Drobo and NEW iMac 27 (1 Viewer)

[Raul Marquez]

Well, I finally bit the bullet and bought myself a 27in iMac. I'm considering buying the Drobo 5N to attach it via the Gigabit port on the iMac so that I can have my iTunes library on it with all my movies (around 5,500) and that I may then use Apple TVs to watch them. Has anyone had any experience with this new Drobo 5N?

Raul

 

[Dave Upton]

Raul, I have used the Drobo and found it to be a solid product, however I would look at competitive products like the Synology or QNAP. Sent from my Android phone on the HTF App!

 

[mattCR]

The good news for you right now is that the nas market is very competitive. So, between options like Iomega (EMC), Netgear, Synology, QNAP and now 4TB drives, you've got plenty of choices.

 

[Dave Upton]

One piece of advice:Stick with WD Red drives - they handle RAID much better.

 

[Raul Marquez]

Dave, What is the difference between RED, BLACK and GREEN drives?

Raul

 

[Dave Upton]

They are essentially performance tiers. Green is "eco" or cheaper with less cache and slower rotational speed, blue is a green with more cache, black has higher speed rotation.
The red drives are basically a black drive, but with built in circuitry to handle being in a RAID array. When you try to rebuild an array with conventional consumer drives, they don't always align sector to sector and are more prone to rebuild errors. The red drives are built to a higher standard, with a longer warranty (3 years) and firmware meant for small NAS appliances like you're considering.Given a choice, I would pick the WD RED every time for a NAS.

 

[mattCR]

Here's the tiers, WD goes: GREEN->BLUE->BLACK->RED

Green are considered Eco friendly, low speed drives. These are generally good for offline storage, USB enclosures, or backup devices/etc.
Blue is your "standard" desktop hard drive, general day to day use.
Both blue and green have a 2 year warranty.

Black is WD'd premier Desktop HDD, higher speed, designed for basic desktop use with a longer warranty. It is not Raid certified.

WD Red are basically WD Black drives with Raid aware data circuitry designed for a larger, faster buffer to prevent loss.
WD Red and Black drives both receive up to a five year warranty with credits:
http://support.wdc.com/warranty/faq_dir.asp

 

[Raul Marquez]

Thanks Dave and Matt! I bought the Drobo 5N through B&H Photo and also a Crucial mSATA 64GB SSD which is attached to the bottom of the Drobo, and does not constitute one of the 5 drives. The reviews I've read state that this SSD markedly speeds up data transfer. What I also like from this particular Drobo unit is that (as with all Drobos) you can mix drives, and that it also includes a battery backup in case of power failure. I'm expecting delivery on Tuesday so I'll give you my impressions once it arrives.

Raul

 

[Raul Marquez]

On the subject of drives... I have several WD My Book external drives, Is there any way in which to know if these are Green, Red, etc? Wondering if I could open them and stick them inside the Drobo. Also, is there a "Red" equivalent for Seagate drives?

 

[mattCR]

All of the My Book are blue label. All of the WD to Go where blue. Yes, Dropbox uses a ZFS method, which is quite nice

 

[mattCR]

Stagnate Constellation (CS) is their response to wd red

 

[Ken Chan]

The MyBook Thunderbolt Duo requires Green drives: being slower, they are also cooler; the Duo has no fan.

 

[Sam Posten]

 

[Ted Todorov]

Drobo + the original Intel Mac Mini, was why I ended up buying the 2009 Mac Pro. A disk on the Drobo failed, replacing it and recovering failed, the help from Drobo was awful. I was so traumatized I still haven’t replaced the now dead (not its disk drives or data) Mac Pro with a Synology or equivalent to go with our new Mac Studio. Anyone who has a Synology, what is the noise level? I had ~48TB on the Mac Pro — so I need fairly huge storage. Anyone try any of these from OWC: https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/thunderbolt/thunderbolt-external-drives

 

[Greg.K]

Anyone who has a Synology, what is the noise level?

It depends on the drives you use. My Synology NAS currently has three 16 TB Seagate Exos drives and they are noisy as hell, but it's down in the basement so I don't hear it.

 

[DaveF]

A solute to Drobo, who popularized and simplified RAID-boxes for normal-ish people.

I bought a Drobo back around 2009 for a work use. It lasted some number of years. But I gather it may have died sometime after I left the company.

 

[Ted Todorov]

It depends on the drives you use. My Synology NAS currently has three 16 TB Seagate Exos drives and they are noisy as hell, but it's down in the basement so I don't hear it.

No basement — small NYC one bedroom. Can’t be noisier than my Mac Pro was…