CCC is great if you need a bootable drive for contingency. If the primarily drive fails, you boot from the 2nd CCC clone and continue work. Then exchange the broken drive, sync back and continue to work from the primary drive. CCC (or rsync) might be used to sync up incrementals in between, but it takes a lot longer than TM.

 

TM is great if you just need to have a simple backup (and deltas in between which CCC do not provide), either to a hidden partition or a network share. In case of system drive failure I don't see a problem booting from a CD, mounting the network TM share and restoring from it!? Every Mac has a built in optical drive. Only thing is that booting from CD is slightly slower than booting from a HDD but then you do this once in the event of failure. Works like a charm.

 

True enough, but I have a tendency to misplace my CD's in a time of need.  I know where the CCC backup is at all times not to mention I always take it with me on trips so that should something happen I have a way to get back up and running while away from home.  Point in case was a couple of years ago when i took a trip with the Family to Florida.  I was there taking a lot of pics of the family vacation and reunion and the drive in the computer died on me.  I had a backup from the night before and was back up and running with everything still intact except for the photos and videos from that day, which were still on the camera.

Does Drobo allow you to take a single drive out and recover data from it?  This is one of the big selling points for unRAID for me.  As far as I've seen, unRAID offers the best chances of data recovery in a 'worst case scenario' type of situation.

 

I didn't see anyone answer this, but the answer is yes. It will automatically reallocate space over the remaining drives if you have enough free space.

Does Drobo allow you to take a single drive out and recover data from it?  This is one of the big selling points for unRAID for me.  As far as I've seen, unRAID offers the best chances of data recovery in a 'worst case scenario' type of situation.

 

No, drobo FS is totally proprietary. You can't take a drive and read it somewhere else. It is like a raid controller, you either trust it or not and if something happens than you just pray that you could recover. If it fails on you (anything in firmware, FS, logic, cache memory), then your data is gone forever! This is not a two controller, dual pathed, mirrored cache array, it is a totally simple, closed, proprietary system sold for big money. Heck, it's even unable to properly cool the drives in there. And not to talk about its network performance out from that totally overpriced DroboShare...

True enough, but I have a tendency to misplace my CD's in a time of need.  I know where the CCC backup is at all times not to mention I always take it with me on trips so that should something happen I have a way to get back up and running while away from home.  Point in case was a couple of years ago when i took a trip with the Family to Florida.  I was there taking a lot of pics of the family vacation and reunion and the drive in the computer died on me.  I had a backup from the night before and was back up and running with everything still intact except for the photos and videos from that day, which were still on the camera.

 

You could take the bootable system on a 8GB USB stick which is fairly small and have it always with you. However, you are right, having a second drive makes up for contingency if the first fails. I actually also have two drives in my 15" MBP for exactly the same reason and this saved my life once as one of the drives died on me. When at home I use TM to backup it additionally to a server so that I also have all the deltas.

 

 

Does Drobo allow you to take a single drive out and recover data from it?  This is one of the big selling points for unRAID for me.  As far as I've seen, unRAID offers the best chances of data recovery in a 'worst case scenario' type of situation.

 

I didn't see anyone answer this, but the answer is yes. It will automatically reallocate space over the remaining drives if you have enough free space.

 

No, drobo FS is totally proprietary. You can't take a drive and read it somewhere else. It is like a raid controller, you either trust it or not and if something happens than you just pray that you could recover. If it fails on you, then your data is gone forever! This is not a two controller mirrored cache array, it is a totally simple, closed, proprietary system.

 

Sorry I read it the other way. ie, If you pull out a drive can you read data from the Drobo. Sorry, if the understanding was pull out and read data off of the drive you pulled out, you're correct. My apologies.

Does Drobo allow you to take a single drive out and recover data from it?  This is one of the big selling points for unRAID for me.  As far as I've seen, unRAID offers the best chances of data recovery in a 'worst case scenario' type of situation.

 

I didn't see anyone answer this, but the answer is yes. It will automatically reallocate space over the remaining drives if you have enough free space.

 

No, drobo FS is totally proprietary. You can't take a drive and read it somewhere else. It is like a raid controller, you either trust it or not and if something happens than you just pray that you could recover. If it fails on you, then your data is gone forever! This is not a two controller mirrored cache array, it is a totally simple, closed, proprietary system.

 

Sorry I read it the other way. ie, If you pull out a drive can you read data from the Drobo. Sorry, if the understanding was pull out and read data off of the drive you pulled out, you're correct. My apologies.

 

That is correct, when read the way starcat interpreted the question, this is one of the biggest drawbacks of drobo compared to unraid. If you loose multiple drives, or take a single drive out you cannot take a drive out and put it in another system utilizing drivers (ReiserFS in unraid's case) to mount and recover the data.

 

You can take all of the drives out of a drobo and mount them in another drobo (called the "disk pack") to recover/rebuild the array.

I'm using CCC to do incremental backups with archiving. It takes longer than TM but it happens in the background and I don't even notice. An hourly increment with archive takes about 4 min and writes about 200MB. TM is faster and uses less disk. My biggest complaint is that I have to trim the archives myself. I'm going to take a look at Crashplan.

 

IMHO most mac users will not even consider a NAS that does not support AFP and TM.

I'm using CCC to do incremental backups with archiving. It takes longer than TM but it happens in the background and I don't even notice. An hourly increment with archive takes about 4 min and writes about 200MB. TM is faster and uses less disk. My biggest complaint is that I have to trim the archives myself. I'm going to take a look at Crashplan.

 

IMHO most mac users will not even consider a NAS that does not support AFP and TM.

 

I'm mixed. Some machines are Windows, others are Macs. I have a Drobo at work and an unRAID at home. I understand how you got to your current conclusions. If I didn't have the Drobo at work to do my Mac backups I'd seriously have to figure out netatalk and the other methods of backup as I use my unRAID with Air Video so I doubt I'd go with another NAS today only because I use Air Video so much.

Does Drobo allow you to take a single drive out and recover data from it?  This is one of the big selling points for unRAID for me.  As far as I've seen, unRAID offers the best chances of data recovery in a 'worst case scenario' type of situation.

 

I was thinking of buying a drobo before noticing the Unraid solution. What you mention was also my main concern. Drobo is proprietary. If it stops working there is no other way to recover your data but to replace it with a new one. if it is out of your 2 years warranty period you have to buy a new one or decide that you have lost all your data. And what if by that time they have moved to a new model that does not support the previous format? You will probably have to go hunting for a used older version...

 

I remember mailing them and asking them if it was possible to mount the HDs in another system and recover the data if there was a drobo malfunction and what i got from their response was that i cant. To be fair they also said that if Drobo malfunctions during warranty period they  can send me another Drobo while I still have mine.

 

Another think i researched was the HDD tmperature. I dont know if there are new models out now, but at that time there were reports of quite high temperatures...

 

To be honest, if it offered more HD slots and i was not so concerned with the extra money i will have to spend if it malfunctions, i still might have bought it... it seems very convenient and user friendly.

 

 

I've never been in the drobo forums, but I wonder if they have the same type of 'users helping users' type of forum activity that unRAID does.  I think it speaks volumes about unRAID that the majority of the support comes from community volunteers...I don't know of any other proprietary product that can make the same claim.

 

The unraid forum is amazing. on the other hand i cannot imagine the drobo company having worse support than the official Unraid support which is something between minimal and non-existent. At least in my case, Tom never answered any mail i sent. For example, I am currently interested in the 3Tb HDs. There is no way I could get any info on  them being eventually supported by Unraid. The only answers i get is from the very helpful people of the forum, who, naturally, can only explain the problem but do not have the authority to fix it...

papnikol couldn't of said it better. Why go proprietary? In the case of wanting support for a protocol, I guess swaying towards another product, but personally, I'd rather have support for future data recovery, considering that you are placing all your data in a product, what happens if that company which produces this product goes broke/gets brought/or no longer offers support for previous models, it could leave you in some trouble if the hardware fails and becomes hard to find.

Having your data on an unRAID server however, you'd be able to mount the disks in a Linux machine, or even so, use a Windows GUI tool called Explore2fs 'http://www.chrysocome.net/explore2fs' (which only allows read-only access to the ReiserFS), but good enough to at lease allow you to copy the files from your old unRAID disks onto another storage system.

I do not know a lot about Drobo to dismiss it, so I won't talk it down or say not to buy it, maybe the needs to support a specific protocol is far greater then what unRAID has or could offer you at present, but from what I've quickly read and from previous knowledge of Drobo, it is a 'closed' technology. Lets look at some facts and comparsions between the two:

 

File format: unRAID uses a 'tried and true' & open source file system called ReiserFS, which we all know is widely excepted and a solid FS. It has the ability to offer data recovery (though it is tricky, it is possible), and unRAID uses a great parity system for disk failure. If multiple disk failures occur, you will still be able to recover the data from the remaining working disks. Drobo uses ...?

 

Hardware: unRAID has a large driver suport for lots of x86/X64 hardware, leaving all unRAID users the choice to pick and choose what they'd like to have in their systems. This is great for easy upgrade of disks (without sticking to specific disks sizes, makes/models), addon cards, CPU's, RAM, mobo's, etc... This is also great for people who are on a budget, to those who have a burning hole in their pocket. You can deploy a unRAID server using old hardware to cutting edge hardware, and like Drobo, you can buy a prebuilt unRAID server directly from Lime-Technology as well if you're not handy with the tools.

Drobo has set prices for specific models and might appeal to those who like a 'out of the box' experience to a few simple steps to have their storage up and running. Being that Drobo is more commercial, some peolple might feel more comfortable to buy it over unRAID. Where Drobo provides the ease of use and specific feature support out of the box, unRAID to support certain addon's/features, protools not included in the OS at the time of it's release, requires more tinkering and work to get it going. This effort that might be required to get a specific feature to work under or the fact that you cannot get a specific feature to work on unRAID could scare some people off too (hence this post to begin with).

 

Scalibility: I can't see Drobo offering more storage in a single unit which unRAID could provide currently. (I'm leaving myself open to be proven wrong here).

 

Future proofing: As mentioned before, data recovery or migrating off unRAID to another storage system is easily possible with an existing unRAID server. I would say the same for Drobo, in terms of data migration, if all the existing hardware for your existing Drobo unit is still working, if not, you're in trouble.

 

Again, I'm not trying to saying do not buy Drobo, but it is wise to know the pro's and con's of both products. I'm happy to be corrected on some of the facts that I've made about Drobo at present, but the words 'closed' or 'proprietary' just scare me when it comes to data storage and future proofing. I've been a happy unRAID user for the past year and a half now, and have received great support from the forum members, have learned and shared some information too. I cannot comment on how good Drobo's community/company support is.

 

Hope the above helps. Thanks.

 

Does Drobo allow you to take a single drive out and recover data from it?  This is one of the big selling points for unRAID for me.  As far as I've seen, unRAID offers the best chances of data recovery in a 'worst case scenario' type of situation.

 

I was thinking of buying a drobo before noticing the Unraid solution. What you mention was also my main concern. Drobo is proprietary. If it stops working there is no other way to recover your data but to replace it with a new one. if it is out of your 2 years warranty period you have to buy a new one or decide that you have lost all your data. And what if by that time they have moved to a new model that does not support the previous format? You will probably have to go hunting for a used older version...

 

I remember mailing them and asking them if it was possible to mount the HDs in another system and recover the data if there was a drobo malfunction and what i got from their response was that i cant. To be fair they also said that if Drobo malfunctions during warranty period they  can send me another Drobo while I still have mine.

 

Another think i researched was the HDD tmperature. I dont know if there are new models out now, but at that time there were reports of quite high temperatures...

 

To be honest, if it offered more HD slots and i was not so concerned with the extra money i will have to spend if it malfunctions, i still might have bought it... it seems very convenient and user friendly.

 

 

I've never been in the drobo forums, but I wonder if they have the same type of 'users helping users' type of forum activity that unRAID does.  I think it speaks volumes about unRAID that the majority of the support comes from community volunteers...I don't know of any other proprietary product that can make the same claim.

 

The unraid forum is amazing. on the other hand i cannot imagine the drobo company having worse support than the official Unraid support which is something between minimal and non-existent. At least in my case, Tom never answered any mail i sent. For example, I am currently interested in the 3Tb HDs. There is no way I could get any info on  them being eventually supported by Unraid. The only answers i get is from the very helpful people of the forum, who, naturally, can only explain the problem but do not have the authority to fix it...

If you guys don't mind a little massive thread necrotism, I thought I'd share my way-back hindsight. I used Unraid from like 2006-2010 then moved on to a drobo. A recent discussion brought me back to this forum and thread.

 

Drobo was a big mistake - I had little control over things and no visibility - I used it well for about 5 years until it was apparent to me that the company was dying and my hardware was too. It was brain-dead simple, but also incredibly restrictive - I'd recommend that anyone avoid it. The support sucks, no one from the company engages and it never evolves.

 

I hope Tom and unraid are doing well these days , and from what I hear in the community they certainly are.

 

For anyone using unraid, and sticking with it you've made an excellent choice, I probably should have too in retrospect.

 

The old saying about the grass being greener... is quite true.

 

I wonder if my old 1.X key (I used through 3.X) will still boot/work/upgrade these days - it's in one of the boxes... somewhere ;-)

 

 

I wonder if my old 1.X key will still boot/work/upgrade these days - it's in one of the boxes... somewhere ;-)

Welcome back! If you can find your license file, theoretically you could load a fresh good quality USB thumbdrive with the latest version, copy the license into the config folder, and off you go. It will find your old license and offer to transfer it to the new stick, easy peasy.

 

Things sure have come a long way since you were last active!

Oh yeah, with docker support and VMs, unraid evolved from being a simple nas to a full fledged multi purpose server

I used to swear by brand name NAS's, QNap, Netgear, Synology, I own a few of each of them (well not Netgear anymore) and they work great for what they are. People used to say, 'why not build a box out of pc parts and run something like Freenas?' I would tell them its a bad idea, you have all these pc parts that can die, an all in one brand name NAS is so much easier, albeit more expensive. Then I got interested in UnRaid, saw it was evolving beyond a simple NAS solution. Saw that it was incorporating virtualization, dockers, and that it had a great support forum, I was hooked. Now I have three UnRaid servers and think this product is fantastic and headed for even greater things. UnRaid isn't everything to everyone, nor should it try to be, but what it offers is a heck of a lot for not a lot of money, IMO.

 

I think this thread covers some fundamental unRAID issues and I am grateful that dschur resurrected it to discuss his experiences. I discovered unRAID just 2 months this thread began and my server has also spent 5 years humming quietly in a corner, running v5 and waiting for me to blow out the dust every 6-12 months when I swap out a drive for a bigger one. Since my server is mostly for media low maintenance and easy, inexpensive storage increase is important so the ability to buy whatever is cheapest on the refurbished/craigslist market and know it will mesh with whatever drives are already installed is great. I have a goofy mix of drives from 2TB SATA 3 to 160GB PATA. The current version of PLEX requires unRAID v6 and the upgrade was (mostly) painless. Needed a new USB stick because the old one wouldn't play nice with v6 and learning how to use Docker has taken some time but the upgrade does not demand a new MB, more RAM, fancier CPU or anything else.

 

unRAID is a great niche product but it requires a bit of tinkering, support is via the forum and the thought that a commercial product is better is ever present. Thanks again dschur it's great to hear about your experiences.

... my server has also spent 5 years humming quietly in a corner, running v5 and waiting for me to blow out the dust every 6-12 months when I swap out a drive for a bigger one...

I know you're on V6 already, and you didn't actually say you don't check on your system frequently, but I thought I would just use this to mention Notifications. I have already had 4 people this week who set it and forget it, didn't use Notifications, and discovered "accidentally" they were already past the point of no return with disk problems.