Data Robotics Drobo 4-Bay USB 2.0/FireWire 800 SATA Storage Array DR04DD10

Product Details

Product Reviews

(3 stars) - Ehh, it's OK but it could be much better.
Most people already know about the Drobo, so instead of harping on the positives, I'll go over my issues with the Drobo.

1) No IEEE 1394, but has two Firewire 800 ports. Huh? This is a big FU to PC users as almost every motherboard has a IEEE 1394 (Fireire 400) connection, but almost none have FW 800. I'll pass on USB thanks.

2) Unit spins down hard drives way too quickly. Seems like I'm always waiting for them to spin up. You can't disable this either. You have to buy the "Pro" model to do that (which was released after I bought mine). Insane that this is a "feature." Microsoft wouldn't even go that far.

3) Slow. I get 20-30 MB/sec over USB2. It's just slow, no way around it.

4) Randomly drops/disconnects under Windows 7. It also "boots up" too slowly under Windows 7. My apps like Media Center are up and running before the Drobo has even finished spinning up the drives.

5) Can't resize partitions. This is the worst. When you first setup the Drobo, you have to create logical partitions to go with your new unit. The default here is 2TB. That was fine for me since I was using 4 500 GB drives. What's lame is that it won't let you resize them to be larger once your disk storage grows. Sure, you can use that new storage if you use up all 2TB, but you'd have to create a new volume. This is absolutely ridiculous and there's no good reason for this other than their laziness. I've never seen a RAID appliance that wouldn't let you resize volumes.

In summary, this thing is OK, but considering how expensive it is, could be much better.

(1 stars) - Nice looking product but it isn't reliable
First unit sent back because one of the bays didn't work.

Second unit started failing after I put the fourth drive in - random disconnects from host machine after a few hours of use.

CHKDSK revealed large scale corruption not just once but several times.

It declared THREE disks as dead - that's an astronomical failure rate compared to all the other disks I have in PCs.

The last disk it declared dead was during a rebuild after I switched a disk - since the rebuild was going to take 48 hours (for one 320GB disk!!!) there's a pretty huge window for another failure.

Replacing it with a JBOD disk array - I'll trust Windows to manage my drives rather than Drobo.

(5 stars) - Amazing
For over a year I put off buying a Drobo because of the cost. But then I started looking around at all of the hard drives I was storing up. It was getting a bit ridiculous. I could have easily paid for the Drobo with what I had spent. Plus I knew the cost of the information on the hard drives and how important it is and decided to make the leap. I am sooo glad I did. This little black box is amazing. Everyting about it has been great from the packaging (nice touch) to the ease of installation and the speed. My only regret is that I did not make the leap sooner. Don't put it off. Click the add to cart button now and make your life easier...

(1 stars) - Drobo Not redundant, unit can fail easily, very slow
As an IT/tech geek, I was very excited when the Drobo came out. I loaded up four 1.5tb drives with what was suppose to be newer, supported firmware according to seagate (seagate cc3g.) The unit worked fine. I set mine up as a 16tb partition so I wouldn't need to create new volumes if I upgraded the drives in the future. The unit was very slow at transferring data, about 5-10mb/s (vs the performance of a single drive transfer of about 70mb/s). I even purchased a firewire 800 card and used both native firewire drivers and 3rd party drivers that run at full speed, but the performance remained poor.

However, as I was just using it for data archiving, I wasn't too concerned with the speed. I quickly moved all my important data to this volume. All my music, family photos, family videos, work documents, etc.

Fast forward to two weeks ago. The unit ran fine for about 8 months, though it did need the occasional reboot. I had to power down the unit to switch some plugs around. Upon plugging it back in it was stuck in a reboot loop.

I immediately opened a ticket with Drobo. They tell me the drive firmware's are unsupported, and I need to DOWNGRADE the firmware to cc1h. I said fine, and I downgraded the firmware successfully WITHOUT erasing any data on the drives. I then put the drives back in and the unit again was stuck in the same reboot loop.

I again updated my ticket with Drobo with all the details and attached all the necessary logs. Drobo responded with "you must have a failed drive, do you have your data backed up elsewhere?" !!!! I respond no, they say they will escalate to tier 3. This was was on November 3rd, 2009. I have since sent two emails asking for some sort of update and received NOTHING to date (Nov 12, 2009.)

I've been without ALL my data for well over a week and fear that I've lost all my family photos and videos, as well as business documents. In addition, their response baffles me about having a failed drive. Isn't the whole point of the Drobo to protect you against failed drives? If the drobo doesn't support certain drives, and the unit can detect that (apparently they discovered my firmware version from the debug log I sent them) shouldn't the software warn you before letting you set it up?

Drobo has more or less given up on me, and the unit has proven not redundant at all. So basically, if you want a slow array that can fail at any time, buy this thing. Otherwise, just get a drive case and setup a raid5 or get a windows home server unit.

(5 stars) - Drobo Performance Delivers Just As Advertised
Note-"digitalman" (9/15/08) has already provided an outstanding technical review of this product.

I purchased my Drobo on September 30th based on the recommendations from my web designer, who is also a Mac person and is using Firewire connectivity for his Drobo. I am using my unit for data storage connecting directly to a USB 2.0 port on my system board just as DR recommended. As described below, one of the four WD HDDs failed 15 days after I received my Drobo unit. My "pros" below far outnumber and outweigh my "cons":

Pros:

1. Data storage, reliability, retrieval, and security are exceptional. The data throughput rate is not as high as Firewire or Ethernet but this is not an issue for me.
2. The capability for using HDDs of different capacities including the "hot swap" and quick replacement of a defective HDD is an outstanding feature. This is in sharp contrast to my current Buffalo Technology NAS that requires a complete disassembly of the unit to replace a drive.
3. The Digital Robotics sales and technical support representatives are excellent. Their recommendations were very important in order to better understand the technical aspects of the unit, performance etc.
4. Although this Drobo has USB 2.0 connectivity (slower data throughput rate) it is still adequate. As I understand it, USB 3.0 will be available next year. You can avoid purchasing the DR NAS unit by making your Drobo a "shared" drive on your PC which will allow other users connected to your network to have access to it.
5. I purchased four WD 1.5 TB EADS drives from Amazon at $119.99 each. DR technical support recommended this model amd assured me that it was compatible with the Drobo. There is a reduction in the total available storage capacity which is required for the overhead/RAID functionality but the advantages are evident in note #6 below.
6. Two weeks after purchasing both the unit and the HDDs the Drobo began reporting that one of the WD drives was failing and immediately began reallocating the existing stored data to provide the required protection and integrity of my data. No data was lost as a result of this incident.
7. Kudos to Amazon customer service. Although one of the 1.5 TB drives failed, it was within 30 days of my purchase. Amazon shipped a replacement drive to me immediately. Reviewer comments on this website have lead me to conclude that I would not have had a similar experience with WD T/S.

Cons:
1. Lack of Ethernet connectivity option without having to purchase the expensive NAS unit option. Even if it is purchased the data transfer rate drops to the USB transfer rate internally from the NAS unit to the Drobo.
2. Limited data transfer rate for video, DVD and high definition files

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