Drobo and DroboShare — a review

Just as a followup, I am fighting and trying to uninstall Drobo Dashboard from my Mac. Guess, what, it has a lame window asking me for my password (not the usual MacOS authorization window), and then crashes, because I have a semicolon in my password. That's just unprofessional.

Another Drobo user here. Yes, it is indeed loud, and the loudness sucks. The vent also kicks in without any reason, sometimes in a normally cool room, 20 hours after I've turned it off. That's why I always unplug it after use.

It is also slow, expect about 5MB/s, even through the Firewire 800 interface.

But I never lost data, and Drobo Dashboard never crashed on me. Knock on wood, I guess?

I have a Synology Disk Station and honestly can't recommend it enough:
http://www.synology.com/us/products/ds210j/index.php

It just works, has load of optional features and keeps surprising me with all its quality touches (e.g. dedicated iphone web ui, drag and drop file management via web ui, iphone app, etc, etc).

The built in bittorrent client is a bonus too especially when paired with a WDHDTV.

I remember reading a very similar report some time ago. I had hoped Data Robotics had improved in the meantime, but that does not seem to be the case.

That is very sad. I love the promise of the Drobo. Is there another device out there that does actually fulfill this promise?

David: I'm actually hoping people will suggest something that works. I pretty much gave up on the Drobo, I can't trust it with my data.

Also — I'm posting this on my blog, because the Drobo Forums are closed (only customers can access them). People that consider buying a Drobo have no way of learning about the experiences of existing customers — and believe me, some of those are pretty bad.

No wonder Data Robotics keeps the forums closed.

Good ol' Time Machine with a WD Firewire 800 drive. Never failed always rockin.

I've got a second generation Drobo, and although my experience hasn't been anywhere near as bad as yours, I'd agree. My Drobo remains functioning and I haven't needed to contact Data Robotics for support, but the Drobo has a bunch of weird quirks that have made me really start to hate the device. As mentioned above, it's loud, and as mentioned in the comments above, it's astonishing slow no matter the connection used. Mine also has this weird quirk where it disconnects halfway through the data transfer if more than 50GB is being transferred to it while connected via USB; switching to Firewire solves that problem, but since I use it over my network, having to dedicate a Mac Mini to share it (as opposed to say a cheapo USB to ethernet adapter or DroboShare) is a costly fix. Drobo Dashboard software is rarely updated and reports varying levels of available storage depending on how it's accessed, inconsistent with what's shown on the front LEDs. Worst for me is the device becomes unusably slow if it exceeds 90% capacity used; so slow accessing the device was near impossible. It wouldn't let me transfer any data off of it, I had no choice but to delete some of my data; THE WORST! It's not an OS, filling up the hard drives shouldn't cause such a performance hit where the device nearly becomes inaccessible (especially when 90% used means there's still 150GB free on the device).

tl;dr Don't buy a Drobo, and if you're unfortunate enough to have one, don't fill it up past 90% capacity!

You're wrong about only one thing here. You don't have to "spend several hours debugging the problems, dealing with support, reinstalling things", you have the option of cutting your losses, trashing the thing and moving on to something else.

Good luck :)

Drobo ?

This stuff should never be used in a real production environment.
You do have a powerfull pc so you must be doing some work on that .

What i dont udnerstand, is why dont you shell out half the money that you gave on the drobo and actually build a filserver of your own with 4 Tera Hard disk in RAID mode ( choose what you want ) and just expand as you want.

All i have is my motherboard and that is it !

I agree. Nothing but trouble with Drobos. Have worked with an original four bay, a DroboPro and a DroboFS. The FS is the worst. I have it hard wired to a brand new iMac and it keeps disconnecting, despite being set to never go to sleep.

The DroboPro that was wired via fw800 to my MacPro. Since I have an extra enet port on the MP I thought it would be nice to try out the iSCSI feature. I did whatever fiddling I was allowed to do in DroboDashboard (should be called DroboASHboard) and suddenly the unit decided it didn't want to let me write OR READ data from it any longer. Backing it up and reformatting was not only a complete pain in the ass (where, exactly, do you put the 2.5TB of data you have on it), but was also unsuccessful. I ended up having to connect it to a G4 Xserve to get it to work.

I'm done with Drobo. Will never purchase nor recommend another one again. Period. The End.

Very timely, I just tweeted my own frustrations. Currently they have a known bug that prevents me from copying new data onto it, moving or deleting data from it. I contacted customer service, and they asked me for a laundry list of information around my device, most of which I know they don't need just to tell me when they plan to get the patch out. I'm also considering the Synology, unless others have a better suggestion. Thanks for writing!

I must be lucky. I've had my 2nd gen for 2 years now and I've never had any of the problems listed here.

Get a synology NAS. I've got the slowest model (DS210j) and I still get between 20-35 MB/s. No noise complaints either.

I was recently debating on which nas to purchase. It was between drobo and qnap. I decided on the qnap TS-419U. I can't recall exactly why, but am I glad I went with qnap after reading this.

So far it has just worked. It was easy to setup and is not all that loud. My only complaint so far is that upnp support for media players is horrendous. But that is not qnap's problem.

By the way: the "slow if 90% filled" issue is by design. It's mentioned in the documentation. Drobo expects you want to extend your space (by adding bigger drives) once you are over 80%. There are various warnings issued at this point. And at 90%, just to make sure you don't miss the warnings, the Drobo gets deliberately slow. Just add a bigger drive (or move a few things off it), and it becomes faster again.

Totally right!

I had the same problems, the same crappy customer support, obscure error messages, it is definitely much to loud, and whatever else.

Thanks for publishing this post.

If you're somewhat technical, my suggestion would be to ditch the Drobo and just get an external enclosure to hold a bunch of drives. You can then install ZFS from https://groups.google.com/group/zfs-macos/files

With ZFS, you don't have to worry about disk corruption, the RAID-5 write-hole, and you can set it up with as much redundancy as you like (1, 2, or more disk redundancy)

I never understood why the drobo's were so expensive. When the software functions just don't work, and you end up losing data, etc, why not just go with a two or three bay enclosure with ESATA - and do a scheduled backup dump at regular intervals. You get much much higher speeds (my WD Green 1 TB gets up to 80 megabytes per second peak on ESATA)

The attraction is all in the slick marketing.

And the "the "slow if 90% filled" issue is by design" is pure greed. I'm not sure if anyone appreciates that feature at all, but if my drives were getting filled, I wouldn't want my performance to be artificially degraded - that just demonstrates that they hate their customers.

For example, if you're editing a large video file that fills your drives with temporary working files, and you have a 5 TB array, 90% filled would give you 500 gigs left. Perhaps that's not enough for ongoing file storage, but for your project which you expect to compress down to a smaller video file as soon as you are done, it's plenty of space. Why won't you want the full speed of your expensive RAID array? Am I missing something here?

Put your blog entry in twitter (robertovalerio)

Can agree on ALL of you issues. Had them, too:

Interesting issues - I don't recall the Drobo being that loud when someone in my co-working space had one, but that is neither here nor there given that I don't own one. Your observation carries far more validity than my third person account.

My main concern, and one that really impacts how I view the credibility of this piece, is your demand for an upgraded Drobo. This is as asinine as demanding a MacBook Pro when your MacBook dies several times in a row (many reports of this, by the way). Yes, Drobo is a small firm that needs to readily address failures and customer concerns - something that they have seemed to failed to do here - but demanding an upgraded unit sounds like the wrong way to approach this problem. If I have two engine failures in my Honda Civic, there is no way that they will hand me a brand new Accord for no extra money, and there is no reason that I should expect them to.

For anyone with some technical abilities, I would recommend just rolling your own Linux file server.

I've been running a home file server on Ubuntu for several years, and it's worked beautifully. Aside from the initial setup, it's completely hands off. The important pieces are:

* mdadm software raid - Don't entrust your raid to some proprietary raid chipset that's going to fail. Unless you require insane throughput, mdadm works great and is incredibly recoverable. I've moved the drives between systems, and as long as they're accessible, mdadm can scan them, and automatically reconstruct the array.
* LVM/ext3 - Resize the partions, change the underlying drive layout. Basically, do whatever you want with ease. Like mdadm, it's all in software and is very recoverable.
* netatalk - Don't use NFS or SMB if you're sharing to a Mac. Netatalk is super-solid and provides an AppleTalk volume that your Mac actually knows how to deal with.
* avahi - Zeroconf daemon that makes your netatalk volumes show up on your Macs.

Charlie: I thought that a company that advertises as "simplifying reliable data storage" would want to somehow compensate me for the unreliable and complicated mess they landed me in. I also thought their newer devices would be more reliable (which doesn't seem to be the case, based on opinions).

Matt: thing is, that is precisely what I wanted to avoid. I've been dealing with mdadm, filesystems, and linux boxes for over 10 years now and I'm looking for simple, buttonless, plug-it-in-and-it-works solutions. Also, you can swap any drive in the Drobo for another drive that is larger, at any time, with no reconfiguration — this is something that's difficult to match. ZFS had the promise, but it seems it isn't going anywhere.

I have had three Drobos, an original 1st Gen unit, a 2nd Gen, and a Drobo Pro. None of them have been loud or experienced any of the difficulties you mention. One is in a 24/7 production environment. It sounds like you had a bad unit and things went downhill from there.

I wrote a while back about some of the problems I ran into with the first generation Drobo and DroboShare. Yes, I heartily agree that I will never recommend this device to anyone. If you're a tech novice then it sounds like the Synology is a good choice. But, if you're at all curious or inclined to learn something like OpenSolaris, then I think you'll find there are many advantages to building your own storage box. You might also enjoy reading Bill Streeter's entry on the horrible experience he had with a Drobo.

I have a Netgear ReadyNAS Duo on my Mac-only network and we access it from multiple Macs every day. Couldn't be more pleased - it's fast, quiet and troublefree. When I researched NAS setups I was intrigued by the Drobo, but then decided that the ReadyNAS would be cheaper in the long run with frequent drive upgrades. After reading this article I'm happy I didn't go with Drobo.

I have a 1TB FW drive that I SuperDuper clone to every day, and a separate 500 GB USB drive for TimeMachine. Nothing but good results with this set up so far. Maybe Drobo will get it together and improve things. The concept is great but simplicity and reliability are essential.

Jan - that makes more sense, thanks for clarifying. However, I understand why they wouldn't give you an upgrade as this would be a tacit admission on their part that their lower end model isn't as reliable as their other models, completely undermining their apparent value as a data storage product.

Given what the product is billed for, I suspect that most users are going to be very wary of any model as you noted. Frankly, I'm surprised that Drobo isn't more actively responding to this post.

I have a Netgear ReadyNAS Pro. Its not cheap, but it works very well with my Mac. It supports AFP, so I don't have issues with filenames that you might run into with SMB. The volume expansion is a bit more limited than the Drobo, as you have to add at least 2 of a larger sized disk in order to grow (for redundancy). Also if there is a problem with the ReadyNAS (and you happen to have a way to hook up the drives to a PC, and know your mdadm/LVM2/ext3/4), you can access the data off the drives without the ReadyNAS.

Another option that we used at my last job on our Mac Pro server was a 3ware Sidecar. It's limited to being accessed directly by a single machine, but it has 4 drives in an external enclosure connected to a RAID card in your Mac. It's fast, and you can choose whether to go with speed or redundancy. I don't know if growing the volume (by replacing the disks with bigger drives) is supported, however I have converted a 2 disk RAID1 into a 3 disk RAID5, and then expanded that into a 4 disk RAID5.

I have used a Drobo since Feb 2008. I initially loaded it with 300GB HDs and as disk prices have lowered and storage fills I have popped smaller drives out of the Drobo (without powering down or restarting etc. etc.) and inserted (unformatted) bigger capacity ones. No further intervention on my part has been needed. Currently have 2x1TB and 2x1.5TB. In that time I have never had a problem (touch wood).

I bought the Drobo because I am the only member of my household with hardware knowledge and running a Linux RAID server was driving me batty. And I worried how things would go if was not available to restart/restore/reformat etc. the Linux server.

Yes, throughput is really slow considering what USB2 is capable of, yes, the fan is audible. But it works and I haven't had to think about it except when a warning light comes on to tell me to add a bigger HD. For my purposes it is ideal.

Thanks to everyone for the interesting responses. I will definitely look at ReadyNAS devices soon.

As to TimeMachine suggestions — I *am* using Time Machine to back up. The Drobo was supposed to store large, infrequently accessed files and SuperDuper full-drive backups. One does not replace the other.

Also, there is one feature in the Drobo that is difficult to find elsewhere — you can swap any of the drives for a larger one at any time, and get more capacity, without copying your data off the device or reconfiguring. This is why I paid the price premium for the Drobo initially.

I recently ordered a 10TB Drobo 'S' along with an eSATA Sheevaplug with the intention to build an OpenSolaris NAS.
I bookmarked this article so I can post the results of my project once they arrive.

If the author did read the manual, he wouldn't have used HFS+ when connecting the droboshare.
The recommended filesystem for a droboshare is EXT3, which is the default when you initialize the disk.

If you deviate from the default and recommended settngs, you shouln't complain it doesn't work as expected.
Especialy when the Drobo application specifically warns you for datacorruption when using HFS+!

(Also, Drobo is your storage, you still need backups anyway.)

Drobo works great if you use it for what is was meant to.

I'm using a drobo share happiliy with the (not supported) droboapps.
All my pictures are on there and mounted through upnp on my wireless picture frame.
All my music is on there and is mounted to my sonos through SMB
The same music is mounted through NFS for my mythtv.
I boot a minimyth client directly through NFS from Drobo.

I agree it is not very fast, but it does work reliably IF you follow the manual...

Hoopy: Incorrect.

My manuals said I can use either EXT3 or HFS+. And then warned me that if I want to switch my Drobo between Macs and Droboshare, I need to use HFS+. So I did.

Quoting the manual http://www.drobo.com/pdf/droboshare_help_files_mac.pdf:
"If you plan to connect Drobo to Macs and DroboShare, select HFS+. This is the default selection."

Note also that you can't use large volumes with ext3 on a Droboshare, you are limited to 2TB. Given that my drobo has 7.5TB of drives, this makes little sense.

As for "reliably" — it will work reliably until it fails. Reliability isn't defined by the fact that it works for you so far, but by the fact that it fails for many people. This means it may fail for you one day.

After reading some more, I've decided to give up on my zfs NAS plug idea & make the best of this big 'ol thing using drobo-utils in Debian, where at least I'll have albeit limited functionality.

I did a Google search and came across this blog. VERY glad I did as I'd decided to splash out on a Drobo 2, Pro and FS for the office and home. I loved the dual disk redundancy. And pardon me, back up and storage are the same thing for many people, this was to be my back-up system. I already have internal RAID on our MPros and work from external LaCie Raid. I looked forward to plug and play, infinite swap options and the really awesome dual redundancy option. *sigh*

On another note, my son is on his 4th! macbook upgrade, an odyssey he managed to begin over 5 years ago -- all free, always the latest and greatest. For what the author of this blog went through they should have been upgraded, it was a reasonable expectation. JMHO.

All I can say is, I feel your pain. I've been through Drobo tortures as well, trying to fix folders that became corrupt overnight for no apparent reason.

However, what really pushed me away from Drobo was the fact that the drive bay didn't lock in the HDDs safely enough. So every time I moved it, one of the HDDs would get disconnected in the back. Upon pushing them back in properly, to my utter shock and disbelief, Drobo would NOT recognize that this is the drive that was in there just a second ago, but would rebuild everything that was on it instead. This usually took a couple of days, but in the latest instance it's estimating it at 300 hours!

So while Drobo has been busy rebuilding the array AGAIN, I've built my own little NAS and installed unRAID on it. I'm in love, mostly for the fact that even if two drives fail, the data is still accessible on all other drives. Which, as you rightfully pointed out, is impossible with Drobo, and downright scary when you think about it.

I was looking for small NAS for me, and after this post I had one product less to compare.
Finaly I ended up with ReadyNAS and I'm happy user, no issues, rasonable speed, CIFS,NFS,AFP,RSYNC are out of box.

I purchased a drobo for my office and later my home. I am so fed up with it, I created my own blog just to rant. Check it out here:

http://drobosucks.blogspot.com/

Great post. Couldn't agree more. I've had to rebuild my disk library three times. The one time I called Drobo support they directed me to spend another $100 of my money on Disk Warrior. Nice.

I too heard about Drobo on Twit podcasts. I really wish they would report on the large negative reviews on Drobos. Seems a bit biased...

DROBO is a mediocre device at best.
DROBOSHARE is absolute garbage. I can't even give this POS away.

Wanted to use the Drobo (2ND GEN) + Droboshare for basic media storage. Music, Movies..etc. Maybe 2 or 3 simultaneous streams at most.

- Got it connected and setup pretty effortlessly.
- Started using it. Wow. Slow. Like ridiculously slow. Like unusable slow.
- Try to begin to play a movie takes a good 30 seconds before it even starts playing.
- If anything/anyone tries to access another file on the Drobo while the first video is playing it gags.
- Tried enabling Jumbo frames..made no difference.

- So I gave up on the stupid Droboshare and went Firewire 800 direct to the Media Center PC.
- Had tons of problems here...really bad speeds. After much research I discovered that the issue actually is with WIndows 7 Firewire support. I found 3rd party drivers that fixed the issue by like 1000%.
- So I've been living with the Firewire connection. For the most part its stable..sometimes (like 1 in 3 times) when I reboot the machine the Drobo doesn't come back unless I unplug it, reboot, power cycle, etc. basically hack at it until it works.

Bottom line is Data Robotics really has no business selling these devices at these prices. They have no business selling the Droboshare at all. A product this bad does not need to exist. It serves only to aggravate. Best thing I can say about the Drobo is that the packaging is nice. The box has been substantially more useful to me than the Droboshare ever will be.

I cannot say enough to try to dissuade anybody who is considering purchasing a Data Robotics product from doing so. Just stay away.