Storage

I have photo's on my computer that are just taking up way to much space and want to delete them off. I was thinking about getting a drobo. How would you do this?

I went with a Synology NAS. Same general idea but WAY faster than the Drobo I used a couple of years ago and it can be accessed from any computer on the network.

will it work with mac?

Tc202 wrote in post #14913354
will it work with mac?

Yep. Its actually a small server running Linux. You connect it to the network and manage it through a web browser. Share some folders and you're on your way. I got the 5 bay model. I recommend getting at least 2 bays so you can mirror the drives for redundancy. You can add or upgrade drives to expand its capacity at any time without having to offload/reload data from the NAS. One drive can fail and your data will still be accessible.

Thanks, I will compare this with drobo g technology.

If you go with a NAS you'll want gigabit networking and a good faster router.

A better solution is generally to put another hard drive inside your computer, if it can take it. It costs around $150 and takes ten minutes, plus quite a few hours to format it.

tim wrote in post #14913810
A better solution is generally to put another hard drive inside your computer, if it can take it. It costs around $150 and takes ten minutes, plus quite a few hours to format it.

That gives no redundancy and migrating to a new drive is a chore, especially as the drives get bigger and bigger.

I think I am going to go for the drobo s. Thanks for your help

mike_d wrote in post #14914398
That gives no redundancy and migrating to a new drive is a chore, especially as the drives get bigger and bigger.

Of course it gives no redundancy, data inside the computer shouldn't be replicated. Drive failures are rare, and RAID is to increase uptime, not act as a backup. RAID is not a backup.

Offsite backups are essential, but that's not what this thread is about.

There are plenty of options other than Drobo, many of them better. There's another thread with a similar topic at the moment where something else was recommended, I think it's this one. It's worth reading. Drobo have great marketing, better than their technology from what I've read.

tim wrote in post #14914564
Of course it gives no redundancy, data inside the computer shouldn't be replicated. Drive failures are rare, and RAID is to increase uptime, not act as a backup. RAID is not a backup.

Given the choice between tolerating a drive failure or not, I'll take the fault-tolerance RAID offers. Drives DO fail, and almost always at an extremely inconvenient time. Of course I still do backups. RAID5 or better also gives better performance than a single drive can offer. Single drive performance absolutely collapses under multi-tasking.

Sure, RAID is better than no raid, but it's not a backup. If performance is a big issue just replace it with an SSD.

tim wrote in post #14914808
Sure, RAID is better than no raid, but it's not a backup. If performance is a big issue just replace it with an SSD.

I never said it was a replacement for a backup. Its redundant storage. The failure of 1 or 2 drives can be tolerated without downtime depending on the RAID level.

SSDs are horribly expensive for storing large amounts of data and you still have failure issues, just like with a hard drive. Plus, they're small so you'd either have to spread the data out and manage what's on what drive, or RAID them into a single volume.

Sorry for my lack of knowlege on this subject, but would it be bad to back my photos on a drobo? I was looking at the Drobo s and drobo 5d, which one would you choose and which drives would you buy to put in it? Thanks

Tc202 wrote in post #14914872
Sorry for my lack of knowlege on this subject, but would it be bad to back my photos on a drobo? I was looking at the Drobo s and drobo 5d, which one would you choose and which drives would you buy to put in it? Thanks

For just backing up data, I wouldn't bother with the expense of a Drobo. But if you're planning on moving your data off your computer as your first post stated, then a Drobo or NAS is a good place to put it since they can tolerate one drive failure without losing any data.

Of course, you'll want to make at least one independent backup of whatever storage solution you choose. RAID arrays can fail due to hardware or software errors. Power surges can kill your NAS/Drobo. Or you could simply accidentally delete something important. I backup my NAS to a USB3.0 hard drive and to Crashplan.

I'm not familiar with Drobo's newer units. I worked with one of their 4 bay models from about 2 years ago and even connected over Firewire 800, performance was sadly lacking in my opinion and didn't live up to the claims on their web site. Western Digital has a new line of NAS-optimized Red drives you might consider for populating whatever you get.

Thanks, this will also be for storing.