About a year ago, when I was planning to build my current desktop computer, I wrote a number of essays where I talk about the issues of image storage. None of the options where ideal, and so I went for the simplest, which was to upgrade my internal RAID 1 pair with higher capacity drives. I don't shoot every day or keep everything I shoot, so while my library grows, I'm not the kind of shooter like an event photog who is adding 50GB every time he comes home.So for the last year, the pair of 1.5TB drives has done me well. But here I am, a year later as predicted, in much the same same position and trying to come up with an answer that's a little smarter this time.
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Just to review my requirements:
1) I need at least 2TB of redundant storage, most likely I'll just buy 3 or 4.
2) It's got to be fast, no USB or Firewire externals.
3) I like having my whole library available at all times. There have been a few big projects that I don't need immediate access to that I've moved to multiple external drives that I consider 'Cold Storage', but for the most part, I have everything online in one system.
4) I don't want to have to worry about complex RAID 5 or 6 systems that are a mess to fix if something REALLY goes wrong.
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To this end, there have been a couple of developments from Drobo. Now I know I scoffed at a Drobo a year ago, and for the low-end one and what I do, I still scoff. However they have released 2 models since then which 'could' answer my call.
First is the Drobo S, which is basically a 5 drive version of the original (which had 4 drives), along with a faster processor, an eSATA connection, and optional dual drive redundancy for $799 plus drives.
The second is the Drobo Pro, which is an 8 drive system, with optional dual redundancy, which connects over a gigabit ethernet cable via a system called iSCSI for $1500 plus drives.
Both expensive to be sure, but remember, this is your data we're talking about. Are your pictures worth $1000 to you? See, I thought so. Now the Drobo Pro has been out a while, gotten good reviews, but is big and expensive, and iSCSI is limited by the gigabit ethernet which in the real world means about 90MB/second. Which is fast, certainly faster than firewire or USB, but is it fast enough to work over?
The newer Drobo S is cheaper and does everything I need it to do (as far as I can tell) and has eSATA, which is theoretically faster than iSCSI, though it's only been out a couple of weeks and I have yet to find a review or anything to give me any objective numbers to compare. I'm worried that the processing overhead of dual-redundancy will slow the whole thing down to the point where it won't even live up to the eSATA potential. The Drobo Pro has 2 processors, so might be better in that regard.
Either way, I planned to fill them with 5 WD 1.5TB Green drives. They run cooler, are still pretty fast (which is less of a concern when they're all working together) and they're only $109/ea at NewEgg. I'd also like to make the purchase before the end of the year for tax purposes, so if anyone has any information that might help, please let me know.
So which specific Drobo are you going with? I own the first-generation USB-only Drobo as well as the second-generation USB/FireWire Drobo, and I'm ambivalent about them. I love the no-brainer aspect of managing them, but man, when they go down, they go down HARD. I use them only as a backup device at this point, but they're pretty great for that.
Unfortunately, I have 5 external FireWire drives connected to my main computer which seems like an insane amount of clutter, but the Drobo can back all the drives up every night, which is one less thing to worry about.
My first choice would be a Drobo S.
What problems have you had where your arrays went down?
Timely post, Bill. I'm looking hard at that Drobo S for the same reasons as you. Mine will be used for backup rather than primary storage--to consolidate the crazy welter of external FW and USB drives cluttering things up.
I'd like to know enough to understand whether Drobo's proprietary aspects should worry me: formatting methods, etc.
My photo storage is in a D-link NAS connected via gigabit ethernet. The D-link is known much more for gross affordability than speed, but to be honest I haven't detected any issue with it - it runs plenty fast for Photoshop/Lightroom and certainly fast enough to stream media, etc. I haven't benchmarked it, but frankly, for working with RAW and TIF files on 64-bit Windows 7, it hasn't been a problem.
That said, since you've evolved to a position where you're willing to outboard your setup to an NAS, I'm curious why you're sticking with Drobo when there seems to be a universe of other NAS options available, and as far as I can tell, Drobo is not necessarily the best value.
PS - build my own PCs as well. Makes too much sense, especially for higher-end builds.
I, too, am shopping for a redundant storage system, and I was almost certain I'd get a Drobo, in large part because it allows seamless scaling up of capacity.
Reading this article on Luminous Landscape recently, gave me pause, however:
The "secret sauce" warning clearly applies to the Drobo, so I began looking for alternatives. I now have my eye on the Synology DS409+. I'll purchase in 6 weeks or so, and if nothing better comes up, that's what I'll get. It has everything I need and then some, apart from the seamless scaling up.
Also - and this is by no means a scientific evaluation, but there's no better data publically available - I did Google searches on "drobo" and "drobo 'data loss'", getting 432000 and 6230 hits, respectively, or 0.14%. The same searches but with "synology ds409" instead of "drobo", yield 386000 and 1540 hits, or 0.04%.
George- I definitely don't want a NAS, nothing over the network will be anywhere NEAR fast enough. the iSCSI thing is using a gigabit direct connection between the box and the computer, it's not like a share.
Yes there are other RAID boxes out there, and ones like the Sonnet ones are pretty nice, but they rely on the RAID card in the computer to do the heavy lifting. Something about having all of that in one external box makes me feel better. So if my machine crashes or whatever, that it's all outside and separate. I also like the idea that I can plug it into a laptop if I had to move data around via USB or whatever, just seems more versatile.
And Mark- You're right, however, Drobo technology has been around for more than a couple years now and the guy who started it was an enterprise data guy for years, so I think they know their stuff. Also, the review of the pro I linked to above, the reviewer TRIED to get the array to break. Turning off the power and pulling out drives during rebuilds and writes and start-up etc, and he was unable to get it to fail. That makes me feel a little better. Your google search results are interesting, but the DROBO gets a lot more press and I'd say has a lot more users, so I'm not sure that analysis is reliable.
Anyway you slice it, you've got to take a chance one way or the other. This seems like one of the times to go with the popular system just from a "I'll be able to get another one of these things if mine breaks" point of view.
iSCSI is definitely the way to go when trying to attach large amounts of storage to a computer. We use iSCSI daily in our file storage and systems work.
When configured correctly, you could attach to a LUN/drive mapping on the Drobo and have near "local" speeds.
There are a few tricks to using it though. I would suggest a second network card dedicated to iSCSI traffic, running through a network switch that is not connected to any normal LAN traffic. Ideally the dedicated network switch would be capable of "Jumbo Frames", but sometimes configuring that takes a bit of looking in the manual and some command line work.
This is a good reference on iSCSI performance: http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2007/10/02/227164/how-to-enhance-iscsi-performance.htm
Really Merrick? Better than eSATA?
eSATAs strengths come from its simplicity. You simply take a cable and go from computer to Drobo. Done.
Line speed is debatable...the eSATA specs it at 300mb/sec, but I'm easily getting 700mb/sec on my production iSCSI setup. [not a Drobo]
With Gigabyte ethernet across, a dedicated switch running jumbo frames, I'm thinking an iSCSI setup would outperform an eSATA setup, but again...the eSATA Drobo seems like a good compromise of speed and minimal setup.
I have a friend using the Drobo via eSATA for music work and she has no speed issues at all for laying down tracks via her Mac. The Drobo acts just like a local drive for her and I assume would meet your needs.
See Merrick, that's the part I don't understand. How can a 1 gigaBit connection hold any more than about 120megaBtyes? 1 billion bits divided by 8 bytes, then overhead of the networking and stuff comes out to about 100 megabytes per second. no?
The tests they did at pcper.com were getting around 90MB/s and they were saying that it's pretty close to the theoretical limit.
Your math is correct. But I think the difference is that the iSCSI setup [configured for performance] is going to be full duplex...ie 2Gbit per second available [or 250 Megabytes bi-directional]. Whereas I think eSATA is half-duplex and uni-directional, meaning your line speed of 300MB/sec may be higher, but the iscsi full-duplex is going to transfer the same 300MB in half the time.
Does that make sense?
I've tried to find a direct eSATA to iSCSI comparison, but haven't found one as of yet.
Now people are telling me that this thing is a good idea:
OWC Mercury Pro Qx2
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/RAID/Desktop/
I'm hesitant for two reasons. One, there's something about the user interface. It's so industrial, setting hardware settings with one button and a few LED lights.. Also, I had another one of their enclosures once and it was pretty loud. When you've got a big aluminum box with 4 spinning drives and a fan, and it's all metal on metal. Resonance city. Can someone sell these guys some rubber grommets?
That said, the idea of actually getting 200MB/s over the eSATA connection definitely piques my interest. But I can't stand loud gear. All of the drives in my current machine are mounted in rubber bands.
What type of online backup are you using as an off-site "method"?
Hi Lance-
I'm using jungledisk, but I think I'm grandfathered into an old plan before they got bought out, so I don't pay a monthly flat fee, but rather just for storage and transfer with Amazon S3.
Mozy and carbonite would work as well, and those are like $5 for unlimited storage.
I only upload full-res jpegs of finished images so my whole archive costs less than $3 a month.