I don't actually access it very much anymore, but it does still work.
It's pretty slow, and when it gets too full (95%+) it's so slow that it's unusable. It's pretty noisy when used if the temperature is even slightly warm. I have had a drive failure in it, and I was able to put in a new drive and everything was good.
Overall, it's a pretty good piece of hardware, but I couldn't recommend one because they are pretty expensive and while they are good, they aren't great.
I know some folks that were resellers of drobo hardware--some sort of generic branded backup solution.
The network ports only got about 25MB/s on it though, so it was better than fast ethernet (100mb) but only about 250mb compared to the gigabit it was touted to have.
25MB/s to disk is not very fast; LTO 2 tapes get like 30MB/s. Its a trade for convenience, I guess! I don't really know how quick the drobos were for direct disk access on a good network, but 25MB/s is probably fast enough for most light backup purposes or a few overnight jobs.
Direct access is similar in speed. It's good for media, but you don't want to be running any applications off it. It also takes about 20 seconds to spin up the disks when it comes out of standby.
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Sunday August 30 2015, @06:43PM
How are those drives holding up?
I know people that initially swore by them, until they started swearing at them.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Monday August 31 2015, @02:54PM
I don't actually access it very much anymore, but it does still work.
It's pretty slow, and when it gets too full (95%+) it's so slow that it's unusable. It's pretty noisy when used if the temperature is even slightly warm. I have had a drive failure in it, and I was able to put in a new drive and everything was good.
Overall, it's a pretty good piece of hardware, but I couldn't recommend one because they are pretty expensive and while they are good, they aren't great.
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Friday September 04 2015, @12:03AM
I know some folks that were resellers of drobo hardware--some sort of generic branded backup solution.
The network ports only got about 25MB/s on it though, so it was better than fast ethernet (100mb) but only about 250mb compared to the gigabit it was touted to have.
25MB/s to disk is not very fast; LTO 2 tapes get like 30MB/s. Its a trade for convenience, I guess! I don't really know how quick the drobos were for direct disk access on a good network, but 25MB/s is probably fast enough for most light backup purposes or a few overnight jobs.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Friday September 04 2015, @02:50PM
Direct access is similar in speed. It's good for media, but you don't want to be running any applications off it. It also takes about 20 seconds to spin up the disks when it comes out of standby.