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| Moderated by: chrisbet, | ||
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richw
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Scott Kelby has been publicly recommending Drobo for years, but has done an amazing U turn and released this: http://scottkelby.com/2012/im-done-with-drobo/ Seems he has been hit with the problem I remember a lot of folk here describing - the proprietary system which when it fails leaves you high and dry. Interesting for me as I was considering getting one to replace my cheap NAS. I imagine this will hurt their business quite a bit as he is well read in the circles that might have bought their product. |
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Robert
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Very interesting Rich, thanks for posting. It leads me to wonder if we really do NEED to keep 15 Terrabytes (times three?) of images in constantly accessible storage. Much of it could reasonably be archived and probably never looked at again except perhaps on rare occasions. It would take a very long time to review that many photographs, let alone do anything meaningful with them. There must be a HUGE amount of repetition in the archive. I went through my collection last year and reduced it from 36,000 images to 12,000 images. I could probably halve that again without disposing of anything I would regret loosing. When it comes down to it there are probably only a few hundred I would actually treasure. In my opinion many of us make a rod for our own back. As time goes by and file sizes steadily increase, the storage issue is going to get much harder to solve. So far most of us only have around ten years worth of digital images and the early ones are tiny. This to a large extent can be eased by not keeping 15 or 20 versions of the same image. The best 1, 2 or 3 should be chosen and the rest discarded. As for Scot's problem it's easy to recover the data, simply swap out the drives which he says are OK into one of his good Drobo housings and extract the data, then junk the Drobo's. Proprietary formats are not suitable for archive, or even reliable storage because when they go wrong you are stuffed. I use a Time machine for short term backup, but NOT archive. All my important data is written to multiple HD's in multiple locations. Actually digital data is a blessing not a curse. It's easy to copy verbatim multiple times and portable. Perhaps because it's so easy to copy we retain too much dross? My mind goes back to my records of botanists who have hand drawn and written accounts of their unique discoveries in the early days of botany, many of these drawings and writings have been lost by worm, gnawing rodents, dampness, fire, shipwreck, theft and even at Kew, lost in files never to be seen again. Only recently some priceless drawings were "discovered" in the wrong files. One account was of a botanist who made many discoveries made many beautiful drawings and wrote an account of his travels and discoveries, his house burnt down, his daughter helped him to re-write the account because he lost his sight, but the drawings were lost forever. At least we can clone our data and images and store in multiple locations if it really matters. |
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TomOC
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richw wrote:Scott Kelby has been publicly recommending Drobo for years, but has done an amazing U turn and released this: I haven't looked at prices lately, but when I did a few years ago, the Drobo units were way more than even LaCie. I bought a 4tb LaCie and it's been flawless. Rather than have real RAID in one box, I opted for 2 boxes at two locations and use an old very small drive to transport the incremental updates and add them to the second drive. Even with a great RAID system, you run the risk of destruction of the location. To me RAID only makes sense for transactional databases that need real time back up to perform the mission. Photo backup is actually pretty static and doesn't get much benefit from RAID imho... Tom |
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richw
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Robert wrote:Very interesting Rich, thanks for posting. I agree Robert. I'm actually thinking about online storage as backup for myself, but only for a very much trimmed down set of photos. I think I might have some free capacity available with my recent Adobe Cloud subscription, but I am also considering paid drop box or Amazon S3. Currently I have most of my photos on at least two drives, one is raid mirrored and the other(s) are various hard drives I sporadically backup onto, but it is hardly a structured approach and they all live in our house, so one fire and they're all gone. The only set I have properly backed up are our wedding photos, I have a full set in Dropbox. |
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Doug
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I've never liked the Drobo |
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jk
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Well I just got a Drobo S unit (4 disks) and it is really easy to use but not as sophisticated as my Buffalo TeraStation Pro but so much simpler to use. I would like a 8 disk version (Drobo Pro) and will get one when I feel the need. The units are very well made but seem to be less sophisticated in their networking. I need to try and get the DroboShare unit that I got to work. I cant seem to get it seen by the DroboDashboard software. In truth I havent tried very hard as I want the unit as a large physically attached disk rather than a NAS unit. I just read the Scott Kelby article and the responses to his challenge for an alternative solution. Key thing is technology fails but to have a backup x2. If it is valuable in digital world then make three separate copies on three different drives! |
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Iain
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I feel rather primitive I just use lots of external HDs  |
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jk
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Iain wrote: I feel rather primitive I just use lots of external HDsSo do I, as I also have had problems with sophisticated hardware. Sometimes the KISS principle is the best way. However sometimes you do need to have a very large disk space unit where you can upload stuff into and this is where RAID and JABOD units work well. |
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Constable
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I don't think you can use DROBO as NAS. It can only be accessed from one computer - although naturally you can share it from that Ed |
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jk
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Constable wrote: I don't think you can use DROBO as NAS. It can only be accessed from one computer - although naturally you can share it from thatI have a DroboShare unit that is meant to allow network attachment for the unit. http://www.drobosolutions.com/droboshare.aspx But at present I cant get that working. I know that there have been reports of difficulty in getting this part working on the forums that I have read. I do like the idea of a Drobo Pro 8 bay unit  |
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Ralph G Speer
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JK, On getting Drobo to work on network -- Plug it into your network and install Drobo Dashbord on each computer you want to use. You should see all the Shares on the Net. Put a check mark in each Share you want to use. Go to Start/Computer -- The share should be there. Ralph |
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jk
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Ralph G Speer wrote: JK,Thanks Ralph. I'll be trying that in the next day of so when I start my copy over from one of my RAID units to the Drobo. I prefer to be able to do it over the network on a machine other than my main one. At present I cant get the DroboShare to be seen by the Drobo Dashboard. |
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Eric
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Iain wrote:I feel rather primitive I just use lots of external HDs You are not alone Iain....works for me. |
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rmoser
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Part of it appears to be associated with the use of green Seagate drives. Green drives do all sorts of tricks to use less power which makes them slow and relatively unresponsive. It's a simple fix; don't use green drives. You'll use a bit more electricity but things will run faster and more reliable. Rob |
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jk
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rmoser wrote: Part of it appears to be associated with the use of green Seagate drives. Green drives do all sorts of tricks to use less power which makes them slow and relatively unresponsive. It's a simple fix; don't use green drives. You'll use a bit more electricity but things will run faster and more reliable.Yes indeed I already found this with one of the new 1TB drives I got as this was a Green drive. I had to copy all the content of one of my simple in external USB box drives off so I could get to use a standard Seagate Barracuda 1TB drive in the Drobo unit. The Drobo continues to misbehave with not seeing drives in all slots. |
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