[Noisebridge-discuss] Drobo & other (psuedo-)RAID units

[Dr. Jesus]

On Sun, Oct 18, 2009 at 2:19 AM, Sai Emrys <noisebridge at saizai.com> wrote:
> After a recent issue with one of my hard drives[0] (which will cost me
> money but hopefully be recoverable via a controller board swap) and
> being properly scolded by RyanC for neglecting to do so earlier, I've
> gotten a bit more, um, motivation to finally store my shit in
> something that's properly redundantified.
>
> So... do any of you have experience with Drobo[1], or with comparable
> products? (I particularly find attractive its ability to take a
> variable number of variable sized drives, as that will allow me to
> upgrade naturally over time.)
>
> I've not used something like it before, and I'm a bit leery of my data
> being locked in to a specific vendor. I'd appreciate knowing how it's
> worked out for you - either w/ Drobo specifically or other solutions
> (including DIY rigs).
>
> And: do you happen to have one to sell? (If not, there's always
> newegg, but I'd rather give my money to people I know.)

http://googlefight.com/index.php?word1=drobo+awesome&word2=drobo+data+loss

My experience with the drobo pro is that it's great for an iSCSI pool
as long as it's on 24/7.  Using it as NAS for a laptop or another
machine which isn't on all the time seems to be risky.

The device uses a completely proprietary disk format, so you're
married to Data Robotics for the life of the device in case you need
disk recovery.

FreeNAS supports ZFS now, btw.