Drobo / WD Thunderbolt?

CSMFoto...... My brother is a MAC guy, I use PCs (and have since Compaq I in 1983 or so)....

Question nobody seems to be able to answer about viruses.... Why none on MACs? Seems like SAYING that there are none would be a challenge to the virus guys. Or is their operating system somehow immune to stuff like that? Or do the virus people think that MAC users have enough problems already? (Just kidding there)....

To me MACs are expensive and limited in expansion. There are some cool design features that PC makers should adopt (like the magnetic plug for the AC adapter in the MAC BOOKS)... But overall at least I can work on the PC software wise.... I have an iPhone and am lost in some of the cryptic directions and lack of documentation..... I assume that stuff carries over to their computers too....

Thoughts on viruses?

Mark H

P51Mstg wrote in post #15110434
Never a fan of Drobo......

I'd suggest some FAST NAS drives at least you can access them over your home (or work) network.... Speed is s function of money.

If nothing else, get a couple of external HDs and get a MATCHED SET (same cases and drives) and simply work on one and then mirror it over to the other using something like BESTSYNC (which I used to replace ALWAYSYNC)......

I'm with Mark. Right now I'm constructing a backup/archive NAS with two identical Hitachi enterprise drives in an OWC enclosure. I'm formatting the drives in a computer then installing them in the enclosure. Many of these enclosures like Drobo use dynamic disks which I don't trust as much as basic disks.

CSMFoto wrote in post #15153288
U...I do not use PC's for the sheer reason that you're spending just as much money for Virus protection and all the other silly mumbo jumbo to keep hackers away from your computers....

No, "you're" not. I haven't spent a dime on malwear protection for my PCs for years. My ISP provides McAfee free with the internet service. Other than that, I don't know what "silly mumbo jumbo" you're talking about. Malwear is very far down the list of things I worry about.

Last 20 years, I have - to my knowledge - suffered two malwares. One care of IRC and one care of broken M$ decision where they turned on .NET auto-install in IE. Both issues noticed within a couple of minutes and solved within less than 30 min. I haven't spent any money - using free solutions.

NAS is not something I support in my specific use case.

I have one physical area where I work on RAW images or videography. I do not need ubiquitous access. And, NAS is slow compared to local storage.

I understand when NAS is appropriate and useful, but in my case it makes no sense.

I use a LaCie Thunderbolt set up in RAID 0, but I replaced the two 7200 SATA drives with a pair of SAMSUNG 830 (512) SSDs. This is used for processing and workflow, not storage. This is the fastest (read or write) storage I've ever used, which should come as no surprise given the unrestricted Thunderbolt bus.

I moved the deinstalled 2TB drives into two locally attached Firewire 800 enclosures (single disk in each) and use Carbon Copy Cloner to automatically copy whatever I want to the discreet drives - usually to each. This is augmented with Time Machine backups.

I also endorse the strategy of multiple backups of data - as required - but I also see the comfort of RAID 1 for some things if augmented.

chmod

drvnbysound wrote in post #15153304
I've never researched Drobo personally, but I saw this unfold a few months ago:

http://scottkelby.com/​2012/im-done-with-drobo/

http://scottkelby.com …m-drobo-ceo-tom-buiocchi/

http://scottkelby.com/​2012/my-life-after-drobo/

Simply due to their proprietary nature, I probably wouldn't go with them personally.

I've been watching that as well. As a Drobo user/owner, I'm a little nervous.

bpalermini wrote in post #15112458
As for Drobo, I agree, it is a good backup solution but slow. I have not used a thunderbolt one.

Drobo is not a backup solution, it's a RAID availability solution.

Hopefully you also ordered something to back that thunderbolt drive up to.

peter_n wrote in post #15171251
Drobo is not a backup solution, it's a RAID availability solution.

Its a backup solution as in "one backup set".
But the user obviously needs multiple backup sets - and at least one set off-site.

But it's quite often people forget that a RAID is still a single point of failure. Just that it can survive the loss of a single (or sometimes two) drives, is moot when the whole unit bricks, or someone erases a file or writes bad data to the file.

So for static files, a RAID is a single copy.

And for files that may change, the RAID needs to store multiple generations of the file - and these multiple generations are still just a single copy. The data must still also be stored on other media and on other locations.

Well guys, unfortunately my iMac did not support the Thunderbolt technology and I did not realize that it was just a mini-display port! I am still looking for a solution to backing up all of my files from my iMac as well as my MBP to another storage device! I have 3 tb in WD USB 2.0 drives, but feel that these are extremely slow, and unfortunely none of my computers have USB 3.0.

Are there any solutions?? I am fairly inexperienced with these back up systems, raid systems etc. HELP PLEASE! I have 500gb left and every wedding I have is well over 25gb!

Unless you plan on upgrading your iMac, I'm afraid you are stuck with USB/Firewire or some sort of networked device like a SAN or NAS. Good luck with your search.

A 3TB WD My Book Live is quite nice solution. Gigabit ethernet and managing about 80MB/s write speed for me.

It is only a single backup destination, so you need more than one unit to have redundant copies. Preferably at least one copy at different geographical location.

CSMFoto wrote in post #15192578
Well guys, unfortunately my iMac did not support the Thunderbolt technology and I did not realize that it was just a mini-display port! I am still looking for a solution to backing up all of my files from my iMac as well as my MBP to another storage device! I have 3 tb in WD USB 2.0 drives, but feel that these are extremely slow, and unfortunely none of my computers have USB 3.0. Are there any solutions??

OK so you don't have Thunderbolt or USB 3.0 so a Firewire 800 port (you have one?) might be your fastest connection. Take a look at the OWC web site. They're Mac guys and have online help for both product selection and technical support. They sell empty enclosures also if you already have SATA drives. I'm working with their Dual at the moment and having problems with the Firewire 800 card and MS Windows but their enclosure seems like a good product and they're worth checking out.

I do have the firewire 800 on both my MBP and my iMac. Have the feeling like I should sell both, get a mac pro(older) and upg it to usb 3.0 and get another MBP with usb 3.0 as well.

I watched a webinar a few months ago of a photographer who used to work in the database group at Microsoft... now a senior portrait and wedding photographer in the Chicago area, who stated they grossed over $1M in sales last year. He stated that, as with most photographers, he rarely needs to look over old photographs again, unless it's a previous client asking for more prints... but obviously not on a day-to-day basis. That said, he solely uses stand-alone external HDDs... and usually buys a number of them on Black Friday (when they are really cheap). One on-site for local storage, another off-site in a safe deposit box. He simply copies the files over to each drive as soon as a shoot is over. Once the off-site drive is full it goes to the safe deposit box. This way there is no RAID array, no proprietary software, or other similar failure points... and the data should be able to be accessed on any computer in the (relative) future... and no reason for him to open the computer case to deal with internal drives.

While I haven't run any tests or accounted for the costs myself, he stated that research was done and he concluded that this was the cheapest and most reliable way to access and store the data (specific for photography of coarse). That said, he also mentioned that based on the cost of the drives (again, inexpensive) he doesn't bother culling pictures and deleting pictures of the ground or other because it's just not worth the time spent doing so considering the minimal amount of disk space saved. I suppose you would need to weigh the cost of the time (hourly rate) it takes to go through and delete these pictures vs. the cost of the disk space used to store them... and also simply consider if you actually want to spend the time doing this (e.g. Could you be doing something else? Another shoot?).

Personally, I generally spend the time to do the latter anyway... For now, and the forseeable future, it's just a hobby for me, and I haven't really bothered much with even an on-site backup However, FWIW, the majority of my pictures are on a separate HDD than my OS (Windows).