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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Alternatives to Drobo Pro?

Tom Lowe

Tom Lowe

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I read this thread about Drobo Pro being very slow (no eSATA??), and also spoke with Jeff Kilgroe about this the other day.

I like the idea of Drobo Pro: easy to use, cheap, and can store a truckload of DATA - 12.4 Terabytes. :001_tt1: But the lack of eSATA is just baffling. :rolleyes5:

What are my other options? RAID 5? RAID 6? How big of a RAID 5 or RAID 6 system can I put together? Price?

What about this claim from Drobo?:

Unlike traditional RAID systems, the BeyondRAID technology found in DroboPro enables you to mix n’ match disk brands, capacities and speeds. This allows continuous expansion as disk capacities grow. With DroboPro expansion is automatic, instantaneous and access to data is always maintained.
Click to expand...

Is that true? If I start a RAID 6 unit with Seagate 2TB drives, will I be limited to Seagate 2TB, even when Western Digital 3TB drives come out?

One thing I am thinking is, while the Drobo Pro is indeed slow, I could also build a fast eSATA based RAID 5 array hooked to my editing PC for actual editorial footage use, and just use the Drobo Pro as a dumping ground for long-term backup?
 
it's the cheapest solution for the amount of storage you get and ease of use. the beyond raid technology was made to be sort of dumby proof. but it's sacrifice is speed. yes you can mix and match drives and brands, doesn't mean you really SHOULD. you'll gain speed increase if you have matched drives and size. the reason u'll get major slowdowns is because different brand drives at different sizes will have different latency rates, and raids always default to the slowest.


it's essentially a smarter raid 6 setup, it can only withstand 2 drive failures like a raid 6. and rebuild time can take up to days. but it's like that for the easy of you of just popping drives out and throwing them back in with no need of software, and carefully calculating and buying drives. this was never meant for a work solution in any capacity. just sheer backup and archiving.

you won't really find other raid solutions that don't need SAS cards, or a ESATA card to hold the array like this does. also i hear they get hot. like.... really really hot.
 
Oh good, so I can use it to cook my breakfast on too.. :biggrin:

Maybe I will get one just for sheer long-term storage, then get a faster RAID 5 for actual footage being edited on the project.

What is the biggest, cheapest RAID 5 array I could put together now. 6-bay? 8-bay? Will it require any expertise to handle?

Thanks, Tom.
 
the mercury pro is only 4 bay, but still raid 5, u kind of just push the button for what array you want, and load up the software and it will build. throw 2 tb hd's in there and you'll have 8 tb of hd space. again not the fastest raid i've ever seen, but still pretty fast for good editing.nothing compared to caldigit, firmtek, sonnet etc. of course, but a lot cheaper. compact too so you can chain em, you can just buy the enclosure nd put in your own matched drives. good customer support. i've been meaning to get one, but i'm ever so poor : \
 
BTW, speaking of RAID arrays, I was just looking at the slick new Alienware Area 51s, which provide easy access to six drives...

295z98y.jpg


Potentially you could set up a 5-drive RAID 5 array, with maybe a really fast SSD to run your operating system and programs?

I guess five 2TB HDs in the Alienware in RAID 5 config would give you about 8TBs of storage?
 
it has potential if ur pc based. but wouldn't consider it cost effective or cheap. if it's motherboard raided, it has a higher likely hood of array failure. (it's happened to me on my pc twice) i'd get a independent pc x card just to run the raid.

and for 800 dollars for a 256 gig SSD, that's almost the price of a raid bay right there, PLUS SSD's stil have a problem where they slow down drastically as they get filled up. prices will go down in them and so will performance, they still kill spinning disc in speed by a huge margin but they aren't really that cost effective at the moment.

you'll also have the ease of use of hot swapping, rebuilds without clogging up your OS, and easier daisy chaining if u got external bay. and personally i lost interest in alienware ever since dell bought the company... i don't trust anything that's within 5000 miles of dell... minus their monitors.
 
What type of RAID card would you recommend for a PC like that? I think Raid 5 would be fine, since the Drobo that will be attached to it is Raid 6.
 
well alienware it's tough, any of these pre made company made systems they tend to build their chassis so it's not entirely easy to do ur own modding on. and now your diving into territory that might go against what you want in easy of use and technical convienance in configuration.

3ware is a reputable company for raid cards, so are the highpoint rocket raids. and with the extra overhead you pay into this computers, your SO much better building a custom pc or finding another company that will configure what you want. that way further upgrading and personal configurations will be a lot easier. let's say u want a red rocket card in there one day or a aja xena card.

i don't know what motherboard alienare is using, it could be custom made so that you have limited PCI X slots and only have enough to put their stuff in there. companies like that really get you in that area. if you want advice on PC construction and specs to budget ratio i can pm you a ton of info and reccommendations.
 
Tom, thanks. Yes, if you can PM me that info, I would greatly appreciate it.

Sorry to get a little off-track here from the Drobo thing: I am a little wary of building a machine, just because I like to get something with a bullet-proof "bumper to bumper" warranty like Dell's "Complete Care." Dell's are sometimes crappy, but at least if it breaks down, they send you a new one. I had an XPS 600 from June 2006 until November 2007. When it broke (RAID 0 melted down), Dell sent me a brand-new XPS 710 with much faster processor, upgraded video card, etc.

Also, have you checked out that Alienware chassis, Tom? It'a absolutely massive. The computer weighs almost 100 pounds! I can't seem to find # of pci slots, but the case itself seems very impressive.
 
pm me ur email. and i'm just the anti corporate pre built kind of guy unless it's a mac or dedicated workstation kind of company. i knew a guy who worked for dell once... i claimed that dell's have a secret timer in them in which everything goes to hell when the warranty expires... he didn't disagree with me.

the warranty and assurance is nice, but customization goes down with that cost. there is NO bullet proof, but it's all in the quality of parts, and sometimes u'll get something defective that has to get replaced but overall unless they have custom made stuff that only their company can give u, a person can build something superior or equally as good. i built a pc 4 years go and it's been running rock solid till this day minus the times i tried to do a motherboard raiding, that worked for about 2 weeks...

but yet shoot me ur email, give me an idea of how much ur willing to spend, what kind of software you use, and what exactly u wanna do on the system. and i can build up a newegg cart for u to look at. i got a lot of down time on set cause it's kind of a hodge podge production... don't ask.
 
Awesome, Tom. PM on the way...
 
Yup

Yup

I'm doing exactly the same thing as the OP was asking / discussing.

I'm upgrading my entire workflow / storage for 2010 because I'll be switching from HVX200s only to shooting a feature with the RED One, and hopefully (RED willing) picking up a few Scarlets as well. Not only that but the amount of work we'll be doing in 2010 will be much more than I've done over the past several years, it looks like. Things are rolling. That means I have vastly greater storage demands for media.

So I have currently a 2 TB CalDigit HDOne RAID unit in RAID 5. I'm replacing all 8 of the drives (of course), which are 250s, with 1 TB drives (CalDigit has verified you can easily do that, just make sure they're all the 1 TB drives, etc.). So that will increase my HDOne to 8 TB of space, perfect even for editing a feature. We always edit off the RAID because it's lightning fast hard drive access through PCI-e.

Then I'm also picking up a DroboPro loaded with 8 Hitachi 2 TB drives (go to NewEgg.com now, $170 2 TB drives, plus $30 mail-in rebate from Hatachi through 11/30, seriously I just saw this deal and was blown away...). It will not be a fast RAID unit, obviously, and I will not ever edit off it. But I need that for media storage of projects that are finished or that I won't be working on actively to my knowledge. That will be the storage RAID. Scale as necessary -- in the future, I could upgrade the internals of the DroboPro for more storage, or simply get another DroboPro and load that with hard drives too.

All of that will only cost me $4,000, which is pretty sweet to go from having a 2 TB RAID to an 8 TB RAID and a 16 TB RAID (useable space will clearly be less, more like 6.4 and 11 or so because I'll be using RAID 5 for speed then RAID 6 for storage).
 
I'm actually building a PC for editing and grading right now. Here's the parts list I've come up with so far:

* EVGA P55 FTW 200 motherboard (2 x PCIe 16x, 2 x PCIe 8x)
* Intel Core i7-860 CPU LGA1156
* Prolimatech Megahalem Rev.B (or Noctua NH-U12P SE2) for CPU cooling
* 4x2GB OCZ Platinum DDR3 PC3-15000 Low Voltage Dual Channel
* CoolerMaster HAF932 chassis (excellent airflow)
* Areca ARC-1220 RAID controller for 8 SATA HDDs (RAID 0/1/3/5/6/10) - or use the mobo's RAID controller
* Corsair HX850W PSU
* Several Samsung F3 1TB HDDs

Beware 1TB and larger Seagate HDDs, they're absolute rubbish. I've had half a dozen of them breaking down in the past 3 months (and HDD Sentinel reports two more are about to give up the ghost), all of them less than 8 months old. Western Digitals appear solid, but their Green Power drives are somewhat slow. Samsung is the only brand I've had zero problems with in the past 18 months.

Whatever you do, don't skimp on the PSU. It's actually one of the most important parts of the PC. A good PSU can make all the difference between a solid workhorse and a constantly crashing lump of sewage calling itself a PC. The Corsair I have on my list provides lots of clean and stable power, but 850W might not be enough once you add several PCIe cards. 1000W+ PSUs, especially good ones, are pretty thin on the ground.
 
Yeah I've not heard good things from people about Seagates to be honest. From what I hear, yes, they have great warranty support, but their drives fail regularly. I had a Seagate drive fail in my Macbook years ago, about 8 months after getting it, and Apple later admitted that it was a defective product entirely. That Seagate drive didn't meet specifications and was failing constantly across the board. I'm still ticked about that, there was a class-action lawsuit pending.

I don't trust Seagate. I basically trust what in my 15 years of experience with these things has been best for me. I know it's not totally scientific and it's still a *relatively* small sample size, but I really don't care, I feel better with trusting what I know. I have owned a TON of Western Digital drives, far more than anything else, and yet had 0 failures. I have about 10 total external WD drives now, a few internals, and one external is 10 years old now and still works. I don't use it of course but plugged it in the other day and was shocked the thing still worked just fine, haha. It's so funny because it's ENORMOUS and it has this bulky power brick and is like 80 gigs, what a joke. At the time it was great.

But I'm going with Hitachi for the 2 TB drives for the DroboPro because I hear good things and the price is just too good to beat. Also drive failure on a RAID like that is more annoying than it is anything else. If you have 8 drives, with dual redundancy, then ok one fails, that sucks, how annoying, but you buy another and life goes on. It's still not much money to replace one drive failure. Granted if in the first year two of them failed, you'd be really ticked off and probably consider switching brands, lol. But I don't see that happening.
 
Jonathan, to be honest, I wouldn't touch Hitachi drives with a 10-foot stick. Simply because Hitachi HDDs are relabeled IBM DeskStars, a.k.a. DeathStars. Now that was one disastrous line of HDDs back in their day. Granted, I haven't tested a single Hitachi HDD in a few years so who knows, maybe they don't throw out sparks as readily as they once did - but I wouldn't want to test that with important data.

I also have to warn you about placing too much faith on RAID arrays, especially RAID-5. I have several years of experience with both self-assembled RAIDs as well as NAS boxes, and I've learned my lessons the hard way.

The thing is, when you buy a pile of HDDs, whether inside a NAS or from a retailer, the HDDs are usually from the same production batch. This raises the odds that the pile might contain drives that will fail around the same time.

This happened to me: a RAID-5 reported by email that one of the drives had failed. I was very busy at the moment so I figured "OK, the data is still fine, loss of one drive is no biggie, I'll attend to it in a moment". An hour later a second HDD failed and all data was lost, for good.

That is why I've moved to RAID-6 whenever possible... and making proper back-ups of the most important data. It's always good to keep in mind that RAID is not a back-up :)
 
Petri Teittinen said:
Jonathan, to be honest, I wouldn't touch Hitachi drives with a 10-foot stick. Simply because Hitachi HDDs are relabeled IBM DeskStars, a.k.a. DeathStars. Now that was one disastrous line of HDDs back in their day. Granted, I haven't tested a single Hitachi HDD in a few years so who knows, maybe they don't throw out sparks as readily as they once did - but I wouldn't want to test that with important data.

I also have to warn you about placing too much faith on RAID arrays, especially RAID-5. I have several years of experience with both self-assembled RAIDs as well as NAS boxes, and I've learned my lessons the hard way.

The thing is, when you buy a pile of HDDs, whether inside a NAS or from a retailer, the HDDs are usually from the same production batch. This raises the odds that the pile might contain drives that will fail around the same time.

This happened to me: a RAID-5 reported by email that one of the drives had failed. I was very busy at the moment so I figured "OK, the data is still fine, loss of one drive is no biggie, I'll attend to it in a moment". An hour later a second HDD failed and all data was lost, for good.

That is why I've moved to RAID-6 whenever possible... and making proper back-ups of the most important data. It's always good to keep in mind that RAID is not a back-up :)
Click to expand...


Good post, Petri!

A propere Backup is not a HDD, but tape and is stored in a different location. I would never, ever use a consumer device such as a Drobo as a place to store valuable data. LTO is the way to go and not expensive. I have two Raid6 systems and LTO plus I backup the work on HDDs.

The problem with raids is that the weak part are not only the HDD. Also the controller can mess the whole thing up. The advertised safety of a raid system is theoretical and works under a laboratory environment with well educated IT-specialist. In the case that your systems fails in the middle of a tight scheduled production and the operator is not familiar with such situations many things can go wrong. Nothing beats a backup, IMO.

There are interesting new system out where the Raid controller sits on the SAS card in the host computer, this reduces the costs considerably. Check out Areca.com on this matter.

Hans
 
Check out the Proavio range - we are using the following:

http://www.proavio.com/eb8ms.html (£370 ex VAT)

We have a Highpoint 3522 sas card: (£330 ex VAT)

http://www.highpoint-tech.com/

Did LOTS of research and this provided the fastest system at the lowest price. We get over 500MB/s read and write + Raid 6 so we can lose two drives at any time and still keep working.

We're currently using Seagate 1 TB 7200.12 drives but will move over to 2TB drives once they have been fully tested.

8 TB RAID 6 500 MB/s+ total cost = £1200 approx.

Been running this sytem for several weeks now and so far everything is working well.

Best wishes

Scott
 
Well

Well

First, I disagree that RAID isn't "a backup." That's exactly what it is. Has been for years. A RAID is the absolute best backup solution for data, I really don't see how that point can be argued. This isn't 1995 where you couldn't really rely on hard drive space because you could buy various tape media that was a lot bigger. This is 2009, almost 2010, where hard drive space is cheaper all of the time and there is quite a lot of it.

The odds of 2 drives failing within a day or two or even a week are extremely small. If you're using RAID 6, they are even smaller that 3 drives would fail.

And I wasn't indicating that you have mission-critical data only on a RAID 5. I was saying that's the ideal setup for editing, so a new project goes onto BOTH the DroboPro RAID 6 AND the CalDigit RAID 5, if you don't think that's secure in a data sense you are insane and more paranoid than Fox Mulder. The only thing that's not going to prevent is a fire destroying the physical drives themselves. And I live in a condo building with probably some of the most advanced fire suppression and fastest response time you can get in a home. It's nothing but 2-foot thick concrete walls. So yeah, maybe a plane could get the building and destroy my entire setup. But you know what? I would probably be dead, and if not, I'd have more important things to worry about than losing some corporate work! lol. Plus I'm fully insured, production insurance, home owners insurance, you name it, I got it.

That's hardly all that I will do, though. Any important work gets put onto emergency external drives as well, and put into storage on an entirely separate floor of the building. Not just left on the DroboPro. Then if I shot a feature, not all of the footage itself, but the finished project and all essential files would be put onto an external hard drive and mailed back to another state for safe-keeping besides being here. The only issue there is I wouldn't be checking that hard drive repeatedly for failure, I'd likely only test it every six months to a year to make sure it still works. But even so I think that's fairly safe. Odds are that by that point it wouldn't be a huge deal -- if you lost the files for your feature after it was out on DVD and had gotten distribution, you wouldn't be happy about it, of course, but it also wouldn't have much of a financial impact. It would be more like, "Wow, that sucks, I'm disappointed."

I think it all depends what type of thing you are working with, how many layers of protection you have. With corporate work, yes it's very important while I'm working on it, which is why it will be on two separate RAIDs, but once the project completes, it's only "nice" to have the footage still, in case the client comes back a year later and wants something re-edited into a TV promo or something along those lines. You want to be able to get that business, not say "Yeah, we lost the footage." That's not professional and you lose money. But if you had that big of a failure that 3 drives on a RAID system failed, you'd just explain you had a massive data failure and you don't have their footage anymore. It's not the end of the world, the contract is done by that point, you can't be sued because we don't guarantee keeping your footage even one day let alone indefinitely.

The worst hard drives I've ever used personally were Maxtor. They were completely unreliable.
 
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