Buy more powered harddrives or save for Drobo?

Hi all, just a quick question. I'm primarily an event and sports shooter for my school, and after I graduate I hope to serve as a photographer for my compulsory national service under one of their magazines, so more event stuff. Not I've just started on HD video with my 5D2 as well.

I run through lots of photos and videos all the time, much like many of you guys, and space has become a real problem for me.

Right now I have four externally powered hard drives on my desk, all amounting to about 4TB inclusive of my mac's internal 500gig.

The question is: Since I cruise through 1TB every year, should I be getting a drobo? The problem now is that I don't have a proper backup, other than between my internal and one of my externals.

What are the pros and cons (other than really high price) for the system? Should I buy into it, or buy some more hard drives?

Zexun

I think the Drobo is overpriced. Its definitely idiot proof (no offense meant) but if you can manage a few individual drives without stress or frustration, that seems like a better idea. You could drop a lot on a Drobo and still not have a REAL backup (i.e. offsite, protection from flood, fire, theft, power surge, etc.)

I live in Singapore in a high-rise building so flood and theft isn't that much of an issue thankfully (and hopefully).

For sure I can manage a few hard drives. But with so many wires tangled up (4 USBs, 3.5mm, headphones, printer etc) on my desktop, it's becoming a real pain.

What is the cost to you (financially, emotionally, stress-wise, etc.) if a power surge takes out your PC AND your backup drive? Or if a thief steals both? That is what you have to consider.

1TB a year?! Do you really shoot that many KEEPERS?

ben_r_ wrote in post #11572143
1TB a year?! Do you really shoot that many KEEPERS?

Well, close to 1TB per year. Sure I don't have that many keepers. But with my 5D2 doing HD video and the need to convert to Apple Prores 422 codec (2.5x space above the original files) for editing, yeah it goes through easily.

Think about it... one day of video shooting for a project gives me maybe 16gb, not inclusive of audio from another source. That's about 56GB (40 + 16) and audio would probably be about 4GB, about 60GB per event. Can't deleted the converted files because often times I'd need to go back to each project to get the highlights for a compilation maybe a month or two down the road.

And then there are the 21mp 5D2 files

The real problem with a Drobo is that to be a "real" backup solution you would need at least 2 of them. 1 to backup on site and the other to rotate out and keep one off site.

Headshotzx wrote in post #11572812
Apple Prores 422 codec (2.5x space above the original files)

I thought that was a lossy compression format? Or is it lossless?

I vote for the combined solution, not the bare drives. Redundancy is good.

Look at alternatives to the Drobo. I use QNAP because it has customisable applications and nothing propriety about it. There's ReadyNAS, Buffalo, Thecus and a dozen others you could choose.

Drives are so cheap these days that they're incidental to the device's cost. Where I initially paid $700 plus $200 per drive, now it's $750 for a better unit and $80 for larger drives.

I echo the point that you need 2 backups, one offsite, but you don't necessarily need 2 Drobos.
If you think of your laptop/desktop as your 'point of origin' the Drobo/NAS can be your local backup and you can use an online service for the nightly backup of finished keepers, then do an physical offsite rotation every week or so, depending on how frequently you shoot.