Comments on: The long-awaited Drobo review

By: Jason

Jason — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:34:39 +0000

Good point, I went and checked the specs on my invoice history from Newegg and found these:

1 TB drive = SATA 3.0 32MB cache
160 GB drive = SATA 3.0 8MB cache

Since the two 160′s were already in there and its repartitioning across a newer drive, wouldn’t it be safe to assume that data is being written to the 1.0 T drive and not the 160 GB drive?

By: SteelToad

SteelToad — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:09:33 +0000

Remember that the data is being spread across multiple drives. It can only be written at a percentage (ususally about 75%) of whatever the maximum write speed is of your SLOWEST drive. If you’ve got 3 super zippy drives and the fourth is filled with molasses, you’re probably doing all writing at 75% of molasses speed.

By: Jason

Jason — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:00:17 +0000

Good point SteelToad – that does make sense…I hadn’t thought of the online versus active factor. I should test that theory and power down one computer then connect another one…see what happens!

That said, the 4 hour rebuild time for adding a 1 TB drive still seems a little excessively long.

By: Jason

Jason — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:58:40 +0000

Um, not sure where you got the impression that I am more of a photographer than a technician. If you read my “About pages, here:

http://www.canonblogger.com/about/
http://www.canonblogger.com/about/the-blog/
http://www.canonblogger.com/about/about-me/

You’d know that my profession is Information Technology…I understand that the data is safe, but what I didn’t get is that the the notification lights go off when it’s not connected to a computer. It’s like it needs the Dashboard, and I just felt as though that didn’t make a lot of sense.

And FYI, I never claimed this to be a technical review – just my personal observations on how the Drobo is working for me. As you did note though, the long rebuild time was not something I was particularly fond of…4 hours for a 1 TB drive was just too long.

By: Jason

Jason — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:45:56 +0000

Um, I specifically stated in the review that I didn’t think the UPS could handle support of both, and since the data is more important, only the Drobo is on there. Guess I needed to make that clearer! (Or you missed it during your listen…LOL)

By: SteelToad

SteelToad — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 12:18:07 +0000

I think perhaps you are confusing OnLine with Active. Online, indicates that it has a connection with the computer. If the computer ‘goes away’ or is disconnected, it has to go offline, that doesnt mean that it’s not working. If you’re on a phone call and the other end hangs up, your phone might say that you’re disconnected, that doen’t mean that your phone isn’t still working.

By: Charles

Charles — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 11:43:33 +0000

This is why photographers shouldn’t be doing technical reviews. Once the data is written to disk it’s safe, even if the case of a power outage. I’m not sure how exactly the drobo does writes, but if there is a power outage while you are writing files or maybe moving files you might lose information in just those files it’s currently writing. That shouldn’t be a problem in most modern systems.

What is more of a concern is that the drobo only supports single redundancy and not dual. With today’s large drives and long rebuild times raid 5 (or similar protection methods) aren’t good enough.

By: Parkylondon

Parkylondon — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 11:25:35 +0000

Surely the crux of the problem isn’t the Drobo. It’s an underpowered UPS? I have a Drobo and it’s simply the best IT related item I have ever bought. If your UPS can’t handle both surely it’s your problem and not Drobo’s?