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Drobo
  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    image

    Quite sad story:

    When I came into work a couple of days ago, I cringed when I saw an all too familiar problem — my drobo cycling on/off over and over again. It doesn’t mount, and I can’t access my photos — essentially it’s a brick. Again.

    In fact, this was the fourth recorded incident Brad and I have had with drobo so far. And while you’re waiting for your new drobo, you cannot access any of your photos or files on your bricked drobo. You’re basically locked out.

    When my photo assistant Brad called their tech support for me, they told him my dead drobo is out of warranty. To get my photos back, I would have to pay nearly $300 for drobocare (an extended warranty program). So basically, while my drobo is supposed to protect my photo archive, what it has actually done is hold my photo archive hostage for almost $300.

    Via: http://scottkelby.com/2012/im-done-with-drobo/

  • 8 Replies sorted by
  • stipstip

    too bad, but honestly, if it's not in two separate places then it's no backup at all.

  • nomadnomad

    When I decide for any kind of RAID or similar disk array, I always buy two identical ones (and store them in different locations). I learned this the hard way with a La Cie Big disk, where the controller went out and that specific unit was out of production. The only way to get my data back was a very nice guy letting me use his unit, remove the disks and put mine in to read them.

    Having two units is the only way to be safe – what if Drobo would have dropped that unit from production or even went bankrupt?

    The only exception are ordinary single disks that work in any old case.

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    @nomad

    Only excepting are Windows Home Server based solutions that allow you to just insert drive in the external tray and connect to computer :-)

  • CRFilmsCRFilms

    I love how we need backups for our backups. Oh wait, no I don't.

  • alcomposeralcomposer

    A mdadm based soft raid is very 'future proof' as you can just plug the drives into any box that has mdadm on it... Plus now mdadm has stable drobo like power... Grow - shrink- nonmatching drives... And it's free!

  • andyharrisandyharris

    My Drobo never worked from new, awaiting refund.

    Will go thunderbolt of some type, in the meantime USB2 raided 2x3TB is not that exciting ...

  • alcomposeralcomposer

    I wouldn't go hardware raid with desktop drives as you really need raid drives so that they don't get booted off of the raid when they try to read errors... And raid class drives are nuts price...

  • ppcroftppcroft

    Don't know if it is off-topic. So what are the recommended solutions for backing up nearly 10TB of stuff. All personal, they are all on WD Green drives. I was looking for something like Drobo, but now need not bother at all.

    Honestly wish the spin drives would go away. Ditto for optical drives as well. SSDs are not so better off either.

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