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

5 comments

1. 

   Lauro Otacilio C. Sousa on December 12, 2009 at 2:32 am

   Hi, Beware !!! This is a RAID system !!! You will never have the total amount of disk space of the hard disks you put inside it… And it is a very fragile product too… The plastic pieces break very easily…

   Have a lot to improve ahead…

2. 

   Frank Segler on December 12, 2009 at 5:26 am

   I have an important warning for everyone for the Drobo device. I just purchased the new one with the firewire 800 for my mac, the one shown in this listing here. I also bought a TON of 1 TB Western Digital drives (model WD10EACS).

   I have a bunch of digital video and photography RAWs to back up. Its a ton of data and I the idea of being able to hot swap drives like the ads purport, instead of adding more and more external drives in never ending piles all around me sounded great.

   So I get my Drobo in, install 4 drives and I get….. 2.7 TB! Not the 4TB that I had just put in!

   I call the company and ask them ‘where are my 4 TB’, and they is so many words, and I am paraphrasing here, they said that this is a RAID device in all but name. RAID that cannot be turned off under ANY circumstances! You lose approximately 50% of the drive space you install!!! I really wish they had just said that in black and white before I dropped thousands of dollars on this thing.

   The phone tech had no problem telling me, but their website, review sites, this Amazon web page, NONE of them say you lose a great deal of your storage space to a forced RAID type system.

   Here is a DIRECT QUOTE from the Amazon.com web page, THIS PAGE that you are looking at now if you scroll up:

   “Hot expandable up to 16TB”

   No, that is a bald faced LIE. You cannot get 16TB!! In order to get 16 TB, you have to put in (4) x (4 Terabte hard drives), so that you put in 16 Terabytes, but the enforced RAID TAKES AWAY perhaps 6 of those Terabtes, so you only get maybe 10 Terabyes. (I am estimating here, because their calculator currently only calculates up to 4 TB.)

   You can try it yourself. I wish I knew this tool was available when I bought mine, but when they call something a “Drobulator”, you might not know its used to tell you how much loss of storage you will suffer under different configurations.

   Here is the link:

   http://www.drobo.com/Products/drobolator.html

   You can pull down (4) of the 1 Terabyte hard drives, and then look at the color coded capacities it shows below. You will see that after installing almost $1000 work of hard drives, you get the benefit of about $500 worth of hard drives, or 2.7TB!!!! Yes correct – install 4 Terabytes, get 2.7 Terabytes. Why? Because it is a RAID in all but name.

   I mean my PowerMac comes with RAID capability, but I can CHOOSE to use it if I want. But with DROBO you have no choice. All the comments about fantasies of having 16TB online – yeah, I was having them too. But the most you are gonna get is possibly 10TB. Of course we have to wait until 4TB single drives are available in a few years from now.

   PLEASE pass this along so that other people don’t make the same mistake as I did. Its a very painful lesson. In talking to the company on the phone, they will charge you a restocking fee, even if as I did, I pointed out to them my mistake was going to be replicated by thousands of other innocent consumers because their data sheets and specifications, while the do mention redundant storage, never come right out and say its a FORCED RAID SYSTEM. I wish they would have done that. I just blew thousands of dollars because their website was VERY unclear about this, as well as all the other review sites that tout the ability to get up to 16TB! Ugh!

   The company also told me that to use it for backups as was the intended purpose in my case, I would have to remove the ENTIRE 4TB drive set, all 4 drives, in order to retain what were essentially 2 copies of my data. A first copy taking up 2.7 TB and a second copy, presumably compressed or something taking up a little less.

   I think this is a great item for companies who need online RAID or any user who actually WANTS RAID. I do not see any value whatsoever in having it be hot swappable like they have made it?!?! It only makes it easier to ADD drives as you use more space. But most tech junkies I know go for the max right off the bat, um, like I did.

   Again, to recap: The Drobo device is an ENFORCED, NON-OPTIONAL RAID DEVICE that will make half of your bought storage disappear for the second data set.

   Go to their website and use the Drobo Calculator, or the Drobulator I think they call it, somewhat cryptically. After I bought it, I went over all the spec data I had read to see where I made my mistake about thinking I would get 4TB if I put in (4) 1TB drives, and while in retrospect there are hints at it, there is nothing that the company says which is clearly stated that you get half the capacity that you install. NOWHERE DOES IT SAY THIS CLEARLY!! And judging from reviews and general opinion on the web, quite a LOT of people are as misinformed as I was.

   Perhaps an email campaign to the company to get them to make the RAID optional. I mean come on, its just firmware – we all know that. They can make it a choice. All I wanted was a nice hot swappable external storage device. They are losing 90% of their potential market I am sure, once everyone hears about this.

   ON the other hand, if you actually want a RAID device, this seems to be pretty reasonably priced. I cannot voice for their unique technology vs. long established RAID technology, but anyhow, thats what its for – people or most likely companies that need a RAID device.

   Thanks for hearing me out…..

   Frank

3. 

   Tony Lee on December 12, 2009 at 5:47 am

   the video with the girl reviewing this product needs to be banned, driving potential customers away. She is holding hard drives and shaking them as she is talking with big arm movement is absolutely absurd. “Oh, this drive is still spinning and I can move them, great, let the machine fix everything”. Hiring a total illiterate to promote your product is a big negative. Text to speech software would have done a better job.

4. 

   jonas bolognas on December 12, 2009 at 8:09 am

   Was about to buy this for raid5 storage. Acutally purchased it, but cancelled before amazon started the shipping process. Wasn’t too concerned about it not being a NAS since I was going to attach it directly to my pc via usb. However, after reading many reviews, i was very concerned about it losing data. I really was enticed by the ease of adding drives of different capacity and having it automatically expand and rebuild as my storage requirements increased. However, a device like this should be reliable above any other features. Because of this, i decided to go with a traditional NAS. Ended up buying the 4 drive N4100PRO from Thecus because it used standard EXT3 file system instead of drobo’s proprietary one. With EXT3, even if the NAS itself failed, the data on the drives can still be recoverable by mounting it in a linux system.

5. 

   M. Lafaver on December 12, 2009 at 8:40 am

   AT FIRST I WAS HAPPY WITH DROBO. IT WORKED FINE FOR THE FIRST YEAR. I HAD PURCHASED IT ON 07/2007. MY DROBO HAD FAILED 14 MONTHS LATER. DROBO HAS A 12 MONTH STANDARD WARRANTY. I CONTACTED TECH SUPPORT FOR DROBO. THEY TOOK MY INFORMATION AND SAID THEY WOULD CALL ME BACK AND THAT IT MAY TAKE UP TO ONE WEEK TO RETURN MY CALL. I WAITED TWO WEEKS AND NEVER GOT A CALL BACK. I CALLED DROBO TECH SUPPORT AND THEY SAID SORRY AND WOULD HELP ME NOW OVER THE PHONE. I EXPLAINED THAT THE DROBO UNIT WOULD KEEP REBOOTING OVER AND OVER. I FOLLOWED THEIR INSTRUCTIONS IN CHECKING A FEW THINGS AND THEY CAME TO A CONCLUSION THAT IT WAS THE DROBO UNIT WHICH HAD FAILED. IF I HAD BOUGHT THE ADDITIONAL ONE YEAR WARRANTY BEFORE THE ORIGINAL WARRANTY HAD ENDED IT WOULD HAVE COST ME $49. SINCE IT WAS OUT OF WARRANTY IT WILL COST ME $129. NOW IM STUCK PAYING THE $129 AND THEY WILL SEND ME A REPLACEMENT DROBO UNIT. I HOPE THIS WORKS SO I CAN RETREIVE THE INFORMATION FROM THE HARD DRIVES.