Others say...

"Drobo is not a substitute for creating backups"
For its price and what it does, Drobo is not quite worth the money since you still need to create backup copies of your data somewhere other than Drobo to really be completely safe from data loss.

I bought Drobo after my main drive started to fail and I became concerned for my difficult to replace data. I happened to watch a video about drobo and the glory of drobo ownership and was quickly sold on the idea that drobo with its proprietary RAID redundancy would be the complete solution for my need of data redundancy and backups. WRONG.

To quote the Drobo documentation:
"Drobo guards everything on it
Even when a drive fails or data becomes corrupted, you're protected."

After my experience what I now interpret this statement to really means is that if your Drobo data is corrupted, Drobo will keep redundant copies of that corrupted data. But it doesn't mean that Drobo is complete protection from data corruption.

Rightly or wrongly I was formerly under the mistaken thinking that Drobo was fault tolerant enough to protect my data against all situations short of things like natural disasters such as fire, flood or theft of Drobo itself.
I found that a simple power failure can cause Drobo to perhaps corrupt the Drobo file system (and your data).

Drobo had some sort of problem a few days ago, I powered off my PC (running WinXP Pro) and went to bed, I wake up a few hours later and Drobo's lights are still all green blue with the fans and drives still spun up and haven't shut down. My PC powered down hours ago but Drobo had been stuck for hours doing something. Strange because I hadn't written or read anything from Drobo before powering down. Restarting the computer Drobo wouldn't mount itself as it normally does, so I powered off my PC and unplugged Drobo in attempt to soft-reset it. That apparently is a dangerous/bad thing to do!

Then I powered on my PC and the system froze during startup for several minutes and the Drobo drive didn't want to mount, but waiting another 20 minutes I could finally see the drobo drive show up in the file explorer but if I tried to access the drive windows explorer would freeze and a few minutes later timeout returning an error stating that the Drobo drive or file system was corrupted. I had about 500GB of data now not accessible, possibly destroyed. I was upset.

The Drobo user guide states:
"Drobo manages interruptions to power automatically and has an internal
rechargeable battery that preserves data being written during an outage."

This stated Drobo product feature seemed not to protect me in my situation.

I did some google searches looking for solutions to my corrupted Drobo and found out that some others had similar issues.

I shut down windows, waited for the drobo to go into standby and power cycled Drobo and that seemed to help, Drobo would start up more quickly and after the power cycle and the Drobo Advanced Controls tool reported that drobo was healthy and "Your data is protected" but Windows was still complaining that the Drobo drive or file system was corrupted and not allowing me access any of the Drobo data.

I eventually opened a command prompt and did a "CHKDSK \F" on the failed Drobo drive and let that run, after a few minutes CHKDSK started printing output to the console and was reporting finding errors and went about 'fixing' them. At the end of this process I could access the Drobo drive again and all the files except for the dozen or so files that chkdsk deleted in its repair. Luckily for me none of the lost files were irreplaceable.

I no longer rely solely on Drobo for disaster recovery, I now create backup copies of critical files that I store on Drobo, on another non-drobo disk.

Some more details, for those readers which are saying to themselves that I was probably doing something systematically wrong or nothing is idiot proof... My setup is powered by a line conditioning UPS, and no at no time did I pull the USB cable out in the during the middle of a write or read of data to the Drobo filesystem, and I did only what I stated above I didn't omit any goofy steps.

I have adjusted my thinking about what Drobo does for me and now just think of it as a big (relatively slow) drive. But at least I'm saving the environment a little bit since Drobo spins down the drives when I'm not using them. Too bad there doesn't seem to be a way to configure that power saving behavior, it would be nice to have more knobs on the thing for tuning various things or more diagnostic tools. I'm not sure why drobo can't help the user run check disk on windows. Reading forum posts elsewhere data robotics seems to take the stance that filesystem issues are not their problem and the operating system's fault or the user's problem to deal with. This seems somewhat at odds with the Drobo marketing which lead me to an unrealistic expectations of what Drobo does and does not do. Drobo is somewhat sold as a magic black box that is practically zero maintenance, green light - good, red light - bad, flashy light - don't touch... but it's a bit more complicated than that to operate.

I now slightly regret not giving more consideration to building a RAID5 system myself or buying a RAID1 NAS device instead. Though doing RAID5 I would have had to re-stage my machine and probably would have had to change the operating system to Linux since the Windows RAID5 support isn't very good. That's part of the reason why I chose to let the storage robot deal with that hassle. But not wanting hassles probably the RAID1 NAS box would have been better alternative solution for me rather than Drobo for the money, since to get Drobo on the network you have to spend an additional $199 for DroboShare.

I still like Drobo but I think a better price point for Drobo would be $300, at least until more features and tools are added, until then its kind of overpriced.

If you are thinking of purchasing a Drobo I would caution you to consider creating back ups of your critical Drobo data on something else that is not Drobo.

"The best little storage robot ever!"
I recently received my Drobo as a birthday gift. Previously, I had been using two external hard drives (Seagate 500GB and Western Digital 1TB). After opening the box, I was able to read through the material provided and set up the Drobo within minutes. I had already purchased a 1TB Samsung SATA drive so I put that in the first bay. Since I didn't have another drive ready, I disassembled my Western Digital external drive and used that in the second slot. After that it was all downhill.

I simply installed the supplied software and followed the on-screen instructions. After about 10 minutes, my Drobo was ready. I then began the diliberate process of moving everything off my 250GB internal drive and my 500GB Seagate drive onto my new 2TB (1TB storage, 1TB backup) Drobo. I connected via Firewire 800, so even though I was moving several hundred Gigs of data, it only took a little over an hour.

Now I am completely Drobotized and I still have 50% of my 1TB effective capacity available. And I still have two extra drive bays for future growth. This device is the best little storage robot ever! It will serve me well for years to come.

One hint when setting up your Drobo... select the option to set the Drobo up as a 16TB drive. Even though you don't have that much hard disk space, it will give you flexibility in the future without having to reinitialize the system.

"Excellent near line back up storage"
I wrote a lengthy review for the USB only device some time ago and thought it best to sum up what task this box is best for, and if used in this manner it is a 5 out of 5.

Use it as a near line back up solution and sleep well.

What does this mean? ALL of us either have, or will have lots of old hard drives we end up with as our programmes bloat and we replace our main drives with bigger units. What to do with the old ones? Buy lots of small cases and put them in...or get an old PC case and set it up as a server?

No, get a drobo and RECYCLE them that way.

Then use something like synctoy or some other synchronising software to COPY, NOT MOVE, your movies, music, photos and other essentials onto this small, elegant looking unit.

You now have a back up of the data on your hard drive, and it is all sitting on a RAID-like device...giving you extra reasons to sleep soundly.

The alternative to this is either tape, a server, or LOTS of DVDs. The smart choice is the Drobo.

Would I trust moving all critical data to this unit and not having a back up? NO! BUT I don't trust the RAIDs on my servers either. I use tapes or hard drive back up solutions on those.

My USB unit is nearly 2 years old I think....and no problems yet. Just use it as an expandable back up solution and you have a fantastic product.




"Don't Do It"
Plug and play, no way. Just purchased one of these and so far I am nothing but sorry. There is more under the hood than the manufacturer would have you believe so be prepared for a merry chase when you try to set one of these up. Your machine will freeze, the drives will not be recognized by the Drobo Dashboard and you will find that the manual is woefully inadequate for the task. Setting up this unit with three drives consumed an entire evening. Troubleshooting the thing to restore function(?) ate up most of the next evening as well. Buyer beware.
UPDATE: After a week with this thing, I have stopped expecting it to work. Now I am happy if my computer and network are functional. If my Mac goes to sleep, this thing hangs the OS when it is awakened. Relaunching the Finder in OS X does not resolve the problem - the only solution is a hard reboot (a common occurrence in my studio since Drobo arrived). The manual and online support do not address these issues. What an expensive headache.

"Drobo does exactly what I expected"
Hello,

I have had the Drobo now for a few months and it works flawlessly. No problems at all.

Some comments on other reviews:

1. I do not understand why people are surprised that with i.e a 4TB format you only have 2.7 TB available date. If one cares to read the product description "before" you buy the unit one would realize that the rest is used for data protection. That is actually the reason why I want to have a Drobo in the first place or???

2. Many people have a wrong defintion of a backup. If you do not have a file at least 3 times on different storage media you do not have a backup. Some people go even further. If your house burns down or a burglar steals your Drobo - are you covered or not. if your answer is no -you do not have a backup, it is that simple. If your Drobo fails - yes it can happen - are you covered or not. Again, if your answer is no - you do not have a backup.

Sigi