Toronto Photography Meetup Group

http://www1.ca.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/days_of_deals?c=ca&cs=cabsdt1&l=en&s=bsd&dgc=AF&cid=3881&lid=77903&acd=CAqD7bLWUPI-Dkt8TdaMKdL4iJuSDudHMg

There is also a $40 rebate (http://www.drobo.com/mir/rebate-0909-cdn.pdf) that will bring the price down to $259.99.

The Dell sale is only for one day (today). If you missed it last time, this is your chance.[/url]

WOAH! Hard deal to pass up. Thanks. Uber tempting...

I am very happy with mine...

wow this is probably the lowest price I've seen since their introduction to the market 2 years back.

Does this come with drives, or is it just a case?

Just the case.

Any recommendation on what drives to put into this?

I have three WD green 1TB drives in mine. Works well so far.

^ It only comes with the case.

This is indeed a good value... I paid $360+15.00 shipping for mine on ebay. I've had it for a couple of months now without issues.

Will this work with the drobo and is it any good?

http://accessories.dell.com/sna/product ... u=A2545486

Any sata drive will work with the Drobo. Just make sure their all the same capacity and model if you want to take advantage of the raid

I own 6 of those seagate 1tb's 7200.11 (4 in the drobo) and 2 x 7200.12 (in my MP).
I haven't had a seagate drive fail since switching to them from western digital 8+ years ago. **KNOCKS ON WOOD**

WOW, that's CHEAP for the Seagate 1TB drive. Canada Computers list the xx528AS drives at $91.

typo*

The drives do not need to be the same capacity or same make. You can use any sized drives from any manufacturer.

That is true but typically the general rule of thumb is to keep all things consistent.

Obviously if you want to expand the capacity - I'm guessing the drobo can do that on the fly - then of course you'll need to replace one drive at a time while the array gets rebuilt before you upgrade the next drive and so on.

I'm told that read/write times are slow if you're working with large files. GummieBear, have you noticed this when working with large PS files?

The largest files that I process are around 12MP RAW files and I have not noticed any difference between the native drive and the Drobo. I managed around 25MB/s to 30MB/s copying files from drive to drive. I am using Firewire 800 on the PC. USB should be similar.

The Drobo is not a true RAID, if I remember correctly. The selling point for it is that it can take any sized drives and still provide data redundancy.

Just read the details of their BeyondRAID here: http://www.drobo.com/resources/beyondraid.php

Though I'm wondering about the *key* differences in the redundacy between the NAS I have and the Drobo, as the one I have allows me to upgrade the storage without needing to change the RAID levels or anything that is mentioned on that web page.

Can you upgrade you NAS without rebuilding the RAID? If you want to increase the capacity, do you need to replace all the drives at once? Traditional RAID won't allow that without rebuilding the whole array (though I could be wrong on this, as I haven't done any RAID beyond RAID 1 for almost a decade).

Some of my layered PS files are just over a 1GB, not many but the average working file size is probably around 300-400MB. My coworker says it'll feel like it's crawling when I work with files that large, even with Firewire 800. He says that for data files that large, I should be looking at eSATA system.

I tried to cash on on the 1TB drive but seems that you only get $50. off the first drive. I tried to buy 8 for me and my bro-in-law. Dang.

I will test this when I get home. That's interesting as I don't think size matters (but of course it does in others that we won't discuss )

I know that when the Drobo gets to about 80% capacity, the writing slows down progressively.

The qnap I have will allow me to replace one drive at a time (raid 5 setup). Of course while the array is rebuilding I don't have and redundancy until the array has been built. Not sure how the robo works. Once I have all drives upgraded then the capacity will increase, robo might be different here perhaps.

The Drobo allocates the amount of space equal to that of the largest drive in the system as reserved storage. For example, if I have two 1TB drives, I have a net space of 1TB, but if I add another 1TB drive, I will have 2 TB storage and if I one more 1TB drive, I will have 3TB of net storage.

If I have a 1TB drive and a 2TB drive in the Drobo, I will only have 1TB net storage, but the reserved space is never higher than the largest capacity drive so if you add another 2TB drive in the future, you will have 3TB drive space.

Continue from the previous post...

So, yes, you can increase the capacity of the Drobo on the fly without rebuilding or disturbing the data. However, if your Drobo is full (4 drives) and you want to increase the capacity, you will need to remove one of the drives (usually the lowest capacity drive) and put in a larger drive. This may not give you additional space until you add another drive with equal or larger capacity.

The point here is that unlike traditional RAIDs where all drives must be equal in size, Drobo lets you use any capacity drives to form a RAID. This makes upgrading the capacity much easier.

I think I'd prefer a 4 drive bay which supports eSata like this one

http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.ph ... id=HDE.690

Yeah, I was looking at that same unit for some time. I've read some users having hiccups and other giving it praise. I like the fact that it has power sensing so it powers up/down automatically when you turn on your system.

Doesn't sound any different than what my qnap does. From what you've described it sounds like a striped setup with a parity bit.

Most mid/high end solutions like these offers this. Cheaper storage devices might need to have everything rebuilt from scratch, or if a drive goes down, the data will still be there but you can't get at it until the array is rebuilt (ie.: ones from Buffalo are like this).

I bought two drives on separate orders so I could get the $50 off each. Doesn't seem to be a problem with this.

I just ordered one, excited to try it out and free up some desk and outlet space!