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Drobo for image storage ?
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I’m wondering if anyone uses/ used any of the Drobo storage units ?
These units have been on my mind on and off for a while, and as I start to take my image storage & backups more seriously, am looking to purchase one of these, as the funds become available.
The 5-bay S model would seem to be the one for photographers, although the 4-bay models have dropped in price, and are quite reasonable. In all, I like the simplicity of them, although I’m sure my engineer friends could tell me of countless other ‘better’ solutions :)
Manufacturers website is here, in case anyone hasn’t heard of these little black boxes: http://www.drobo.com/” onclick=”window.open(this.href);return false;
Yeah, great job and 1 terrabyte disks are for nothing these days. very simple interface and good tech support if you’re stuck. We had an enclosure swapped out under warranty, scary seeing 4tb of stuff almost gone.
That sounds positive mostly, although it doesn’t inspire confidence that the whole enclosure had to be swapped out..
I believe the 5-bay versions allow for up to 2 simultaneous hard drive failures without data loss – which model had you used ?
My opinions on Drobo :
(1) They provide a simple (and overpriced) storage solution for files for people who don’t want to listen to engineer friends with “better” solutions, or have any involvement with the ins and outs of RAID technology :D
(I don’t believe RAID technology is particularly relevant to most photographers – unless you need to use RAID 0 for performance purposes).
(2) A single Drobo device is not a backup solution in itself – you still need to backup the contents of the Drobo somehow, as part of an overall backup strategy. Ideally multiple copies, at multiple time intervals in multiple locations of at least 2 types (e.g. Disk/Tape/DVD/Online)
(3) some people have reported slow performance or related issues (I suppose it depends on the type of interface you use).
Hi Frank,
Cheers for your comments. In regard to the points you make:
1) Are there any other relatively simplistic, similar RAID solutions out there, you would recommend looking at?
2) Perhaps you can elaborate on your reasoning here. With the Drobo, everything is effectively duplicated, ie if you have a 4 drive model, loaded with (4) 1 tb drives for a total of 4 tb’s of storage, then the Drobo lets you have 2tb, and uses the other 2tb as it’s own duplicate/ backup of your data. This to me is backup, although you are always at risk, should the whole Drobo enclosure fail.
I take your point re: other forms of backup, such as DVD, etc., but if I have 2 copies of all my images on a Drobo, that would suit my needs (and a lot of other photographers, I imagine). There is always the issue of what happens if your house should burn down with all your data in it, but as regards using a Drobo for all your onsite backup, I can’t see what the need for DVD backups, etc, would be. Interested to hear your thoughts on this though.
I do accept the need for offsite backup, although to be honest, am not sure what to do in this regard yet.
3) Heard about some of these issues, mainly in relation to the 4-bay models, which seem to be a better option for traditional data storage, as opposed to for photographers who require much more frequent access to their image data. I believe the 5-bay model, with usb 3.0, esata, etc, is supposed to be more suitable to the needs of photographers, as well as having that extra bay, which according to Drobo protects against up to 2 simultaneous drive failures, as opposed to one with the 4-bay model.
Hi Damien,
there are loads of alternatives. I use JBOD technology :D
JBOD = Just a Bunch of Disks (yes, this is commonly used term)
In an something like this :
http://www.amazon.co.uk/StarTech-External-Enclosure-Aluminium-SAT3520U2ER/dp/B00433KU5A/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=miscellaneous&qid=1301157426&sr=8-3″ onclick=”window.open(this.href);return false;
If you search Amazon or other sites for RAID JBOD you will find quite a few.
It works fine for me, but I wouldn’t particularly recommend it to others, as I had a couple of issues setting it up originally. I have a 2TB drive in it currently, and will shortly add a second – but JBOD, not RAID. (There can be performance benefits with certain types of RAID – but that’s a separate issue)
re RAID : this was intended for resilience, NOT backup. So, if you’re running some sort of realtime system e.g. airline booking systems – RAID is used to protect against disk failures, while the system continues to run (and you swap out the faulty disk). Two disks in the same box, with copies of the same data is not a backup.
re Backups : backups are to prevent data loss (forgive me for labouring the issue here)
Some possible causes of data loss :
(1) Disk head crash
(2) Systems failure (hardware or software, either in the original computer or in the RAID device itself) which causes some or all of disk data to be lost
(3) Electrical fault (including lightning)
(4) Fire or Theft (Drobos are nice and easy to carry off)
(5) User error (e.g. deleting/overwriting wrong file or files)A Drobo will probably protect you against (1), probably won’t for (2) and (3) and definitely won’t for (4) or (5)
(These limitations apply to all single RAID devices – not just Drobos)Specifically in relation to (5) if you accidentally delete a file – the Drobo will quite happily mirror this to all the other disks. Where’s your backup then ? Hence my comment about backups at multiple time intervals (e.g. monthly, annual, DVD- which never changes).
So – what you need to do is decide which of the above issues you want to protect against – and setup your backup solution accordingly.
As I said, considering these, IMO a RAID solution is not a useful or good one (for backup).Specifically re Drobo, apart from the performance issues, I just think they’re nice but overpriced RAID boxes – and as I consider RAID unnecessary for backup purposes, I don’t see a reason to have one myself.
Offsite backups are easy – just keep a copy disk with a neighbour, relative, friend or in the office.
Online backups can also be useful, but the upload speeds make them impractical for full-size files from modern cameras. However, I use online backups for all my documents and reduced-size JPEGs of many of my photos.Hi Frank,
Thanks for the comprehensive and detailed reply, you have definitely educated me on a few points :)
The JBOD solution seems quite inexpensive, as well as very interesting. Its seems I have some reading and research ahead of me!
It would seem, a pair of JBOD systems could work very well, with regard to redundancy and ensuring against cases (1) & (2) of the disk loss scenarios you describe. Would a surge protector be sufficient to guard against (3) ?
Re: (4), an offsite/ online backup would seem to be the way to go, to protect against this risk.
Re: (5), I’m on a mac, so something like TIme Machine on a seperate drive would be the way to go.
Don’t mind me thinking out loud, just trying to work my way through what I would need :)
I see the JBOD device you linked above could be used in a RAID 1 setup, so if I had two disks in the unit, I could have 2 copies of my data, one on each of the disks to guard against disk failure.
Thanks once again for the thought provoking reply. At the moment, my backup solution consists of one copy of my images on my internal iMac hard drive, and a duplicate copy on an external hard drive. I hope to improve on this setup, and it is very good news there are reasonably priced options out there, a lay person like me could understand :)
With the increasing size of single drives (2 TB drives are common and fairly cheap now) a few external drives might be all most people need for backup. I also use some bare drives and a docking station for drives I use as backups only (helps keep the cost down).
When I get my next PC, I will get one with a slot for external drives that I can do backups to, and then remove and store elsewhere.
in Ireland, I think the risk of power surges etc. is low – but not non-existent. I use a surge-protector just-in-case !.
(They seem to have a lot more problems with this in the US and other countries – we seem to have a pretty stable power supply here).
The other risk is via the phone lines and your modem – these are sometimes zapped by lightning.Just to expand on my own process (bear in mind I do it professionally, so need to be careful) :
(1) For any paid work, I download all the cards to my PC asap.
(2) Rename and burn DVDs of the RAW files before doing anything else.
(3) Backup to an external drive (which is swapped around regularly – including an offsite version) – I will have a few versions of this.Following processing – I upload reduced-size (2048px longest side) JPEGs to an online service (Smugmug) – so they should always be available
For all documents (e.g. contracts etc) I use Jungle Disk and Amazon S3 to store online (as well as an occasional copy to a local drive I don’t use for much else, just in case !). The total of these is only about 5-7GB, so online storage is very practical.
This means I usually have 3-4 versions of my files on Disk + the original DVDs + Online JPEG versions.
This is probably overkill for most people – but some of it should be relevant.
Hi Damien,
A big variable in choosing a backup solution is the size of the data that you intend to backup. Do you have any ballpark figure on the size of your data?
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