Comments on: Drobo and backing up

By: Robert Thompson

Robert Thompson — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 17:32:00 +0000

Remember that Drobo is proprietary, and there is NO working data recovery software is there is a failure, unlike Linux and MS Server operating systems. Once you loose the data, it is gone forever! It is only a matter of time that you will loose your data. True, with other RAID systems, but there are recovery options. NOT with Drobo.

By: Robert Thompson

Robert Thompson — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 17:32:00 +0000

By: Daniel

Daniel — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 16:52:05 +0000

@Jon Unfortunately the Drobo stores data across all drives, so removing 1 disk as an off-site copy will not contain everything and will be useless. I would say that you would have to look at a traditional RAID configuration using a RAID array that copies an exact copy of each drive to a matching drive (of exactly the same size).

By: Jon

Jon — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 11:14:07 +0000

Hi guys, could Drobo be used to easily create off site backups? Could you purchase 3 drives, have one that lives permanently in your Drobo, and swap the other 2 every week, that way you would always have 2 drives in Drobo, and an off site backup. Is this possible?

By: Steve Meade

Steve Meade — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 22:36:54 +0000

Drobo has two models. The newest model is firewire 800. The older model is USB. The USB model is $150 US less. You can get $25 off either model by using this link. http://www.drobo.com/macbreak

By: Sean

Sean — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 02:40:47 +0000

I have to comment regarding Mozy - nice people but the speed is just too slow to be able to reliably (and efficiently) create an offsite backup. I was trying to backup less than half of what Paul mentioned in his post and it would have taken over 7 weeks to complete the upload. Now some of this would be caused by upload speed limits but it underlines the difficulty in completing reliable off-site backups. I am now considering options such as mailing DVD backups to a mail storage service and having them available for shipment to me in the event of an emergency. This certainly would cause multiple days of delays but if I was able to recover 100% of my backed up data then it might be worth it.

By: Justin Viger

Justin Viger — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 22:18:15 +0000

I just use time machine and a time capsule for my macbook. I have never had a hard drive fail, but the time machine icon in the menubar tells me if the hourly backup fails.

By: Damien

Damien — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 21:45:39 +0000

Did someone tried crashplan for off-line backup: http://www.crashplan.com/pro/index.html It stores your data on your friends' computers and optionally on a central server. You can back-up (and restore) other internet or your network.

By: SimianE

SimianE — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 17:44:50 +0000

It’s like fate telling me that I need to backup more:
The other day, one of my harddrives died. Luckily, not an important one… On the same day, I read this post.
Then the next day my copy of .net magazine arrived in the post. Lo and behold they’re giving away a copy of ‘Titan Backup’ on the cover cd.
I’ve used (and been completely let down by) a fair few bits of backup software in the past, but so far I’ve found this one to be pretty good. Obviously it’s not as good a some of the more rigerous backup solutions listed here, but it’s a damn sight better than nothing!

By: fork

fork — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 04:06:35 +0000

Just a reminder to everyone who has an "old" drive with archived backups. Use it or lose it! Hard disks need to be read and written to on a regular basis or they will fail. Alex Lindsay of Pixelcorps and a frequent contributor to the TWIT podcast network owns a digital video company in California that uses terabytes of storage. He has learned over the years, according to his comments on a recent MacBreak Weekly podcast, that drives that stored data but weren't spun up a few times a year had higher fail rates than old drives that were used regularly (but not abused). Though I only a have a dozen or so drives right now, I must admit my own experience of owning a hundred or so drives over the past twenty years validates that assertion.