Unless you want support or reliability or really anything other than to throw money at a problem like some uneducated shmuck. Also Anandtech didn't mention it, but Drobo is bankrupt - not just morally, which they are, but they're a sinking ship running out of cash, forcing buyers to shell out up to $230/incident even while your unit is under warranty. RUN, do not walk, away from this.
If they worked, they would be some of the best, most innovative things ever. They do not. The worst thing is that I can actually see a couple of ways to get it to work, but it would mean as a start they would need to give up their "BeyondRaid" BS.
I have to second this view. Their products are based on ease-of-use and both reliability and performance have come a distant second to that. The fact that there is no way to get data off your drives in the event of a unit failure was always a HUGE no-no for me, but what made me drop the Drobo I was using in the end was the awful performance. 5 drives performing worse than a pair of RAID-1 should never happen.
Even if they were solvent, a one year warranty for a $600+ device that stores all of my data? No thank you. I've seen better warranties on toothbrushes.
Our experience is that the other vendors aren't much better. Having a power supply failure should have been trivial but it took us over a week to extract one. Had we used a cheap server we could have been up and running the next day as the parts are standard.
that is true of anything. There are a lot of devices with lower bandwidth connections that are cheaper. Conversely, Thunderbolt stuff is generally cheap for 10Gb/20Gb throughput. Too bad Drobo doesn't take advantage of that at all.
Did you test performance with its drives nearly empty or with them somewhat full? A more alarming problem with older units than the proprietary data format you mentioned was that its performance went to hell as the drives filled up.
I wish I had tested with lots of files in the DAS (something we actually do in our NAS reviews). But, all these tests were done with the drives freshly initialized.
I can see how having a large number of files could cause Drobo's data protection scheme to become really slow. Will check this aspect out if I get a chance to review a Drobo NAS in the future.
This is what I always ask myself. I currently run WHS 2011 with StableBits Drive Pool and if I take out the cost of the drives, I didn't spend any more than that on a case, motherboard, CPU, and power supply, and it does a lot more. The simple fact that it replicates my folders across multiple physical disks without regard to individual disk sizes, AND those files are readable on any computer that can connect a SATA drive and read NTFS, makes it far superior to any of these proprietary solutions or RAID options. Add in that it does deduplicated backups of all my workstations so I can do anything from single file recovery to bare metal restore of a machine, and it only gets better. It's plenty fast enough to stream HD video to multiple media players. It runs headless and unattended. What is bad is that Microsoft dropped it and has no equivalent replacement - Server 2012 Essentials is NOT it.
Are you currently hoping that despite WHS 2011 itself being EoL as of this month that the underlying Windows Server OS will still get patched next month meaning you won't have to replace your box asap? (Unpatched Windows: Just DON'T)
I've seen that belief a lot on home server forums - and while personally dubious - have ended up suffering enough attacks of Real Life the first part of this year that I haven't gotten a replacement of my own up and running yet. At this point I've more or less decided - by default - wait and see what happens on the next Patch Tuesday; and if the OS gets patched just swap in the new HDDs (the only part of the new box I did buy) in for the old ones to get a few more years out of my current hardware.
I've got WHS2011 with RAID-6 and I've been putting off/ignoring the fact that its EOL time for the system. Its just a backup device nowadays so I guess as long as its behind the firewall it will be ok, but to be sure I will make sure it doesn't ever access the outside world lol
Any problem elsewhere on your lan could pass the infection on. If I don't get OS patches next month; I'll definitely be rushing up a replacement. Dunno if I'll do a QNAP/Synology appliance, or just W10 + StableBit Drivepool + 3rd party backup software. At this point, even aside from the price, I'd be reluctant to buy Server 2012 Essentials as MS"s theoretical replacement due to it's end of life clock being about a third used up.
Is this just wishful/optimistic thinking on your part or has MS actually said they'll continue providing patches to the underlying OS of WHS 2011?
I tried pinning MS down on MSDN forums a few months ago; but all I got was links to the official life cycle page which shows April as the last month WHS2011 is to get any patches.
No, the lifecycle support for Server 2008 is until January 2020, security patches only. It's on that same lifecycle page. Security patches for 2012 R2 go until January 2023. If I'm still running this same hardware (already almost 6 years old) in another 7 years, it will be either a miracle or else I will have stuffed it in a closet and forgotten it's running. It's a first gen I3 I built in early 2010. I just retired a first gen I5 workstation that would actually make a better server (the mobo has 8 SATA ports - the I3 board only 6 so I have a dual port PCIe card) but that one dates from late 2009. Server 2016 is at Tech Preview 4 so I'll plan on new hardware and a new server next year.
I use DrivePool too, with 5 Mediasonic ProBox USB3 drive bays, which makes swapping out failed drives easier than when they were in the PC. If you have to ditch Home Server, you can still use DrivePool on a desktop version of Windows.
As you mention, DrivePool is safer than Raid. I had 2 drives fail at the same time, and only lost about 5% of my data. If I had set up DrivePool to keep 3 instances of every file, I would have had no data loss at all. On RAID, it would have been a total loss.
Just an FYI: RAID is not a substitute for backup...it was never intended to be. With a good backup scheme, there is no reason why you should lose any data even with a single disk setup.
...someone willing to DIY it, one way or another there are cheaper ways to do this. But for the non-techie or less-techie who doesn't mind spending the money, this could be a good solution. There are also thunderbolt cards available for PC's .
That's sort of the whole point of WHS - it's really for the non-techie. You don't have to build your own box for it, you can use off the shelf computers, and the whole thing is actually pretty dumbed down with a big dashboard control panel that shields you from the usual Windows Server management stuff. That was the whole point of the product - there were complete off the shelf solutions too so you wouldn't even have to install an OS, just plug it in and turn it on. Plug some more drives in to expand storage, size didn't matter. What's funny is most people I know that have DRobo or similar are those with rather high levels of technical skill, not the PC illiterate.
WHS2011 w/ DrivePool by itself doesn't replicate the full functionality of a RAID setup. At best DrivePool can do RAID 1 type protection through file duplication. That leaves you with 50% storage efficiency. However, you can easily implement SnapRAID to do snapshot parity calculations on your drive pool w/ multiple drive redundancy (i.e. RAID 5/6 type protection). Its not real-time protection, but its good enough for me at the moment.
I'm also using WHS 2011 with Stablebits drivepool, for the same reasons you do. I have 7 hard drives of various sizes in my drive pool (bought a $25 SATA card to give me more ports). Besides automatic backups of 8 computers in my house, it is also a minecraft server, ftp server, media server, etc... I'm still wondering what my next move will be, but it will probably be a Windows 10 system, with Stablebit drive pool. Not sure what to do about autoamtic computer backups, but a program called "Ur Backup" that looks promising and is open source.
I replaced my WHS 2011 with Server 2012 R2 Essentials running on the same hardware. It has the same client backup and bare metal restore capabilities as WHS2011. I didn't trust WHS2011 anymore given its low adoption and impending EoL, particularly for Win10 clients. Windows Storage Spaces provides drive pool functionality, but overall I found better performance in just mapping shares to different physical drives. I particularly recommend putting the Client Backups folder on its own physical drive, as disk response slows when a client is doing a backup. For server backups, I run Crash Plan on the server to do cloud backup of all the drives.
I'm looking at an alternative solution for my parents, possibly a generic NAS with Macrium Reflect or Acronis True Image running on the clients. Bare metal restore has saved me too many times to rely on file/document backups alone.
I was amazed when I upgraded my primary machine from Win 7 to Win 10 and the WHS client just worked, same as it always has. There was an update for Win 8 which seems to have enabled operation with 10 as well, I already had the Win 8 update to the client installed on my server since my laptop had 8.1 before I installed the Win 10 update.
Exactly. I have a full blown desktop, dropped in 3 Seagate ES 4TB disks into a IcyDock and am running a virtualized CentOS with raw disk access into a RAID5 array. Currently testing it for stability to make sure it's going to work right before taking down my standalone setup.
Lower latency than a GigE NAS and thus better performance in everyday usage Significantly lower power consumption Reliable standby and wakeup in sync with the connected Computer (unlike WOL) Setup simplicity, almost zero configuration required, firmware updates are completely hands-off.
Simple. Most people reading Anandtech are not in Drobo's target demographic.
Readers here always compare it to some file server they set up themselves for low cost, but never factor in the many hours to learn all the hardware and software setup (e.g. learn ZFS) and then make it stable.
A unit like the Drobo removes the vast majority of those hours, but not for free. It's not a bad or particularly expensive product, just not for you.
It is still more expensive than a similar off the shelve NAS, which doesn't require much knowledge to set up. (not more than drobo). Plus with NAS you don't need a PC with Thunderbolt. But yeah. the target audience is people that need huge amounts of fast direct attached storage. It's a different use case than a NAS.
Have you ever tried to get a broken NAS fixed? For a business losing you data for a week or more while you deal with the dreadful support offering from NAS vendors is a disaster. A PC based system allows you get up and running the next day.
That line of thinking works right up until you try to get support for your dead box 6 months outside of warranty. Then there is suddenly nothing user friendly about the device.
If you are the type of users who is goign to build their own NAS, and have the technical know how, not much here is going to sell you. The only thing may be the dynamic way you can add space with additional HD's.
From a guy who owns 2 drobos and 2 synology's, the only benefit over that is easy of use, flexible expandibility, and the apps. Note though, drobo's apps are worse than the synology so if you are looking for an app, a good chance synology will have it, and the drobo will be a hassle
I guess for the average consumer -- it's the easy setup and stuff. To me, it makes zero sense. I run ZFS and manually manage it all, but that's just my preference. I would rather configure everything directly and stuff. Plus I am not dependant on any proprietary hardware. I can move my drives to any linux or solaris machine and get my data. I am also not relying on hardware raid, which would mean I am tied to that particular manufacturer's raid cards. Drobo could go out of business and then if your box failed you are pretty much SoL.
Simplified Redundancy with Mixed Drives off the network. Mission critical data, Trade Secrets, Computer code that China would like to hack, etc... Kept off a network, even a local network is only as strong as it's weakest link.
Plug and play. If you're at all willing to learn a bit, there are many guides that will walk you through getting the same feature set for less (and the big advantage of not being locked into a proprietary format which is a big reason why software raid is preferred in data centers).
Ugh. Drobo is THE WORST. I picked up a DroboFS around 5 years ago. It was abysmally slow compared to similarly-priced competition (QNAP, Synology). It was extremely buggy --- I had not one, but TWO separate, non-concurrent updates render the box completely useless within the first year and a half; I managed to rollback the updates, and am still running an ancient version of the dashboard. I have absolutely zero faith in their ability to code... Drobo's support was TERRIBLE, too; I remember it being some of the least-helpful official tech support I'd even encountered. They featured "DroboApps" quite prominently in their marketing as an "easy" way of expanding the functionality of the box. It turned out that the "DroboApps" were all third-party, and were not officially supported by Drobo; if you needed help figuring out how to set up/configure/troubleshoot them, Drobo's official line was "*shrug* sorry, you're on your own". Sorry, what? I downloaded these apps directly from your microsite, and you won't even help he figure out how to properly INSTALL THEM!? Adding insult to injury, most of the DroboApps were absurdly complex for a layperson (Drobo's target demo) --- a lot of the DroboApps required you to have moderate-to-advanced experience with SSH and command-line. On the positive side, the Drobo community was legendary. There was one guy (Ricardo, IIRC...?) who took it upon himself to pickup all of the balls that Drobo had dropped, offering proper tech support (he was the guy who helped me restore functionality to my FS after the botched updates), detailed instructions on how to deal with the DroboApps; he even wrote or modified a bunch of Apps. Also on the plus side, the FS is still working --- I replaced it with a Synology box a few years ago, but am still using it as a target for Synology backups. In fairness, it's possible that a some of those issues with quality, support and corporate culture may have changed over the past 5 years...
tl;dr F*** Drobo. They're the worst. Run away from their products as fast as you can.
I had a droboFS....I have to agree, it wasn't the best iteration. But the next version the Drobo5N is actually a great piece of hardware. I love both of mine, and they are simply great for the home.
But, if I had to choose, I would go with a Synology over the drobo. I might love my drobo5N, but my Synology 1815 will be in my hands until the day I die. Great software, lots more support I find in forums, better apps, everything.
Absolutely! I've got an 1813+, and absolutely LOVE it. I can't think of a single reason why anyone would buy a Drobo instead of, say, a Synology or a QNAP...
I can't believe I had to scroll down this far to find a critical comment. I had a Drobo 5D and it was the single worst purchase I have ever made in my life, bar none.
It would routinely just drop the connection, particularly if you were copying data over. That in turn would make it decide it needed a scrub, which would take any where between 8 hours and 9 days, no matter how empty the volume was. The Drobo Dashboard would lockup routinely, and also impose a system modal freeze whenever you attached or detached anything to a USB port. If you were unluckily plugging in while it froze, your system was dead and a hard reboot was required. It marked six drives failed - drives which are working flawlessly in my post-Drobo box, with not a single SMART error.
But the absolute worst was the "Customer Support". I came back to a completely dead Drobo after a short trip with lights flashing on it. I called, was told that despite the fact that it said 1 Year Phone Support, it was really 90 days, and that I was out of that, so I could pay to speak. I submitted an email, had a reply a week later, submitted a reply instantly, had a reply which clearly had not read anything two weeks later, repeat - UNTIL THEY RAN OUT THE WARRANTY.
Fuck Drobo. Worst products in existence, and Anandtech should be ashamed to put their name on a review of a company as horrific as them.
PS - those of you saying "oh Drobo allows you to combine multiple volumes, nothing else does" ... BULLSHIT. On Windows you have Storage Spaces, Drive Bender and Drive Extender. On OS X you have O3X pools. On Linux you have btrfs and zfs pools. You want a NAS that does it? Get a ReadyNAS x02 series and enjoy your btrfs pools. All the benefits of Drobo, none of the wrist-slicing shit, open standards and bitrot protection.
You did read the concluding paragraph, right? I specifically mention what they need to do to gain the trust of tech-savvy users.
Before writing a review, I do look at various forums to see what issues are being faced by users (particularly if the product being reviewed has been around for a long time). It appears that the Drobo 5D indeed had firmware issues, but Drobo has fixed them in recent releases.
You mention exactly two things: TB support under Windows and end-user data recovery. You do not address Drobo hardware or software stability, you do not address the absolutely despicable customer service, you do not address Drobo's eagerness to mark drives as faulted even when there are no faults, or even the inability of Drobo to recover from the simplest of errors. And god forbid you want two volumes on your device. You cannot have done more than a cursory glance through the web on the basis of what your writeup contains. I even ended up buying a second Drobo (a third generation 4-bay) thinking that I got unlucky with my first but no - the lockups and dickish CS remain problems, and it took complete wipes of all the computers to get them running again.
Moreover, you do not mention even once the fact that Drobo the company is functionally bankrupt and running on vapor. Your suggestion to even consider this is akin to a responsible car journalist recommending a Saturn - the product is unsupported, defective and unreliable and you should withdraw the review, or begin by stating that it isn't fit for use.
Drobo is a marketing-based fear-seller: they prey on your fear of losing your data, encourage you to get locked in to a proprietary and broken system that doesn't allow for recovery and then make you pay for their fuckups. To add insult to injury, it isn't even a backup because it protects against literally only a single failure mode - catastrophic disk failure - which a single external drive will protect against as effectively.
You've certainly had bad luck, I've not experienced anything like you've had with the Drobo; neither dickish CS reps or lockups. I've certainly not had it mark disks as faulty when they aren't. Anytime it has marked a disk as problematic I've stuck it into another PC and run the HDD providers disk test tool and its proved to be the case (the basic test might have passed on a couple, but then extended tests would always fail).
Do you have a link to anything to backup your claim that they are functionally bankrupt? I've not heard that anywhere.
What is the deal with all of these other 'RAID' techs out there? Sorry, but for the price they could use legit RAID hardware or even ZFS platforms. I'm not a fan of the newer Un-RAID and BeyondRAID systems. I prefer the proven flavors.
I myself have two RAID boxes, both 8 drive. One Hardware RAID6 and one RAIDZ2 (ZFS). Both are faster then I have network for (even with 4x1G teamed lines although one does have a 10G connection also) and as NAS boxes work wounderfully and cost a heck of a lot less then this on both counts. I just don't get these.
I am with you, I run ZFS at home as well and I think ZFS is amazing, but it does have one glaring fault and that is it is difficult to (properly) expand an existing volume. Sure you can add a new vdev, but then your data is all on the first one and it will not automatically migrate the data so it is evenly spread across the vdevs. Plus these alternate raid schemes allow you to use different sized disks, but, at least to me, that is a much smaller deal.
True. But when I am expanding a volume, generally I am making a new box to retire an old one so it's 8 new disks, etc. I do not tend to expand an existing system. Just me though. Perhaps the next itteration of my box will use 12. I wouldn't go beyond that though with RAIDZ2. 16 drives with RAIDZ3 maybe, or just two RAIDZ2 8 drive volumes. Depends how much of your data is really backed up and how fast you need it should you lose a few drives.
We all know RAID is not a backup. Well with as much data as I have, I can't afford would-be 'backup' so for me it's all I got. (OK, a few parts are offsite but not all of it). So if I lose 6 disks at once, I lose the array. But that's a lot of disks and I keep a daily checkup on them and replace them every so often with a whole new setup. My 2TB versions will be retired probably this year (sooner if a single disk fails. I'll have a new system built after shipping time and the system will be offline during that time till the new build. Have to lose 3 to lose that array.)
Is it a backup? No. Is it secure? As secure as I can make it given the size we are talking about and the budget I have. Does it take a lot of knowhow? Nope. I looked up ZFS and did it via google and hardware in a few days. (Retired gaming computers and 8 new drives. I've sent better stuff to Good Will honestly). I did have a bit more money then compared to now but... The drives are the expensive part of any of these builds in most cases. While I'm surrounded by 'old' drives, I wouldn't trust them in any sort of an array for any real use.
Expanding a volume by adding 1 or 2 disks probably doesn't make sense for something as massive as what you've got. It does if you're running only a handful of disks. Adding a 6tb drive to a 2x3gb mirror can (FS/etc permitting) get you a 6GB mirror pool for half of what buying new drives would cost.
My current WHS 2011 box started out 4 years ago with 2x3tb drives. Last summer space was getting tight; and being reluctant to buy a new drive for something I was planning to retire soon in the face of potential end of life (see commentary above) I just stuck in a 1.5tb drive I had sitting around which's gotten it enough capacity to keep going. If I wasn't concerned about EoL, I'd've added a single new bigger drive to accomplish the same for longer than the yearish the small addition's gained me. Since I never found the time to buy the rest of a replacement; assuming the optimists are right about no real EoL, next month I'll probably migrate everything to the pair of 6tbs I did buy in December. If I didn't already have 2 of them, I'd only be buying one now. Either case would probably be followed by adding a 6-12tb disk in 2-3 years (depending on what my capacity trend looks like). That'd probably be the final end of the line; due to the age of the mobo/cpu itself (I'd probably build a new system from scratch at that point instead of trying to migrate the existing os/disks); but would be three expand/resizes over the lifespan of the system as a whole.
That isn't true. There are thunderbolt drivers for windows. They are just extremely uncommon for devices. They are STARTING to hit a few motherboards now though... Very few.
Sorry, but I have used Seagate / LaCie Thunderbolt devices with Windows without issues.
The 5D, on the other hand, connects and is recognized by the Thunderbolt software as a device not certified for use on a PC. But, Drobo Dashboard doesn't recognize the unit at all - says nothing is connected. Windows Disk Management doesn't recognize any new drives either.
I also confirmed with Drobo's CTO that Windows support for Thunderbolt on the 5D is never coming.
You said "Thunderbolt ports work only on Mac OS X. (clearly spelt out in the specifications, though)" which isn't true.
You're now talking about Drobo specifically which most people here even think is garbage so... What's the point. I don't have one to test on the Intel devices but it's a moot point as I would never buy one anyhow. If they don't care, why should I.
Assuming I googled the right ones obviously. Simply put, while much rarrer for windows, they have been around. And for quite a while. I think the Intel driver is from 2014 or something for W7-8.1
Ganesh, is there a possibility that you could look at snapraid? I'm curious to see how it performs relative to the other solutions (like unraid, for instance), especially when it comes to bit rot and disk loss. I know that their are tools that are designed for the fs devs that will stimulate various behaviors (bad cables, bad controller, etc) which would make this test easier to perform. One more fs you might be interested in is bcachefs (written, mostly, by former googler Kent Overstreet). To my knowledge, it's the only fs written outside of the filesystem layer in Linux (it works below the fs layer in the block layer). Its got a number of fascinating features and its design is extremely unusual. https://bcache.evilpiepirate.org/
ZFS is simply not ready for *consumer-level* use unlike traditional RAID.
Call me when the flexibility, performance and low-power nature of traditional RAID (both mdadm and hardware vendors) is matched by a ZFS system.
Pretty sure btrfs has better chance to replace traditional ext4 RAID in consumers from COTS vendors rather than ZFS for *consumer* use. Enterprise is a different story.
It is a matter of how much time you can invest in a review and return on that investment. The vendors play no role here.
Performing further tests with that hardware would be great. I'd love to see how various setups perform (that is, it'd be nice if you imaged Linux, *BSD, and windows to test how their solutions compare.... including robustness, as I mentioned). It would be a big undertaking but I've not seen anything like that before and it seems like AT's audience would be interested.
The outside access stuff has been turned off by Microsoft dropping Windows Live several years ago. None of the other options that are current offer everything WHS does, the backup being key. I have an unlimited Crashplan account so I COULD back up each machine individually, but that means a lot more bandwidth utilization from the way it is now, which is the WHS backing them all up and deduping the data BEFORE it goes to Crashplan. And the recoveru is not nearly as convenient - with WHS you can mount any selected backup as a drive and just copy files off it. All backups are incremental and it automatically links them together so you just pick which date you want to recover from and you see the state of the whole drive as of that date, even if on that actual backup, it only backed up a tiny fraction of your files. My machine is more than capable of running Server 2012 R2, but no version does what I need (and WHS was cheap - definitely worth paying for). I could theoretically run WHS in a Hyper-V VM under 2012, but that makes doing the drive pool much more complex. Maybe VMware with passthru storage with all my storage drives.
I've had 2 Drobo units (both 4 Bay, 2nd and 3rd Gen), and generally speaking I've had a good run with them. The 2nd Gen was horribly slow, but then I wasn't putting stuff onto it that needed fast access. I was backing up (with an external single disk as an extra paranoid backup) data and videos, and streaming those videos off it. When the fan died and the cost of getting an out of warranty repair was nearly as much as buying a new 4 Bay drobo, I opted to get the 3rd Gen which is much faster be it over Usb 2 (that my server has) or USB 3 which my Hackintosh has.
I like the Drobo because it is easy to mix and match drives and slowly increase the size over time as disk prices come down. IIRC (this was prob late 2007 or 2008) it was the easiest option for setting up an expandable backup/storage. I am a computer techie (and programmer by profession) but was also a stay at home dad of a 2 and 1 year old at the time who didn't have the time to look into building my own backup solutions with RAID or windows server or anything like that. I just wanted something that was fire and (mostly) forget.
Their SW is pretty poor and I miss the old version which updated the menubar icon with the actual disk state rather than a static icon. HW wise I've only had two problems, the first was on the new 2nd Gen, the power supply was borderline sufficient and under strain would cause the Drobo to reboot. They sent a new power supply out quickly and it was sorted in a couple of days. The second was that the fan was dying and very loud on the 2nd gen, but it had been going for 6 years well. I may yet try and replace it, I had found a blog where someone else had done it, but its not particularly a user replaceable part.
Don't believe a word Drobo say. Their devices are just USB-bridges. They are dumping a load of flawed devices. Their support is the worst i have encountered in 35-years working in the field of IT. Their software is written by a blind-baboon, their quality-assurance staff were either bribed or drinking Tequila all day long. Their senior staff are insolent, argumentative and down-right jerks in many cases. Don't give these idiots your money. You have been warned..
I've a couple Drobos and would like to chime in. 1. Have not had to use support (they have just worked for the last 4-5 years).
2. I can replace a bad drive without reconfiguring, managing, the box. Pull drive. Replace and it rebuilds. IIRC not necessarily the case with the others. Many require backing up, and rebuilding the volume.
2. I can pull drives from one drobo, and put them in another and my volume just shows up and works. IIRC thats not an option on most raid boxes
3. I can change the size of the volume on the fly. I can add bigger drives, and the volume knows what to do.
Things may have changed but the last time I looked at raid boxes - to change the setup, meant wiping the array, which means moving (and having a spare place to move) a dozen or so terabytes of files, and then moving them back. That's a no.
I connect one via USB, and one via FW800 - neither is a speed demon, but not noticeably slow by any means. File transfers speeds are comparable with standard drives. Newer models have a SSD cache.
I'm just a dude, with lots of data, and its been safe for years on my 2. I've had 1 drive failure, and after replacing the drive, it rebuilt just like I expected it to. Just replaced the drive and let it be. Lights turned green, volume was rebuilt.
I'm surprised by the strongly worded protests. Interesting.
I have a Drobo 5D, had it for a few years now. It's not really worth it IMO. Here's why:
1) The thing is damn slow. While windows asks a sleeping drobo to wake up, sometimes it can lock the entire system up as it waits for a response. Since this thing has 5 disks thats like 20 seconds, and it happens multiple times a day. And I only use it for storage, I don't actively use it. I can get like 70MB/s out of it.
2) You can't get data off if it dies. And I've had mine crap out once in less than 3 years of ownership where it dropped some piece of data, and windows could no longer read the filesystem.
3) If you use Windows Image Backup to it, it apparently causes issues with the system booting. I have mine (8TB configuration) and I cannot boot my laptop with it plugged into my Dell Docking Station. I have to push power, pop my machine off the dock, wait for it to finish UEFI boot, then put it back on, or it just locks up. This may not be the fault of the drobo (I see it at home with a 4TB drive, but they're both GPT/UEFI setups...) but its really inconvenient.
For the price of this (and the fact that once the warranty goes out you can't even get repair service done!) it's not worth it at all. It's fancy, but its not useful fancy.
This "review" reads like an advertisement. $600 for this thing and nowhere does the review compare it to its competitors or tell me why I should buy this thing over a Qnap device. Anandtech was so much better when they were independent.
I have a Drobo I use for my photos and misc stuff. It has been rock solid for the last couple years. It is slow as hell, and I'd really resent the unit if I hadn't gotten a great price on it. Honestly I only picked it up because of the deal, and all the NAS I looked at had too many gimmicky features I didn't care for. Recently replaced it with an OWC Thunderbay 4. MUCH faster.
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SaolDan - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
Neat!!vnangia - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
Unless you want support or reliability or really anything other than to throw money at a problem like some uneducated shmuck. Also Anandtech didn't mention it, but Drobo is bankrupt - not just morally, which they are, but they're a sinking ship running out of cash, forcing buyers to shell out up to $230/incident even while your unit is under warranty. RUN, do not walk, away from this.ImSpartacus - Tuesday, April 26, 2016 - link
That's a real shame if true. Their products seem pretty nifty, but I guess they were too expensive.vnangia - Tuesday, April 26, 2016 - link
If they worked, they would be some of the best, most innovative things ever. They do not. The worst thing is that I can actually see a couple of ways to get it to work, but it would mean as a start they would need to give up their "BeyondRaid" BS.Spunjji - Tuesday, April 26, 2016 - link
I have to second this view. Their products are based on ease-of-use and both reliability and performance have come a distant second to that. The fact that there is no way to get data off your drives in the event of a unit failure was always a HUGE no-no for me, but what made me drop the Drobo I was using in the end was the awful performance. 5 drives performing worse than a pair of RAID-1 should never happen.dougbert - Tuesday, April 26, 2016 - link
Me too! So painfully slow. Giganetwork. 10TB of drives in dual disk redundancy. Slow to write. Slow to read. I've always regretted it.mrvco - Tuesday, April 26, 2016 - link
I'm a little surprised that Drobo still exists. especially considering they seem to be suffering from the same problems as always.kaidenshi - Wednesday, April 27, 2016 - link
Even if they were solvent, a one year warranty for a $600+ device that stores all of my data? No thank you. I've seen better warranties on toothbrushes.BedfordTim - Thursday, April 28, 2016 - link
Our experience is that the other vendors aren't much better. Having a power supply failure should have been trivial but it took us over a week to extract one. Had we used a cheap server we could have been up and running the next day as the parts are standard.edward1987 - Wednesday, May 11, 2016 - link
You can find cheaper alternative without thunderbolt connection: http://www.span.com/compare/DRDR5A31-vs-DRDS4A31/3...CalaverasGrande - Tuesday, June 14, 2016 - link
that is true of anything. There are a lot of devices with lower bandwidth connections that are cheaper.Conversely, Thunderbolt stuff is generally cheap for 10Gb/20Gb throughput. Too bad Drobo doesn't take advantage of that at all.
DanNeely - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
Did you test performance with its drives nearly empty or with them somewhat full? A more alarming problem with older units than the proprietary data format you mentioned was that its performance went to hell as the drives filled up.ganeshts - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
I wish I had tested with lots of files in the DAS (something we actually do in our NAS reviews). But, all these tests were done with the drives freshly initialized.I can see how having a large number of files could cause Drobo's data protection scheme to become really slow. Will check this aspect out if I get a chance to review a Drobo NAS in the future.
milkod2001 - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
What is an advantage of this $615 empty box over regular NAS or just 4-5 HDDs raided to users liking in existing PC?rrinker - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
This is what I always ask myself. I currently run WHS 2011 with StableBits Drive Pool and if I take out the cost of the drives, I didn't spend any more than that on a case, motherboard, CPU, and power supply, and it does a lot more. The simple fact that it replicates my folders across multiple physical disks without regard to individual disk sizes, AND those files are readable on any computer that can connect a SATA drive and read NTFS, makes it far superior to any of these proprietary solutions or RAID options. Add in that it does deduplicated backups of all my workstations so I can do anything from single file recovery to bare metal restore of a machine, and it only gets better. It's plenty fast enough to stream HD video to multiple media players. It runs headless and unattended. What is bad is that Microsoft dropped it and has no equivalent replacement - Server 2012 Essentials is NOT it.DanNeely - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
Are you currently hoping that despite WHS 2011 itself being EoL as of this month that the underlying Windows Server OS will still get patched next month meaning you won't have to replace your box asap? (Unpatched Windows: Just DON'T)I've seen that belief a lot on home server forums - and while personally dubious - have ended up suffering enough attacks of Real Life the first part of this year that I haven't gotten a replacement of my own up and running yet. At this point I've more or less decided - by default - wait and see what happens on the next Patch Tuesday; and if the OS gets patched just swap in the new HDDs (the only part of the new box I did buy) in for the old ones to get a few more years out of my current hardware.
noeldillabough - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
I've got WHS2011 with RAID-6 and I've been putting off/ignoring the fact that its EOL time for the system. Its just a backup device nowadays so I guess as long as its behind the firewall it will be ok, but to be sure I will make sure it doesn't ever access the outside world lolDanNeely - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
Any problem elsewhere on your lan could pass the infection on. If I don't get OS patches next month; I'll definitely be rushing up a replacement. Dunno if I'll do a QNAP/Synology appliance, or just W10 + StableBit Drivepool + 3rd party backup software. At this point, even aside from the price, I'd be reluctant to buy Server 2012 Essentials as MS"s theoretical replacement due to it's end of life clock being about a third used up.rrinker - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
Server 2008/WHS 2011 will continue to get security patches until 2020. So we're all still good, no rush to Server 2012.DanNeely - Tuesday, April 26, 2016 - link
Is this just wishful/optimistic thinking on your part or has MS actually said they'll continue providing patches to the underlying OS of WHS 2011?I tried pinning MS down on MSDN forums a few months ago; but all I got was links to the official life cycle page which shows April as the last month WHS2011 is to get any patches.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle?p1=1...
rrinker - Tuesday, April 26, 2016 - link
No, the lifecycle support for Server 2008 is until January 2020, security patches only. It's on that same lifecycle page. Security patches for 2012 R2 go until January 2023. If I'm still running this same hardware (already almost 6 years old) in another 7 years, it will be either a miracle or else I will have stuffed it in a closet and forgotten it's running. It's a first gen I3 I built in early 2010. I just retired a first gen I5 workstation that would actually make a better server (the mobo has 8 SATA ports - the I3 board only 6 so I have a dual port PCIe card) but that one dates from late 2009. Server 2016 is at Tech Preview 4 so I'll plan on new hardware and a new server next year.doggface - Tuesday, April 26, 2016 - link
Freenas. Literally costs nothing to implement.JeffFlanagan - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
I use DrivePool too, with 5 Mediasonic ProBox USB3 drive bays, which makes swapping out failed drives easier than when they were in the PC. If you have to ditch Home Server, you can still use DrivePool on a desktop version of Windows.As you mention, DrivePool is safer than Raid. I had 2 drives fail at the same time, and only lost about 5% of my data. If I had set up DrivePool to keep 3 instances of every file, I would have had no data loss at all. On RAID, it would have been a total loss.
Ratman6161 - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
Just an FYI: RAID is not a substitute for backup...it was never intended to be. With a good backup scheme, there is no reason why you should lose any data even with a single disk setup.but yes, for
Ratman6161 - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
...someone willing to DIY it, one way or another there are cheaper ways to do this. But for the non-techie or less-techie who doesn't mind spending the money, this could be a good solution. There are also thunderbolt cards available for PC's .rrinker - Tuesday, April 26, 2016 - link
That's sort of the whole point of WHS - it's really for the non-techie. You don't have to build your own box for it, you can use off the shelf computers, and the whole thing is actually pretty dumbed down with a big dashboard control panel that shields you from the usual Windows Server management stuff. That was the whole point of the product - there were complete off the shelf solutions too so you wouldn't even have to install an OS, just plug it in and turn it on. Plug some more drives in to expand storage, size didn't matter. What's funny is most people I know that have DRobo or similar are those with rather high levels of technical skill, not the PC illiterate.owan - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
WHS2011 w/ DrivePool by itself doesn't replicate the full functionality of a RAID setup. At best DrivePool can do RAID 1 type protection through file duplication. That leaves you with 50% storage efficiency. However, you can easily implement SnapRAID to do snapshot parity calculations on your drive pool w/ multiple drive redundancy (i.e. RAID 5/6 type protection). Its not real-time protection, but its good enough for me at the moment.kmmatney - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
I'm also using WHS 2011 with Stablebits drivepool, for the same reasons you do. I have 7 hard drives of various sizes in my drive pool (bought a $25 SATA card to give me more ports). Besides automatic backups of 8 computers in my house, it is also a minecraft server, ftp server, media server, etc... I'm still wondering what my next move will be, but it will probably be a Windows 10 system, with Stablebit drive pool. Not sure what to do about autoamtic computer backups, but a program called "Ur Backup" that looks promising and is open source.voicequal - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
I replaced my WHS 2011 with Server 2012 R2 Essentials running on the same hardware. It has the same client backup and bare metal restore capabilities as WHS2011. I didn't trust WHS2011 anymore given its low adoption and impending EoL, particularly for Win10 clients. Windows Storage Spaces provides drive pool functionality, but overall I found better performance in just mapping shares to different physical drives. I particularly recommend putting the Client Backups folder on its own physical drive, as disk response slows when a client is doing a backup. For server backups, I run Crash Plan on the server to do cloud backup of all the drives.I'm looking at an alternative solution for my parents, possibly a generic NAS with Macrium Reflect or Acronis True Image running on the clients. Bare metal restore has saved me too many times to rely on file/document backups alone.
rrinker - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
I was amazed when I upgraded my primary machine from Win 7 to Win 10 and the WHS client just worked, same as it always has. There was an update for Win 8 which seems to have enabled operation with 10 as well, I already had the Win 8 update to the client installed on my server since my laptop had 8.1 before I installed the Win 10 update.ImSpartacus - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
Yeah, it's tough to swallow the cost. I've asked myself the exact same question with respect to drobo.bill.rookard - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
Exactly. I have a full blown desktop, dropped in 3 Seagate ES 4TB disks into a IcyDock and am running a virtualized CentOS with raw disk access into a RAID5 array. Currently testing it for stability to make sure it's going to work right before taking down my standalone setup.ydeer - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
In my experience:Lower latency than a GigE NAS and thus better performance in everyday usage
Significantly lower power consumption
Reliable standby and wakeup in sync with the connected Computer (unlike WOL)
Setup simplicity, almost zero configuration required, firmware updates are completely hands-off.
chekk - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
Simple. Most people reading Anandtech are not in Drobo's target demographic.Readers here always compare it to some file server they set up themselves for low cost, but never factor in the many hours to learn all the hardware and software setup (e.g. learn ZFS) and then make it stable.
A unit like the Drobo removes the vast majority of those hours, but not for free.
It's not a bad or particularly expensive product, just not for you.
beginner99 - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
It is still more expensive than a similar off the shelve NAS, which doesn't require much knowledge to set up. (not more than drobo). Plus with NAS you don't need a PC with Thunderbolt. But yeah. the target audience is people that need huge amounts of fast direct attached storage. It's a different use case than a NAS.BedfordTim - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
Have you ever tried to get a broken NAS fixed? For a business losing you data for a week or more while you deal with the dreadful support offering from NAS vendors is a disaster. A PC based system allows you get up and running the next day.Spunjji - Tuesday, April 26, 2016 - link
That line of thinking works right up until you try to get support for your dead box 6 months outside of warranty. Then there is suddenly nothing user friendly about the device.jjunos - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
Not much.If you are the type of users who is goign to build their own NAS, and have the technical know how, not much here is going to sell you. The only thing may be the dynamic way you can add space with additional HD's.
From a guy who owns 2 drobos and 2 synology's, the only benefit over that is easy of use, flexible expandibility, and the apps. Note though, drobo's apps are worse than the synology so if you are looking for an app, a good chance synology will have it, and the drobo will be a hassle
extide - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
I guess for the average consumer -- it's the easy setup and stuff. To me, it makes zero sense. I run ZFS and manually manage it all, but that's just my preference. I would rather configure everything directly and stuff. Plus I am not dependant on any proprietary hardware. I can move my drives to any linux or solaris machine and get my data. I am also not relying on hardware raid, which would mean I am tied to that particular manufacturer's raid cards. Drobo could go out of business and then if your box failed you are pretty much SoL.jasonelmore - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
Simplified Redundancy with Mixed Drives off the network. Mission critical data, Trade Secrets, Computer code that China would like to hack, etc... Kept off a network, even a local network is only as strong as it's weakest link.tuxRoller - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
Plug and play.If you're at all willing to learn a bit, there are many guides that will walk you through getting the same feature set for less (and the big advantage of not being locked into a proprietary format which is a big reason why software raid is preferred in data centers).
Derjis - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
Ugh. Drobo is THE WORST.I picked up a DroboFS around 5 years ago. It was abysmally slow compared to similarly-priced competition (QNAP, Synology). It was extremely buggy --- I had not one, but TWO separate, non-concurrent updates render the box completely useless within the first year and a half; I managed to rollback the updates, and am still running an ancient version of the dashboard. I have absolutely zero faith in their ability to code... Drobo's support was TERRIBLE, too; I remember it being some of the least-helpful official tech support I'd even encountered. They featured "DroboApps" quite prominently in their marketing as an "easy" way of expanding the functionality of the box. It turned out that the "DroboApps" were all third-party, and were not officially supported by Drobo; if you needed help figuring out how to set up/configure/troubleshoot them, Drobo's official line was "*shrug* sorry, you're on your own". Sorry, what? I downloaded these apps directly from your microsite, and you won't even help he figure out how to properly INSTALL THEM!? Adding insult to injury, most of the DroboApps were absurdly complex for a layperson (Drobo's target demo) --- a lot of the DroboApps required you to have moderate-to-advanced experience with SSH and command-line.
On the positive side, the Drobo community was legendary. There was one guy (Ricardo, IIRC...?) who took it upon himself to pickup all of the balls that Drobo had dropped, offering proper tech support (he was the guy who helped me restore functionality to my FS after the botched updates), detailed instructions on how to deal with the DroboApps; he even wrote or modified a bunch of Apps. Also on the plus side, the FS is still working --- I replaced it with a Synology box a few years ago, but am still using it as a target for Synology backups.
In fairness, it's possible that a some of those issues with quality, support and corporate culture may have changed over the past 5 years...
tl;dr F*** Drobo. They're the worst. Run away from their products as fast as you can.
jjunos - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
I had a droboFS....I have to agree, it wasn't the best iteration. But the next version the Drobo5N is actually a great piece of hardware. I love both of mine, and they are simply great for the home.But, if I had to choose, I would go with a Synology over the drobo. I might love my drobo5N, but my Synology 1815 will be in my hands until the day I die. Great software, lots more support I find in forums, better apps, everything.
Derjis - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
Absolutely! I've got an 1813+, and absolutely LOVE it.I can't think of a single reason why anyone would buy a Drobo instead of, say, a Synology or a QNAP...
jasonelmore - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
that's a unfair comment. Your qnap is not gonna let you mix a 1TB drive with a 6TB drive, and another 3TB drive.vnangia - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
I can't believe I had to scroll down this far to find a critical comment. I had a Drobo 5D and it was the single worst purchase I have ever made in my life, bar none.It would routinely just drop the connection, particularly if you were copying data over. That in turn would make it decide it needed a scrub, which would take any where between 8 hours and 9 days, no matter how empty the volume was. The Drobo Dashboard would lockup routinely, and also impose a system modal freeze whenever you attached or detached anything to a USB port. If you were unluckily plugging in while it froze, your system was dead and a hard reboot was required. It marked six drives failed - drives which are working flawlessly in my post-Drobo box, with not a single SMART error.
But the absolute worst was the "Customer Support". I came back to a completely dead Drobo after a short trip with lights flashing on it. I called, was told that despite the fact that it said 1 Year Phone Support, it was really 90 days, and that I was out of that, so I could pay to speak. I submitted an email, had a reply a week later, submitted a reply instantly, had a reply which clearly had not read anything two weeks later, repeat - UNTIL THEY RAN OUT THE WARRANTY.
Fuck Drobo. Worst products in existence, and Anandtech should be ashamed to put their name on a review of a company as horrific as them.
PS - those of you saying "oh Drobo allows you to combine multiple volumes, nothing else does" ... BULLSHIT. On Windows you have Storage Spaces, Drive Bender and Drive Extender. On OS X you have O3X pools. On Linux you have btrfs and zfs pools. You want a NAS that does it? Get a ReadyNAS x02 series and enjoy your btrfs pools. All the benefits of Drobo, none of the wrist-slicing shit, open standards and bitrot protection.
ganeshts - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
You did read the concluding paragraph, right? I specifically mention what they need to do to gain the trust of tech-savvy users.Before writing a review, I do look at various forums to see what issues are being faced by users (particularly if the product being reviewed has been around for a long time). It appears that the Drobo 5D indeed had firmware issues, but Drobo has fixed them in recent releases.
vnangia - Tuesday, April 26, 2016 - link
You mention exactly two things: TB support under Windows and end-user data recovery. You do not address Drobo hardware or software stability, you do not address the absolutely despicable customer service, you do not address Drobo's eagerness to mark drives as faulted even when there are no faults, or even the inability of Drobo to recover from the simplest of errors. And god forbid you want two volumes on your device. You cannot have done more than a cursory glance through the web on the basis of what your writeup contains. I even ended up buying a second Drobo (a third generation 4-bay) thinking that I got unlucky with my first but no - the lockups and dickish CS remain problems, and it took complete wipes of all the computers to get them running again.Moreover, you do not mention even once the fact that Drobo the company is functionally bankrupt and running on vapor. Your suggestion to even consider this is akin to a responsible car journalist recommending a Saturn - the product is unsupported, defective and unreliable and you should withdraw the review, or begin by stating that it isn't fit for use.
Drobo is a marketing-based fear-seller: they prey on your fear of losing your data, encourage you to get locked in to a proprietary and broken system that doesn't allow for recovery and then make you pay for their fuckups. To add insult to injury, it isn't even a backup because it protects against literally only a single failure mode - catastrophic disk failure - which a single external drive will protect against as effectively.
tarasis - Thursday, April 28, 2016 - link
You've certainly had bad luck, I've not experienced anything like you've had with the Drobo; neither dickish CS reps or lockups. I've certainly not had it mark disks as faulty when they aren't. Anytime it has marked a disk as problematic I've stuck it into another PC and run the HDD providers disk test tool and its proved to be the case (the basic test might have passed on a couple, but then extended tests would always fail).Do you have a link to anything to backup your claim that they are functionally bankrupt? I've not heard that anywhere.
SirGCal - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
What is the deal with all of these other 'RAID' techs out there? Sorry, but for the price they could use legit RAID hardware or even ZFS platforms. I'm not a fan of the newer Un-RAID and BeyondRAID systems. I prefer the proven flavors.I myself have two RAID boxes, both 8 drive. One Hardware RAID6 and one RAIDZ2 (ZFS). Both are faster then I have network for (even with 4x1G teamed lines although one does have a 10G connection also) and as NAS boxes work wounderfully and cost a heck of a lot less then this on both counts. I just don't get these.
extide - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
I am with you, I run ZFS at home as well and I think ZFS is amazing, but it does have one glaring fault and that is it is difficult to (properly) expand an existing volume. Sure you can add a new vdev, but then your data is all on the first one and it will not automatically migrate the data so it is evenly spread across the vdevs. Plus these alternate raid schemes allow you to use different sized disks, but, at least to me, that is a much smaller deal.SirGCal - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
True. But when I am expanding a volume, generally I am making a new box to retire an old one so it's 8 new disks, etc. I do not tend to expand an existing system. Just me though. Perhaps the next itteration of my box will use 12. I wouldn't go beyond that though with RAIDZ2. 16 drives with RAIDZ3 maybe, or just two RAIDZ2 8 drive volumes. Depends how much of your data is really backed up and how fast you need it should you lose a few drives.We all know RAID is not a backup. Well with as much data as I have, I can't afford would-be 'backup' so for me it's all I got. (OK, a few parts are offsite but not all of it). So if I lose 6 disks at once, I lose the array. But that's a lot of disks and I keep a daily checkup on them and replace them every so often with a whole new setup. My 2TB versions will be retired probably this year (sooner if a single disk fails. I'll have a new system built after shipping time and the system will be offline during that time till the new build. Have to lose 3 to lose that array.)
Is it a backup? No. Is it secure? As secure as I can make it given the size we are talking about and the budget I have. Does it take a lot of knowhow? Nope. I looked up ZFS and did it via google and hardware in a few days. (Retired gaming computers and 8 new drives. I've sent better stuff to Good Will honestly). I did have a bit more money then compared to now but... The drives are the expensive part of any of these builds in most cases. While I'm surrounded by 'old' drives, I wouldn't trust them in any sort of an array for any real use.
DanNeely - Tuesday, April 26, 2016 - link
Expanding a volume by adding 1 or 2 disks probably doesn't make sense for something as massive as what you've got. It does if you're running only a handful of disks. Adding a 6tb drive to a 2x3gb mirror can (FS/etc permitting) get you a 6GB mirror pool for half of what buying new drives would cost.My current WHS 2011 box started out 4 years ago with 2x3tb drives. Last summer space was getting tight; and being reluctant to buy a new drive for something I was planning to retire soon in the face of potential end of life (see commentary above) I just stuck in a 1.5tb drive I had sitting around which's gotten it enough capacity to keep going. If I wasn't concerned about EoL, I'd've added a single new bigger drive to accomplish the same for longer than the yearish the small addition's gained me. Since I never found the time to buy the rest of a replacement; assuming the optimists are right about no real EoL, next month I'll probably migrate everything to the pair of 6tbs I did buy in December. If I didn't already have 2 of them, I'd only be buying one now. Either case would probably be followed by adding a 6-12tb disk in 2-3 years (depending on what my capacity trend looks like). That'd probably be the final end of the line; due to the age of the mobo/cpu itself (I'd probably build a new system from scratch at that point instead of trying to migrate the existing os/disks); but would be three expand/resizes over the lifespan of the system as a whole.
Vidmo - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
"Thunderbolt ports are useless when the unit is used with PCs / Windows." Wait... what does this mean?? I would like to have this clarified please.ganeshts - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
No drivers for the device when it is connected to a PC via the Thunderbolt ports.Thunderbolt ports work only on Mac OS X. (clearly spelt out in the specifications, though)
SirGCal - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
That isn't true. There are thunderbolt drivers for windows. They are just extremely uncommon for devices. They are STARTING to hit a few motherboards now though... Very few.Here is the Intel driver for example: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/23742/Th...
ganeshts - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
Sorry, but I have used Seagate / LaCie Thunderbolt devices with Windows without issues.The 5D, on the other hand, connects and is recognized by the Thunderbolt software as a device not certified for use on a PC. But, Drobo Dashboard doesn't recognize the unit at all - says nothing is connected. Windows Disk Management doesn't recognize any new drives either.
I also confirmed with Drobo's CTO that Windows support for Thunderbolt on the 5D is never coming.
SirGCal - Tuesday, April 26, 2016 - link
You said "Thunderbolt ports work only on Mac OS X. (clearly spelt out in the specifications, though)" which isn't true.You're now talking about Drobo specifically which most people here even think is garbage so... What's the point. I don't have one to test on the Intel devices but it's a moot point as I would never buy one anyhow. If they don't care, why should I.
ganeshts - Tuesday, April 26, 2016 - link
Classic case of taking things out of context by reproducing only part of the statement.This way, one can never write anything which is true if you decide to pick and choose words from a sentence.
SirGCal - Tuesday, April 26, 2016 - link
Well, that was the entire sentence... 2nd entire paragraph actually.SirGCal - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
Seagates: http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/item/thun...Assuming I googled the right ones obviously. Simply put, while much rarrer for windows, they have been around. And for quite a while. I think the Intel driver is from 2014 or something for W7-8.1
tuxRoller - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
Ganesh, is there a possibility that you could look at snapraid? I'm curious to see how it performs relative to the other solutions (like unraid, for instance), especially when it comes to bit rot and disk loss.I know that their are tools that are designed for the fs devs that will stimulate various behaviors (bad cables, bad controller, etc) which would make this test easier to perform.
One more fs you might be interested in is bcachefs (written, mostly, by former googler Kent Overstreet). To my knowledge, it's the only fs written outside of the filesystem layer in Linux (it works below the fs layer in the block layer). Its got a number of fascinating features and its design is extremely unusual.
https://bcache.evilpiepirate.org/
Navvie - Tuesday, April 26, 2016 - link
Don't hold your breath. Won't even cover ZFS despite lots of comments on the NAS reviews saying the ZFS is a better solution.Can't upset those hardware vendors or they might not send review samples.
ganeshts - Tuesday, April 26, 2016 - link
ZFS is simply not ready for *consumer-level* use unlike traditional RAID.Call me when the flexibility, performance and low-power nature of traditional RAID (both mdadm and hardware vendors) is matched by a ZFS system.
Pretty sure btrfs has better chance to replace traditional ext4 RAID in consumers from COTS vendors rather than ZFS for *consumer* use. Enterprise is a different story.
It is a matter of how much time you can invest in a review and return on that investment. The vendors play no role here.
I bet you didn't see this review of a DIY NAS: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9508/asrock-rack-c27...
Thanks for your thoughtful comment.
tuxRoller - Tuesday, April 26, 2016 - link
Performing further tests with that hardware would be great.I'd love to see how various setups perform (that is, it'd be nice if you imaged Linux, *BSD, and windows to test how their solutions compare.... including robustness, as I mentioned). It would be a big undertaking but I've not seen anything like that before and it seems like AT's audience would be interested.
rrinker - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
The outside access stuff has been turned off by Microsoft dropping Windows Live several years ago.None of the other options that are current offer everything WHS does, the backup being key. I have an unlimited Crashplan account so I COULD back up each machine individually, but that means a lot more bandwidth utilization from the way it is now, which is the WHS backing them all up and deduping the data BEFORE it goes to Crashplan. And the recoveru is not nearly as convenient - with WHS you can mount any selected backup as a drive and just copy files off it. All backups are incremental and it automatically links them together so you just pick which date you want to recover from and you see the state of the whole drive as of that date, even if on that actual backup, it only backed up a tiny fraction of your files. My machine is more than capable of running Server 2012 R2, but no version does what I need (and WHS was cheap - definitely worth paying for). I could theoretically run WHS in a Hyper-V VM under 2012, but that makes doing the drive pool much more complex. Maybe VMware with passthru storage with all my storage drives.
HideOut - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
So it says daisy chaining only works under macs? WTF? Do they not support the massive windows user platform fully?tarasis - Thursday, April 28, 2016 - link
I've had 2 Drobo units (both 4 Bay, 2nd and 3rd Gen), and generally speaking I've had a good run with them. The 2nd Gen was horribly slow, but then I wasn't putting stuff onto it that needed fast access. I was backing up (with an external single disk as an extra paranoid backup) data and videos, and streaming those videos off it. When the fan died and the cost of getting an out of warranty repair was nearly as much as buying a new 4 Bay drobo, I opted to get the 3rd Gen which is much faster be it over Usb 2 (that my server has) or USB 3 which my Hackintosh has.I like the Drobo because it is easy to mix and match drives and slowly increase the size over time as disk prices come down. IIRC (this was prob late 2007 or 2008) it was the easiest option for setting up an expandable backup/storage. I am a computer techie (and programmer by profession) but was also a stay at home dad of a 2 and 1 year old at the time who didn't have the time to look into building my own backup solutions with RAID or windows server or anything like that. I just wanted something that was fire and (mostly) forget.
Their SW is pretty poor and I miss the old version which updated the menubar icon with the actual disk state rather than a static icon. HW wise I've only had two problems, the first was on the new 2nd Gen, the power supply was borderline sufficient and under strain would cause the Drobo to reboot. They sent a new power supply out quickly and it was sorted in a couple of days. The second was that the fan was dying and very loud on the 2nd gen, but it had been going for 6 years well. I may yet try and replace it, I had found a blog where someone else had done it, but its not particularly a user replaceable part.
alanc - Friday, April 29, 2016 - link
Don't believe a word Drobo say. Their devices are just USB-bridges. They are dumping a load of flawed devices. Their support is the worst i have encountered in 35-years working in the field of IT. Their software is written by a blind-baboon, their quality-assurance staff were either bribed or drinking Tequila all day long. Their senior staff are insolent, argumentative and down-right jerks in many cases. Don't give these idiots your money.You have been warned..
zaphoddd - Wednesday, May 4, 2016 - link
I've a couple Drobos and would like to chime in.1. Have not had to use support (they have just worked for the last 4-5 years).
2. I can replace a bad drive without reconfiguring, managing, the box. Pull drive. Replace and it rebuilds. IIRC not necessarily the case with the others. Many require backing up, and rebuilding the volume.
2. I can pull drives from one drobo, and put them in another and my volume just shows up and works. IIRC thats not an option on most raid boxes
3. I can change the size of the volume on the fly. I can add bigger drives, and the volume knows what to do.
Things may have changed but the last time I looked at raid boxes - to change the setup, meant wiping the array, which means moving (and having a spare place to move) a dozen or so terabytes of files, and then moving them back. That's a no.
I connect one via USB, and one via FW800 - neither is a speed demon, but not noticeably slow by any means. File transfers speeds are comparable with standard drives. Newer models have a SSD cache.
I'm just a dude, with lots of data, and its been safe for years on my 2. I've had 1 drive failure, and after replacing the drive, it rebuilt just like I expected it to. Just replaced the drive and let it be. Lights turned green, volume was rebuilt.
I'm surprised by the strongly worded protests. Interesting.
Mgamerz - Thursday, May 5, 2016 - link
I have a Drobo 5D, had it for a few years now. It's not really worth it IMO. Here's why:1) The thing is damn slow. While windows asks a sleeping drobo to wake up, sometimes it can lock the entire system up as it waits for a response. Since this thing has 5 disks thats like 20 seconds, and it happens multiple times a day. And I only use it for storage, I don't actively use it. I can get like 70MB/s out of it.
2) You can't get data off if it dies. And I've had mine crap out once in less than 3 years of ownership where it dropped some piece of data, and windows could no longer read the filesystem.
3) If you use Windows Image Backup to it, it apparently causes issues with the system booting. I have mine (8TB configuration) and I cannot boot my laptop with it plugged into my Dell Docking Station. I have to push power, pop my machine off the dock, wait for it to finish UEFI boot, then put it back on, or it just locks up. This may not be the fault of the drobo (I see it at home with a 4TB drive, but they're both GPT/UEFI setups...) but its really inconvenient.
For the price of this (and the fact that once the warranty goes out you can't even get repair service done!) it's not worth it at all. It's fancy, but its not useful fancy.
devildahusky - Saturday, May 7, 2016 - link
I had a Drobo once. It deleted all my data and the company refused to provide recovery or acknowledge a problem with the device. Money well wasted.aj654987 - Thursday, May 12, 2016 - link
This "review" reads like an advertisement. $600 for this thing and nowhere does the review compare it to its competitors or tell me why I should buy this thing over a Qnap device. Anandtech was so much better when they were independent.CalaverasGrande - Tuesday, June 14, 2016 - link
I have a Drobo I use for my photos and misc stuff. It has been rock solid for the last couple years. It is slow as hell, and I'd really resent the unit if I hadn't gotten a great price on it. Honestly I only picked it up because of the deal, and all the NAS I looked at had too many gimmicky features I didn't care for.Recently replaced it with an OWC Thunderbay 4. MUCH faster.