admit that I didn't do much research before pulling the trigger, but I felt like I had to act quick.

You see, I was reading through this thread on fatwallet earlier in the week. Basically, Microsoft is offering 30% cash back within 60 days on Paypal buy-it-now items on ebay purchased through a link from live.com. Luckily, I remembered this a couple minutes ago and went into hyper-spend mode before (with my luck) Microsoft pulls the plug.

It turns out I will be getting the Drobo for $339.98 after the $138 cashback from Microsoft. I figure that if the Drobo blows, I would undoubtedly be able to sell it for more than $339.98 in 60 days time. I also will have two more 750GB drives (total of four) if I cast the DNS-323 aside. Four 750GB drives sould yeild 2TB in the Drobo, so that's a plus.

I'll let you guys know how I make out.

Green with Envy

That's an amazing price, just short of £200 and they are £330 over here!

Will be very interested to hear what you make of it, I have read some very good reviews but you never know who to trust so a first hand account will be very interesting.

Cheers

Cris.

How are you getting on with the Drobo Rob ???

Cheers

Cris.

My Drobo-owning friend found non-trivial problems with the Firewire interface that wasn't present on the USB interface. The symptoms were consistent with slow memory leaks. It ran for a while then slowly ground to a halt. After making a stink, they sent him a new one, with some hardware revs in it.

Meanwhile, two weeks ago, one of my two LaCie 2-disk striped RAID things stopped working. You'd hear one disk spin up while the other wouldn't. I did the LaCie tech support and they diagnosed that my external power supply had partly failed. They sent a new one, I swapped it in, and it's now magically working again.

What can I say: I'm impressed so far with LaCie.

I only received it this week. The build quality of the thing is very high. The actual function of the device is a little odd.

When setting up for the first time (in Windows), the software asked if I would like a maximum volume size of 1TB or 2TB. These two options were presented on a slider, but the slider had blank space for maybe 3 or 4 more choices. It looked like this:

I don't know if this is a limitation of Windows XP, but I would have liked to make a single volume the total size of the array.

So, I have four 750GB drives in the Drobo. This comes 2.03TB. Annoyingly, the extra .03 of a TB causes the Drobo to get assigned a 2nd drive letter. The 2nd drive letter isn't limited to 30GB though, it's listed as 2TB. I suppose this is reserved for future expansion. I have not done any tests yet to see what happens if I stick more than 30GB on the 2nd drive letter. My assumption is that the space will be made available as needed to either the 1st or 2nd volume.

If you do not use the Drobo agent software, knowing how much space is left on your Drobo would not be very easy:

This is the first 2TB Volume. Currently, all data is on this volume.


This is the second 2TB volume that was created due to the .03TB in my array over the 2TB limit. As you can see, Windows reports a 2TB volume.


This is the Drobo agent software. Although there are two volumes, it reports the space available in a single pie chart. An icon in the task tray also displays this pie chart.

The FW800 cable supplied with the Drobo is very thick and doesn't like to bend. I have another one around somewhere, but I (naturally) can't find it at the moment. The connector on the Drobo-supplied FW800 cable also doesn't "snap" into the Drobo or my FW800 card. So, I have 2TB of data connected with a cable that is merely laying in the ports.

The Drobo isn't silent, but it's not loud either. The drives will power-down after some idle time. The fan seems to cut off completely during this time and will cycle on and off when there is activity. When on, the fan is audible but not annoying. I can live with it.

The power-on sequence powers on each drive in succession about 1 or 2 seconds apart from each other. The Dlink DNS-323 did the same thing, but the Drobo is ready to go much, much quicker.

Data transfer with the Drobo over FW800 is dramatically quicker than the DNS-323 over Gigabit. I did not take any scientific measurements, but it feels like night and day. It's not the fault of the network connection either. Accessing the Drobo with my MacBook Pro (over 802.11n) is far snappier than accessing the DNS-323. It's safe to say the DNS-323 is not a speed demon.

Overall, I'm happy with the Drobo. However, I'm glad I didn't pay full-price for it. The agent software seems less developed than it should, considering the beauty and hefty price of the hardware. I'm not in love, but I think I'll keep it since it seems like the best option for me at this time.

The 2TB limit is the next major roadblock in the storage world, and it comes from several different issues. Under Windows, 2TB is the largest partition size allowed on those 1980's MBR formatted disks, with GPT formatted disks being the way to solve the issue. Various filesystems have had limits in the past at 2TB as well, but most have fixed these issues as enterprise storage arrays were hitting 2TB ages ago.

More info for various operating systems here.

Sounds pretty good to me, I better get saving!

I assume the 2TB limit is the same in OS X ???

I see they have started community development for it, so maybe some improvements will be made to the software there.

Cheers

Cris.

Depends. If you are running any of the past 4 major versions, 2TB won't be a problem when using HFS+. Other file systems will depend on the limits there (NTFS, FAT32, SMB, etc). For an Intel mac, the MBR limit still applies, so make sure to partition it using GPT and not MBR. I believe Disk Utility will default to GPT in Leopard.

Mac OS 10.4+ = 8EB - Holy crap. Just about 8 Million TeraBytes. In my world that's called "unlimited."

Mine arrived yesterday.

I ended up buying one after spotting amazon.co.uk were selling them for under £300, the price has since gone back above £400 ??? Drobo are also doing £35 cashback in amazon vouchers at the moment, so that seemed a slightly better deal than normal.

My first impressions are the same as your Rob, the unit is very very well put together. It weights about twice as much as it looks like it does. The fan is a little louder than I would have liked, but doesn't seems to come one at all during normal use and it totally silent when powered down, taking only a few seconds to come back to life when needed.

Data transfer seems high, I only have USB to try it on at this point. I have currently loaded it up with 2 1TB Samsung drives, they were good value at a little over £70 a piece and should provide enough space for at least a year. I think I have found my long term storage solution in Drobo, first impressions are good it's here to stay!

What is less impressive is the mac Dashboard software, and I would have liked some backup solution included for that price. Can anyone recommend a good solution for OS X ???

Cheers

Cris.

I actually have my Drobo connected via USB2 at the moment as well. There were some odd occurrences when plugged into FW800 that didn't leave me feeling secure. I believe these problems are related mostly to Windows and my (possibly) crappy FW800 card.

As for the Windows issues, Microsoft really likes making life more difficult than it has to be. I didn't realize the Drobo was acting slowly at first, because its primary function is acting as data storage. Then, I tried running a VM located on the Drobo. HOLY F***, was it painfully slow! That's when I stumbled upon the 1394b slowdown issue post-XP SP2.

I applied the patch (which wasn't needed in SP3), and then adjusted the registry settings. That worked to give me FW400 speeds, but why do I want that when I have FW800 ports?

So, in search of a solution, I came across UniBrain. They publish a freely-downloadable 1394b driver for Windows XP. In fact, TI (who made the chipset on my cheap card) suggests using the UniBrain driver for their chips. Unfortunately, the UniBrain drivers and the Drobo don't seem to get along. XP would see the two Drobo drives, but report a corrupt filesystem. That didn't make me feel too secure, so I'm running on trusty USB2 at the moment.

Another issue with Windows and the Drobo shows up when you boot Windows with the Drobo turned on. In most cases, Windows will not recognize the Drobo's 2nd drive without disconnecting and reconnecting after boot is complete. This is really silly and apparently not uncommon with FW devices supporting multiple drives.

Another problem which I can probably blame my cheap FW card on is shutdown. When the Drobo is connected and you attempt to soft-power off the computer, it will reboot instead. Really annoying.

Everything is working as it should with USB2, so I'm inclined to just settle on that connection. I may try FW800 again, but I will probably get a better card first.

Time Machine.

I've been using it on 4 Macs now, with all my home ones backing up to my ReadyNAS. Several times now I've also used various recovery options, and there hasn't been a problem yet. This includes just single file restores, and also complete system recovery after booting to the Leopard DVD.

It's simple, it works, and it's built into the OS. Really can't find a good reason for something else on OS X now.

I haven't upgraded to Leopard yet, I couldn't justify the cost for my old Macbook. I am sure Time Machine will be very useful if I get a new iMac in the new year

Until then, maybe I will have to stick with a manual backup method of some kind.

Cheers

Cris.

A Mac friend of mine with a Drobo on his Mac has reported Firewire problems as well, and is now using USB. I'm tempted to conclude that it's a Drobo problem, not a Windows driver problem.

Another update on the Drobo.

I decided that the fan was just too darn loud. I completely disassembled the thing (sorry, no pics) and installed this fan. The result is very good. Well worth the $15.99. I can now hear my PC over the Drobo.

I have another 1394b card on the way and will let you know how that goes.

The Drobo just doesn't seem ready for prime time, even though its in its second rev.

I can't get over the fact they offer Firewire 800 and Windows in all cases is unable to get any decent speed. With stock drivers you get at most Firewire400 speeds. Using Unibrain drivers with a supported card (perhaps their own would be best) people are getting higher speeds, but nothing to write home about. PLUS, the unibrain driver is limited to 2TB where I've read the stock driver isn't.

Moving over to the Mac you'll still find a lot of complaints about slow speed and disk corruption.

The idea is cool, but it just doesn't seem to work (at least not reliably), despite their marketing.

I'd love to move to a 4 drive box in the future - as early as spring. Right now I've got two 1.5TB Seagates with updated firmware in a RAID 1 box from NewerTech (Guardian Maximus). I'd like to get a Unibrain PCIe FW800 card so I can start using that instead of USB since it's connected to my Windows-based PVR which runs on a mobo without any FW ports.

I was very much looking at a drobo as a nice solution to having the disks externally in a small box instead of using an onboard raid controller. A bonus is that it supports 4 drives where most onboard controllers on workstation mobos only support 2.

The external RAID is currently being used to store media for my PVR as well as all the music for my SlimCenter. The idea of updating to 4 disks is so that I can also start using the same "box" for the TV capture/recording.

I seem to be having very few problems with mine. Admittedly I am no power user so I haven't even tested the speed over the USB on my Macbook, it's fast enough for me

The latest 1.3 firmware seems to have addressed a slight problem I was having with loosing the connection to the Drobo sometimes, and I have found that it is a little happier if it doesn't share a port on my hub. What product doesn't ship these days with the odd bug here and there, they are being addressed by Drobo.

The fan can be quite noisy I suppose, but most of the time when I am using it the fan on the macbook to spun up full anyway (running CS3 is enough to do that on it's own!) Thanks for the tip on changing the fan Rob, I may look at doing that myself ready for the iMac later in the year.

Cheers

Cris.

Here are the instructions I used to disassemble the Drobo:
http://mimbler.blogspot.com/2008/04/how-to-take-your-drobo-apart.html

Wow, that's more involved than I thought!

Thanks for the link.

Cheers

Cris.

I have one last update on the Drobo saga. It turns out that the SilenX fan I used to replace the stock fan was a poor choice. The drives ran noticeably hotter and I came home one day to my Drobo lit up in red lights. I presume this was due to thermal issues, but the Drobo really doesn't give any feedback about the fault.

I ended up re-replacing the fan with the Noctua NF-R8 that was used in the tear-down I posted earlier. The Noctua is only slightly louder than the SilenX, but the drives stay significantly cooler. After a month of constant access, the Drobo is humming along as happy as can be.

As for, Firewire... [rant]It's really shocking how Windows does not play well with Firewire at all. I put a card in with a completely different chipset and I got the same crap. The UniBrain drivers helped a bit with respect to Drobo, but they were completely useless for my Canopus ADVC110. I use the Canopus thing to import analog video as DV. Before I sold my MacBook Pro, it worked swimmingly. In Windows, it was producing flaky results whether I used the new or old 1394 card.[/rant]

I decided to just stick with USB2 for the Drobo and, for the price of a meal, I picked up a 350MHz PowerMac G4 from a friend. A 1GHz G4 upgrade chip is on the way, but even without it, the PowerMac just works. Someone got it right, and it was a long time ago.

Thanks for the update Rob. I've just scratched the Unibrain Firewire800 card off my shopping list for now. I have a RAID1 box connected to a Windows system right now with USB2 which I would have loved to connect with FW800. I'm not willing to put up with flaky access to the box though.

As for Drobo, I still love the idea, but I'm hoping they come out with something new that addresses the (low) speed issue in a meaningful way.

Whatever you do, don't try to put Leopard (10.5) on that PowerMac. While a lot of things work great with Mac OS, I do not recommend Leopard for anyone with a PowerPC system. Too many stability issues and absolutely nothing terribly worthwhile over top of Tiger (that actually works well on a PPC system anyway).