Review : Drobo Options

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Product summary
CNET Editors' ChoiceJun 07
The good:
Protects your data without your interference; can take a 3.5-inch SATA drive of any capacity and from any vendor; hot swappable; your data is available while Drobo is formatting a new drive (even if one drive fails); runs quietly; dashboard lets you track the condition of your Drobo.

The bad:
Drobo itself is an USB-only device, and networking capability adds $200 to the bill; we would like to see Drobo bundled with a good backup application.

The bottom line:
Drobo takes the pain and confusion out of data protection and lets you tailor and expand the drive according to your needs. This so-called storage robot works exactly as promised and is the most innovative storage device we've seen in a long time. We want one.


Drobo will let you sleep at night. Drobo will make your headache go away. Drobo will put a smile on your face. Drobo is not a drug. Drobo can affect you in the aforementioned ways, however, if you worry about keeping your troves of digital data safe. Drobo is an external storage device that is dead simple to set up and use while offering excellent protection and unbelievably flexible expansion. Specifically, it's a USB drive enclosure with four empty bays that can house any combination of SATA hard drives. It can salvage and rebuild your data in case of drive failure, and you can add larger drives to it as your storage needs grow. Data Robotics calls Drobo a "storage robot" because it automates all those tasks and decisions that RAID arrays require you to make in order to protect your data. An empty Drobo will set you back about $500, but e-tailers will probably offer bundles that include hard disk drives (currently, Drobo is available only in its baseline, driveless configuration). Drobo is the essence of simplicity and user friendliness. We only wish Drobo came bundled with its own backup utility so that the important first step of data backup wouldn't be left to the whims of end users.

The Drobo's all-black body makes it look small and inconspicuous for a four-bay enclosure. While the top and sides are matte black, the front and rear panels are made of glossy, black plastic. The rear panel of the Drobo houses only a USB port and a power port. If you pop off the front panel (which comes off easily without requiring tools), you're faced with four empty drive bays. Each bay can accept a hard drive of any capacity from any vendor, as long as it's a 3.5-inch SATA 1- or SATA 2-type drive. A series of 10 blue LEDs along the bottom of the front panel as the Drobo is filled--each light represents about 10 percent of the drive; the more blue lights you see, the less capacity you have left. On the right side of the front panel are four LEDs--one for each drive bay--that shine or blink green, yellow, or red to indicate the status of each drive. The included user guide offers a full explanation of the light patterns, as does a sticker on the inside of the front panel--saving you from hunting for the manual should you suddenly see the lights blink red or yellow.

Getting your Drobo up and running couldn't be simpler--no tools are required. Insert a SATA drive into any of Drobo's drive bays, connect Drobo to your PC via USB 2.0, and power it up by plugging it into a wall socket. You can start with just one hard drive, but Data Robotics recommends you start with at least two for data protection. You're paying for Drobo's protection technology--there are cheaper alternatives for a single, external hard drive. No matter how many drives you add to Drobo, your PC will see it as a single USB storage device. After you've popped your hard drives into Drobo and plugged it in, you can either use the included CD to format the drive(s) or you can use the native Windows drive formatting utility or Apple's Disk Utility. The benefit of formatting by using the CD is that you can install the Drobo Dashboard, which will help you stay informed of the device's status. The initial formatting will take a few minutes. Drobo supports NTFS (Windows), HFS+ (Mac OS), and FAT32 (cross-platform) file systems, and the separate DroboShare base provides EXT3 support for Linux systems. In order to format your Drobo volume in the EXT3 file system, you will need to purchase the separate DroboShare product.

Once you've formatted the disks, you can install additional disks without going through the formatting process. Simply pop out the full or damaged drive, and slide in a fresh one in its place. The new drive will be formatted automatically, and the data from the removed drive written to it; you can even access your data during this process (keep in mind that any data already existing on a drive will be erased once you allow Drobo to format it). According to Data Robotics, Drobo uses a variety of data protection schemes, including some used in RAID arrays. Unlike RAID arrays, you don't need to choose a protection level or scheme; all of the protection goes on behind the scenes. As mentioned previously, you can use any 3.5-inch drive from any vendor, in any capacity. When choosing drives, however, you should keep capacity in mind, because not all of the installed capacity will be available to you as storage space. Data Robotics' rule of thumb is to omit the capacity of the largest drive and add up the capacity of the remaining ones: for example, if you have three 250GB drives, your usable capacity is about 500GB. If you have two 500GB drives and a 250GB drive, your available capacity is 750GB. Drobo uses the remaining capacity for data protection. The idea is that if the largest drive fails, you'd need equal its capacity on the other drive(s) to store its data should that drive fail.

We installed the Drobo (with two drives, an 80GB Seagate Barracuda and a 160GB Seagate Barracuda) on our Windows-based system, and it was as easy as the start-up literature promised. After the initial formatting was done, we copied over several gigabytes of data, including photos, music, video, and data files. To test the ability to access data during a drive failure, we started a video from Drobo and proceeded to extract one of the hard drives and replace it with another (a 400GB Hitachi Deskstar). We didn't see any hiccups in the video (or any of the other files we accessed), and the formatting of the new disk and the rewriting of the data progressed in the background.

The Drobo dashboard shows a graphical representation of capacity (in the form of a pie chart), which we found useful. In the advanced options window, you can also check the capacity of each drive, set up alerts for various situations, check for firmware updates, and reformat the drive. The dashboard also lets you access instructional videos that show you how to perform various tasks, such as replacing a drive. While the dashboard is useful, we'd like to see Drobo bundled with more software, specifically with a good backup utility. As good as Drobo is at protecting your data, it still relies on users to actively copy files over and let's face it: we are lazy. A backup utility would let users schedule automatic backups during the installation process and let Drobo take care of the rest.

Because the focus of the Drobo is on data protection and not speed, we didn't test data transfer speeds (plus, speeds will vary depending on the hard drives you choose to add to Drobo). So far, Drobo is only available with a USB 2.0 connector, which is the main speed bottleneck, if that's a concern for you. The separate $199 DroboShare adds Gigabit Ethernet networking, but we would also like to see Drobo come in FireWire and eSATA versions for those users who want faster throughput than what USB 2.0 can provide.

Data Robotics supports Drobo with a standard one-year warranty. First-level toll-free phone support is available 24-7; if your matter needs additional attention, the second-level phone support is available 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. PT. You can also send an e-mail to tech support or fill out the online support form. Drobo's site offers FAQs, documentation, downloadables, and a user forum.

Source : cnet.com

[NickTheGreek]

Data Robotics has disqualified the use of the 1.5TB Seagate drives at this time due to reliability issues with the drives.

Pending resolution of this matter by Seagate, Data Robotics will re-qualify these drives for use in Drobo. Please visit periodically to stay informed.

Source : http://www.drobo.com/Support/feed/

well, guess what ?

i eventually swapped the 1TB WD Caviars for 4x1.5TB Seagate Barracudas.

In the mean time since hat quoted post, several Seagate 1.5TB part numbers have been qualified for the Drobo...

Here is the full story by a Seagate engineer, interesting reading ... and i also attached a letter by Data Robotics exmplaing to their customers the current Drobo + 1.5TB HD issues, solved or not.


"I posted this in another thread, but I'll post it here to. This was posted by a Seagate employee this morning on Slashdot... take it for what it's worth. Might explain what's been going on.

Originally Posted by maxtorman
I work for Seagate. I was there when the fit hit the shan, and I saw everything going in internally, as well as externally.
I really love my job, so please excuse the sock-puppet nature that creating a brand new account and claiming to be an authority on the subject I must seem to be. But I am a geek, and I really think you all need to know the true story behind the scenes.

This whole thing started with the 1.5 Terabyte drives. It had a stuttering issue, which at first we all thought was a simple bad implementation of SATA on common chipsets. Seagate engineers promptly jumped in and worked to try to duplicate the issue and prove where the problem was. This wasn't a massive rush as 1.5tb drives are what? 5% of the drives on the market. When it became obvious that the issue was more widespread, they buckled down and put out a couple of firmware revisions to fix it.

Now, in the 1.5tb drives, there are 2 main revisions. the the product line that gets the CC* firmware, and the line that gets the SD* firmware. They came out with firmware CC1H and SD1A to fix these issues and started issuing them.

But, seagate has always been restrictive of handing out their firmware, so such updates required calling in with your serial so that the people who had access to hand out the firmware could check a) model, part number, and c) current firmware just to make absolutely sure that they were giving the right firmware out. This has been a procedre that has worked for YEARS up until now.

Then the bricking issue came to their attention. It took so long because it's an issue that's hard to track down - pretty much the journal or log space in the firmware is written to if certain events occur. IF the drive is powered down when there are 320 entries in this journal or log, then when it is powered back up, the drive errors out on init and won't boot properly - to the point that it won't even report it's information to the BIOS.

This is a rare, but still obviously bad issue. Up until now, we all figured it was just some standard type of failure, as it was such a rare event, so we'd RMA the drives.

So, for whatever reason, mid management started freaking out (as it could be a liability for seagate, I suspect - ontop of the already potentially liable issue of the stuttering problem causing drives to fail in RAIDs). So, they pushed the release of the SD1A firmware to the general public. They took a few days to 'test', though it was mostly just including some code in the batch file that kicks off the firmware updater, to check that it is a BRINKS drive, and the proper model number. Then it was kicked out to the public.

Please understand, this firmware had to go through five different checks to make sure it applies to the specific conditions to qualify sending to a customer, before now. 5 chances for us to go your drive needs the other (or none) firmware update. Suddenly, it's down to ONE check, and even that was more designed for a contingency just incase the wrong firmware was sent out.

Of course, it starts bricking drives.

Right now, the engineers are crapping themselves, the firmware's been pulled, the support agents are told to say "The firmware will be released soon" and no real procedure to fix this issue is in place. Our phones are flooded so bad that it locks the system up when there are too many calls in queue, and emails are coming in at hundreds an hour.

We simply cannot keep up.

The good news is, the chance of your drive simply not spinning up one day is very low. And for those of you who flashed the wrong firmware - be patient. It's not bricked, just unable to write data to the platters properly. When they have a *GOOD* firmware out, a new flash should un-brick the drives. If not, flashing it back to SD15 should make it work again.

Seagate really pushes the idea of being open and honest as much as we can without being sued to hell. They let agents make choices and use their skills instead of scripting us to death. They worked hard to bring their support back to the USA.

Seagate does care about their customers. They just got caught with their pants down, twice in a very short period of time! So, they're wanting to double, triple, and quadruple check the firmware so it doesn't brick anymore drives.

As for why it takes so long before an issue is reported and before seagate makes an announcement - we get a dozen 'reports' of issues that are really just one-off problems a day. It takes time for an issue to be 'significant' enough to escalate to the product teams, and time before they can provide a fix.

I hope this clears up a few things. I may or may not be able to answer questions if you have any.

now, i must be lucky, because eshop.gr did not have any 1.5TBs in stock and i had to wait a week for the new delivery, so i open the first of the 4 hard discs and here are my details :

CODE

ST31500341AS
P/N: 9JU138-302
Firmware: CC1H

no need to upgrade, doing a CC1H > CC1J upgrade is even forbidden !

Attached File(s)

 Seagate_1.5TB.pdf ( 693.13K ) Number of downloads: 0