Slightly off the RAID question, but on mass storage and data protection, has anyone looked at the DROBO product (Data Robotics, Inc.) or have any experience with it? I was looking at this as a possible data protection solution. Not being that familiar with RAIDs (I will check out the Wikipedia information suggested by Kevin), this looked easy and relatively inexpensive, but might not offer the advantages of a RAID in its different configurations.
DROBO looks like a solid unit. If you do a search on some of the other forums FM, etc you'll see some people have been testing them for awhile. I have Infrant ReadyNAS and if I were to buy a NAS today it would probably be DROBO.
__________________ Regards,
Carl
Canon 1 Digital and Analog, bright lights, and a small bag of sharp glass
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
I have used RAID 0 (stripping) on my last 2 computers with no issues at all. It does make it faster, because writing to hard disks is just about the slowest "bottleneck" process in computers. I just purchased a HP computer with and AMD dual core processor, 2 GB RAM and 2 250 GB hard disks in RAID 0 configuration for about $1000. delivered. RAID right out of the box from a reputable manufacturer with a 3 year on site warranty. RAID is not as expensive as it used to be. For the small extra amount it costs, I wouldn't buy another computer that did not have RAID built in.
Also have an external hard disk for storage and backup with 2 250 GB drives in RAID 1 configuration (mirroring) for data back up & security. About $300.00
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
I've done the RAID thing already....soft/mechanical through FW and SCSI interfaces. It just clutter things up by adding another interface that can go wrong (which in fact has). I had one of my Raid mirror (not RAID 0) drive fail and couldn't get the RAID back up. Furthermore, more technology to get updated.
So...I now for many years now, made my life a lot easier by just mounting individual externals and copying data to both for safety, a third if it's really important.
Interfaces like SATA has been very reliable and as fast or faster than my former RAIDs.
Drives are huge now...one of the needs for RAID was to build a single large volume for video editing and speed, but those days are becoming obsolete. Get more RAM and a fast processor....A dream would be 32 gigs memory on a Mac dual eight-core tower since applications and operating systems are processor intensive and utilizes all the RAM you got.
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
Last edited by Paul Kuroda; 01-27-2008 at 04:01 AM.
I've been running Raid-0 (two 160 GB SATA drives) on my current (Dell Precision 470) workstation without a lick of trouble in 2-1/2 years of continuous service. When I got it the system ran rings around its peers without Raid.
I just visited a friend who just got a new Dell Precision 690 with 3 x 300 GB SAS (Serially Attached SCSI) drives in a Raid 5 configuration. Fast as my own system is, his seems in another realm altogether. Everything we tried was virtually instantaneous (which was doubly impressive as he has Vista). Just for grins we copied tens of gigabytes of files in a folder tree from one place to another, and it was done so quickly we wondered whether it even happened. The OS doesn't even realize the C: drive is an array, as the Raid-5 operations are all happening in the controller card. This offloads the processors (he has 8 cores) to do real work. It's a comfortable feeling knowing one drive could burn out and there would be no data loss nor even an interruption in service (save for down time to physically replace the drive, after it comes in the mail).
Linear Mode
