the last word

Photography meets digital computer technology. Photography wins -- most of the time.

  • site home
  • blog home
  • galleries
  • contact
  • underwater
  • the bleeding edge
You are here: Home / Technical / The Drobo: Conclusions

The Drobo: Conclusions

February 7, 2009 JimK Leave a Comment

I’ll need a few months of glitch-free operation before this is more than provisional, but it looks like the Drobo is a pretty good solution for off-site backup.

The good:

  • Using bare drives is a real plus. There’s no time wasted bolting the drives into trays, and they take up the least room in the safe deposit box.
  • Goes into standby mode by itself to save power. This might be a problem in some applications, but it’s great for backup.
  • Easy setup. Default options are well-chosen.
  • Supports USB 2 at full speed. Since it also supports 800 b/s Firewire, it would be  surprise if it didn’t.
  • You can have eight disks attached to your computer and only tie up two ports.

The bad:

  • Flaky dashboard software. Hung when I put a drive into standby. Fixed by not doing that anymore.
  • Some firmware problems. Fixed by upgrading to Release 1.3.0.
  • Disk errors transferring one file. Fixed by deleting the file and starting over.
  • The drive activity light and the standby light are hidden when the cover is attached.
  • Not very configurable. Non-redundant storage not available.
  • If you’re not careful, the front cover can come off while you’re handling the unit (it’s attached with magnets), and you might drop the Drobo.
  • You can’t put it into standby mode without either using the Dashboard or powering down your computer.

The suspicious:

  • I’m not a fan of hot swapping without special pin arrangements that make ground contact first, then power, then logic pins. I wouldn’t install or remove a drive unless the box is either in standby or, better yet, powered down.

Suggestions for future improvements:

  • A switch on the front to put it into standby mode.
  • An eight-bay version.
  • Ability to group disks and set up RAID levels manually.
  • Support for RAID 6 for large arrays.
  • Support for JBOD.
  • Faster computer interfaces. eSATA now, and USB 3 when it’s mature.

Technical, The Bleeding Edge

← More fun with the Drobo Paper Testing →

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

March 2023
S M T W T F S
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728293031  
« Jan    

Articles

  • About
    • Patents and papers about color
    • Who am I?
  • Good 35-70 MF lens
  • How to…
    • Backing up photographic images
    • How to change email providers
  • Lens screening testing
    • Equipment and Software
    • Examples
      • Bad and OK 200-600 at 600
      • Excellent 180-400 zoom
      • Fair 14-30mm zoom
      • Good 100-200 mm MF zoom
      • Good 100-400 zoom
      • Good 100mm lens on P1 P45+
      • Good 120mm MF lens
      • Good 18mm FF lens
      • Good 24-105 mm FF lens
      • Good 24-70 FF zoom
      • Good 35 mm FF lens
      • Good 60 mm lens on IQ3-100
      • Good 63 mm MF lens
      • Good 65 mm FF lens
      • Good 85 mm FF lens
      • Good and bad 25mm FF lenses
      • Good zoom at 24 mm
      • Marginal 18mm lens
      • Marginal 35mm FF lens
      • Mildly problematic 55 mm FF lens
      • OK 16-35mm zoom
      • OK 60mm lens on P1 P45+
      • OK Sony 600mm f/4
      • Pretty good 16-35 FF zoom
      • Pretty good 90mm FF lens
      • Problematic 400 mm FF lens
      • Tilted 20 mm f/1.8 FF lens
      • Tilted 30 mm MF lens
      • Tilted 50 mm FF lens
      • Two 15mm FF lenses
    • Found a problem – now what?
    • Goals for this test
    • Minimum target distances
      • MFT
      • APS-C
      • Full frame
      • Small medium format
    • Printable Siemens Star targets
    • Target size on sensor
      • MFT
      • APS-C
      • Full frame
      • Small medium format
    • Test instructions — postproduction
    • Test instructions — reading the images
    • Test instructions – capture
    • Theory of the test
    • What’s wrong with conventional lens screening?
  • Previsualization heresy
  • Privacy Policy
  • Recommended photographic web sites
  • Using in-camera histograms for ETTR
    • Acknowledgments
    • Why ETTR?
    • Normal in-camera histograms
    • Image processing for in-camera histograms
    • Making the in-camera histogram closely represent the raw histogram
    • Shortcuts to UniWB
    • Preparing for monitor-based UniWB
    • A one-step UniWB procedure
    • The math behind the one-step method
    • Iteration using Newton’s Method

Category List

Recent Comments

  • lancej on Two ways to improve the Q2 handling
  • JimK on Sony 135 STF on GFX-50R, sharpness
  • K on Sony 135 STF on GFX-50R, sharpness
  • Mal Paso on Christmas tree light bokeh with the XCD 38V on the X2D
  • Sebastian on More on tilted adapters
  • JimK on On microlens size in the GFX 100 and GFX 50R/S
  • Kyle Krug on On microlens size in the GFX 100 and GFX 50R/S
  • JimK on Hasselblad X2D electronic shutter scan time
  • Jake on Hasselblad X2D electronic shutter scan time
  • Piotr Chylarecki on Who am I?

Archives

Copyright © 2023 · Daily Dish Pro On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

Unless otherwise noted, all images copyright Jim Kasson.