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Drobo - 4 Bay FW800 & USB 2.0 Storage Array inc Drobo Share NAS Solution
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Released: 2009-04-16 Rating:  More Details: Drobo - 4 Bay FW800 & USB 2.0 Storage Array inc Drobo Share NAS Solution Drobo - 4 Bay FW800 & USB 2.0 Storage Array inc Drobo Share NAS Solution @Amazon Drobo - 4 Bay FW800 & USB 2.0 Storage Array inc Drobo Share NAS Solution @aStore |
Customer Reviews:
Perfect for home, but steep learning curve
After spending several years of trying different storage solutions for my home I happened upon the Drobo. It does look too good to be true, however I was happy to see it wasn't. The unit was installed (in a cupboard out of the way) and three drives installed in under 5 mintes. Installing the drobo dashboard is simple as well. Anyone could do that.
The problems begin when you start with the applications... some backstory. I was getting a Drobo to replace the need to have one of my computers on to act as a media server, I also needed to be ablet to back up my laptop and computer. The drobo and share was ideal solution. SO back to applications. In order to run the media server I needed to install Fuppes. So I decided to do a bit of reading. Don't try the drobo website though, they do not actually support the apps available in their own app store. A long search of the internet located the site and the media server was configuered and working within a couple of hours.
DO
1. Install Drobo Dashboard
2. Install DroboApps Admin - Do not try and fiddle without it. I experienced mixed results installing applications without this
DON'T
1. Expect support from Drobo
In short the Drobo is ideal for backing up your files and streaming media around your house, but it is not a home network style solution, do not think that you will get anything like the performance you get in the office (or a proper network). In practice across my gigbit network I get a sustained write speed of about 10MB/sec, read is better, but not much. This is a home backup solution, not a small file server. I will probably try some more tweaks and improve the performance, but it meets the the needs I brought it for.
In short Great device with no mess configuration. Dire support though, maybe Drobo should work towards supporting the apps available on their website.
Returned for refund. 
After struggling with this for a few days, I eventually returned it for a full refund. Using this device as it's intended to be used - ie connecting to it over the network gives a speed slow enough to be useless. If you connect directly to it with a firewire cable, it's not bad at all though.
But if it only makes sense to connect directly, why spend the extra money on the bundle that has net network sharing extra device?
Drobo - Good but Droboshare - worthless
The Drobo is great. It was quite easy to set up.
However I bought ours to put on the network and share amongst a few users. For that it will work fine but if you want to put permissions on any folders you can't if you use the Droboshare. The Droboshare doesn't support permissions. All you can do is put a password on the drive. Once you enter the password you can access everything.
So the end result for me was to plug 2 Drobos into the USB ports on a server and set up my permissions there. Anybody want to buy 2 Droboshare?
:(
Lost my entire backup
UPDATE NOVEMBER 2009.
After my first faulty Drobo, the second unit has developed a 'Disk Hardware Failure'. I've trusted my entire backup to this machine and now it won't mount or allow me to access the data. This machine is supposed to make backups safer, but now I have lost everything on it. I've now had enough and will be sending this piece of junk to the recycling tip and replacing it with standard external drives for my backups.
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I've had nothing but trouble with the Drobo I bought, and would recommend choosing an alternative solution for your backup needs. The first unit I had was broken, but it took Drobo Customer Support over two weeks to diagnose the fault.
Eventually, they sent a replacement and told me they would collect the faulty unit. I waited in for two whole days for their courier to collect the item, but they didn't turn up. After several emails, I ended up paying to return the faulty device myself, with no postage refund given.
Apart from that, my main gripe with the Drobo is that you can't eject it like a normal drive. You have to go through their 'Dashboard' software. But sometimes it seems to eject itself randomly when i put my computer to sleep and warns me that my backup data may no longer be safe. Now I have to go through the dashboard, eject my other drives, then unplug the firewire before putting my mac to sleep, then do the same in reverse when I wake the Mac up.
And if I don't do this my entire backup might be lost. My advice is to look elsewhere for a decent backup. There are plenty of others to choose from at a much cheaper price too.
All in all, I am pretty unhappy with this device because it sits there reminding me of such a bad experience. Also, I know several other people from my contacts in the IT industry who have experience faults and bad customer service. Avoid.
Very Happy! 
I bought a Drobo with free Droboshare back in May, and when it arrived we found that the 2nd drive slot wasn't working. We sort of wanted to actually get to using the Drobo so ignored the second slot and put the 2 drives we initially bought for it into the 1st and 3rd slot. However, as we got closer to filling up this space, we bought another drive and again tested the 2nd slot to make sure it was still not working. This was the case, and so I called customer support (in the UK). I got straight through to a customer service representative, and it took about 5 minutes to arrange getting a new Drobo sent so that we could transfer the harddrives over to the new Drobo and then send the old defective one back. Obviously I would rather have not had an issue in the first place, but that was about the least painful support call I've ever had to deal with!
I'm not sure what some of the other reviews are talking about with regards to the Droboshare speeds, as I've found no problem with speeds, nor with the Drobo power-cycling. Perhaps it's a newer firmware or something?
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