Drobo - Automated Storage

[Jessterw]

Fully automated storage you don't have to manage.

Chances are, you get passionate about creating or collecting digital content, not about managing the storage where it lives. For you we've created Drobo, the first robotic storage device that takes the pain out of keeping your content safe.

http://www.drobo.com/products.aspx

Looks like a pretty slick system if it works as well as it appears. There's a nice demo they have of it here:

http://www.drobo.com/products_demo.aspx

Not exactly cheap though, coming in at $499 without any disk drives.

[Kooldino]

That thing is nice.

Questions - How data efficient is the device? IE, if I have a total of 100GB worth of drives in the machine, how many gigs of data will I actually have available? Or is that more dependent on the sizes of the drives that are in the machine?

For instance, if I have two drives...a 10GB and a 100GB drive, will it only allow me to store 10GB worth of data for redundancy reasons?

Also - USB 2.0 only? WTF mate? No external SATA or at least firewire?

What do we do about jumpers?

[Jammrock]

That thing is nice.

Questions - How data efficient is the device? IE, if I have a total of 100GB worth of drives in the machine, how many gigs of data will I actually have available? Or is that more dependent on the sizes of the drives that are in the machine?

For instance, if I have two drives...a 10GB and a 100GB drive, will it only allow me to store 10GB worth of data for redundancy reasons?

Also - USB 2.0 only? WTF mate? No external SATA or at least firewire?

What do we do about jumpers?

http://www.drobo.com/drobolator/

Here you go. Drop in the disks you plan on putting in your Drobo and it will tell you exactly what is used for redundancy and what is available. It's actually just a hair worse than RAID 5, but since it's more flexible I would say it's worth it. But I won't consider a Drobo until they put on an interface faster than USB 2.0. eSATA prefered, but I would accept a 1 Gb connection as well.

[Jessterw]

[Edit: Looks like Jamm beat me to the punch and provided a nicer way to explain it ]


One of the points touched in during the demo video is that you will have the full size of any drive available to you. From the demo I also gathered that it does checks to determine if there is enough storage space left to provide redundancy if any given drive fails (or is otherwise removed). So you can completely expend the total capacity available, but it'll warn warn you (via status lights, etc.) as you do.

So with your 10GB and 100GB drive setup, if you used over 10GB worth of the total available space the system would signal that if the 100GB failed it wouldn't be able to provide redundancy. Or something to that effect.

USB 2.0 only does sorta suck. Maybe later models will provide more connectivity options.

[Kooldino]

@Jester - ahh, I see. That makes sense. I dig this. Now I just have to wait a generation and wait until they're sub 300 and have a better interface. Then...profit.

[VJ]

May be technologically nice, but I am a bit weary of using proprietary systems...


Jörg