REVIEW: ioSafe 1515+ NAS powered by Synology DSM–The Ultimate in Photo & Video Storage (Special Offer)

ioSafe NAS 1515+ powered by Synology DSM Protects against Fire & Flood

Recently I had every photographers worst nightmare come true – my storage solution (a DroboPro) – stopped being visible to my computer so I feared I had lost 12 TB of images!

I had used Drobo’s “dual disk redundancy” for protection, but I failed to think about what happens if the Drobo can’t communicate with my computer. After numerous attempts to contact both Drobo support, media relations and even the CEO went unanswered I decided to join Scott Kelby in saying I’m done with Drobo (see Scott’s story).

Fortunately I discovered a solution – on my own – to get my Drobo data back, but it was a very scary time for several days. As a result, I went on a mission to not only find a replacement device, but also something that I felt I could trust in the event of an even bigger disaster like a fire or flood. My data needed a new home, so I wasn’t going to make the same mistakes of the past!

I’ve written about the ioSafe Solo and SoloPRO and I still love and use both to this day. Out of laziness I moved away from using ioSafe’s for my primary drive each year in 2011 and just stuck my files on my DroboPro. However, this potential data loss scare reminded me of the peace of mind that I have with my ioSafe’s so I decided to revisit them again for a Drobo replacement solution – and so much more!

What is a ioSafe?

It’s a hardware design that protects your hard drives from damage from physical disasters like fire, flood, earthquakes, etc… The case is exactly that – a safe –  and enclosed within it is basically a Synology DiskStation DS1515+ 5-Bay NAS Server. Here’s a peek inside to where the drives are located after you’ve peeled through two layers of protection via the included tool to remove the screws:

Up to 5 Hard Drives are encased in a massive layer of protection

Click here to learn more in this CES video about the ioSafe 1515+ where it gets a video walkthrough and opened up. However, what’s more interesting is to see a device like this get subjected to a serious fire as is the case here:

While the video above is its smaller sibling, the case design is the same. It’s pretty impressive to see it get burned at 1000 degrees Fahrenheit(7:15) for several minutes and then opened up (at 10:50 mark). The unscathed drives get put into a new unit where the files are accessed without any problem – pretty impressive!

What the heck is  NAS RAID?

No confusing this for being a Macbook Air - it really is a safe!

Simply put, it is a dedicated computer that has only one job – to manage storage (hard drives). NAS stands for Network Attached Device and it is just that – a device attached to your router or wall plate via one or more Ethernet cables. However, this is a special class of NAS that is often referred to as a “Smart NAS” which does more than just hold files – it also can do cool things like be a media, file, web, or even WordPress server – and much more!

See those 4 LAN ports? That's protection against a single point of failure for your connection!

To protect against cable and port failures, it supports up to 4 simultaneous Ethernet cables connected to your router. This is useful if you need the ultimately in reliability in case a cable gets unplugged (think tripped over), fails, etc… Now most photographers don’t have that many ports available on a home router anyway, so let’s assume you don’t care about that.

Redundancy has a great value over time where a port can fail due to age and your NAS can no longer connect to your router. This was exactly the failure point for both my Drobo and Buffalo systems devices, so if your computer can’t talk to the device you are out of luck! 

Since this is a dedicated computer that means it has its own operating system which also has the benefit of meaning that you can attach devices to its USB ports like additional external hard drives, network cameras, printers and more.

If you want the device to behave like a drive and not a NAS, that is still possible with its iSCSI support. I used iSCSI for my DroboPro, but I’ve decided to abandon that approach this time around so I can take advantage of all the features this product has to offer as a smart NAS.

Click here to learn about more ways this device offers benefits specifically for photographers.

Cool Web User Interface

Having to learn a new OS sounds scary, but the reality is that you don’t. If you can use a mouse and step through a wizard in a web browser you have the skills needed to use this device.

Rather than having to remote a Windows or OS X interface (think SplashTop), this device allows the operating system to run in your web browser and communicate over the web with the device. The performance is extremely fast and works extraordinarily well (like ChromeOS). The magic behind this technology is called Disk Station Manager 5.1 (or DSM for short), and it works exceptionally well.

Here’s a sample running on my Windows 7 desktop from Chrome:

Yeah, that is a Canon RAW file opened up directly in DSM
Click here to see image formats supported by Photo Station

See, that’s not scary at all! I was even shocked to see that I could open RAW files! Click here for a massive list of what DSM supports.

The main takeaway for photographers here is that there isn’t some cryptic, unusable and painfully slow user interface. What’s more, it isn’t just a black box either. You can connect to the device easily from your computer and operate it the same as if you had a monitor connected to it (which isn’t possible).

See my video below for a quick walkthrough of how you’ll use DSM. While I show Windows in my example, the experience is identical for DSM on OS X:

DSM is the Operating System for the 1515+ accessible via your web browser

Accessing or Uploading via iOS was Easy

Mobile Upload/Download just worked

Are you using Dropbox, OneDrive, iCloud, Google Drive, etc… right now and paying monthly fees? Well if you wanted to replace them, then you’ll be happy to know that this product can act as your own cloud server which Synology calls Cloud Station.

To be fair there is some integration of iCloud into OS X and other services into Windows/Chrome OS that makes it work more seamlessly with your apps, but if you’ve OneDrive or other less popular file services then this is basically the same as those – except you don’t have to pay a monthly fee because it’s on your NAS!

You can easily use this device to store files of any type that are accessible (as you allow) to anyone on the Internet. You can also disable this feature too (it’s off by default) to ensure that nobody can hack into your files as well (assuming they can’t get into your network).

I only had an iPhone to test with, but I found the support to be brilliant for uploading/downloading photos to/from my iPhone both over the local network and the Internet when not at home. Simply put, it just worked!

It’s just as easy to make this device become a home media server too so you can easily view your music, video, and photos on your SMART TV, game console, etc… It can be an iTunes server as well so you can easily serve content to your Apple TV device.

Accessing your files remotely vs backing up your files

Photo Station supports a client app that makes it easy to bulk upload photos, but I personally prefer a traditional file copy via Finder / Explorer to the photo share to work just as well

I want to be very clear on a subject that I found confusing when I first got this device – storage versus backup. This device has loads of use services with matching mobile apps for easy access:.

• Cloud Station is an included storage service that allows you to have a 1515+ act like your own personal Dropbox where you can access it remotely and share links with people.
• Photo Station is a photo server that you can access from a web browser or use on your mobile device or desktop to bulk upload photos.
• Media Server - This is an awesome DLNA compliant media server that work great with your Smart TV, Game Console, and mobile devices to easily access your music, photo and videos with them pre-converted into a format that allows for fast remote usage (although you can disable that and just serve full-size files).
• And More – There’s a bunch of server packages to do things like iTunes server, WordPress, Video, Audio, Logitech Squeezebox, and so much more. It can even be an email or web site server too!

All of this is great, but NONE are what people traditionally think of as backup solutions.

Backup software protects your files on your local computer from accidental deletion, virus attacks, drive failure, etc… While the 1515+ does include software that allows you to backup your 1515+, it does not include software to help you back up your PC’s. Instead, you can think of the 1515+ as a destination where your existing backup software can use to store a backup of your devices (i.e., laptop, computer, etc…).

Now I see a device like this as valuable for several purposes:

1. Huge Hard Drive Scenario – This is what us photographers need to hold the never ending amount of storage needs for our photos. This product rocks for this and it can be treated as a network drive or what feels like a local drive via iSCSI (like Drobo where it also behaves like a local hard drive).
   
2. File & Media Server - To have a place where you can upload/download files from any device and easily access them from your phone, TV, any computer, etc… This is what the Cloud Station (file server), Photo Station (photo server), Media Server (audio, video, photos), etc… packages do.
   
3. Data Backup Storage - To have a backup solution that I don’t have to think about – it just works. This is what your backup software included in your operating system or sold separately does. This software will simply use your 1515+ as a place to store its backup data.

To backup your data against accidental deletion, you still need local backup software like Windows Backup, Time Machine or even Drobo PCBackup would probably work (but I didn’t try it). This software generally doesn’t care about what your device is, it just wants to know where it can put a huge file and get access to it all of the time. For this task, the 1515+ works great. However, if you don’t have software you already like for this purpose then this device will not help you with that problem.

As  I also mentioned, it is a great “huge hard drive” too. If your backup routine is more simplistic where you just copy files to a Drobo or some external device (via Lightroom’s “Make a second copy to” feature on import) then the 1515+ is great for that too!

Don’t forget to backup your NAS!!!!

This is for backing up your NAS, not your computer, to a remote destination

Getting a NAS creates a bit of a chicken and egg problem, because it can serve as a storage location for your computer backups – but what happens if your NAS dies? This is an especially important issue if you use it as your Huge Hard Drive (i.e., the place where we keep our PSD and RAW files) which is what most of us usually do with a Drobo or external hard drive once the drives in our computer fill up.

The 1515+ includes built-in software for this and you could use something like CrashPlan, but it’s important to have something that is off site for this scenario (although you may want to have the device on-site for that first backup).

You can also have an off-site NAS backup your on-site NAS to protect you in case a total loss at your home/office (i.e., theft, mudslide, etc…) where your on-site is gone forever. For this later purpose, DSM offers a way for you to backup your 1515+ to another NAS or cloud service. This is both important and necessary, but don’t confuse this with the backup software required to keep the files on your PC backed up – that’s different and not covered by this service.

Click here to see a full list of software you can install. The packages are for your 1515+, but the stuff for Windows or Mac is much more limited and noted as such in the Download column.

Geek Setup Alert for Cloud Station

Cloud Station (Windows View) is like your own personal Dropbox service,
but it doesn’t protect against accidental file deletion

Getting things set up the first time for Cloud Station is rather tricky for non-geeks so I highly recommend that you watch this video:

 

You also may have to do one or more of the following steps which isn’t especially straightforward:

1. Install the Cloud Service on both the ioSafe (from the Package Center) and on the PC (from the browser).
2. Start the Cloud Service app on the server and follow any instructions and warnings. For example, I was prompted to go to Advanced User settings to enable the user home service.
3. Set up a QuickConnectID which allows remote computers on the Internet to find your ioSafe1515+. It is VERY important that you are using very strong passwords before you take this step!
4. For me, I also had to tell my router to use the same IP address for my ioSafe. This is not for the faint of heart, so if you haven’t done this before then you’ll probably want to call product support. You’ll know if you need to do this because the QuickConnectID setup will tell you, so if you don’t see that warning then ignore this step.
5. In some cases you have to grant permission to your user account in the Shared Folder Control Panel via the Security tab so that you have read/write access to the place where you will be backing up.
6. Set or verify that you have enabled privileges and sharing for your user account in the privileges and sharing tab of the cloud station control panel shown below:

TIP: You can’t use the same name for your quick connect ID as you use for your local computer.

Fortunately all of this stuff is a one time thing so once you get it set up all is well. This is why non-geeks may want to ask a geek to help out so you don’t spend much time getting things set up.

Worried about security?

Security Advisor offers peace of mind

One obvious concern once you start opening up devices to the internet is how secure is this system? None of us want our photos stolen or systems hacked, so I felt good about having the built-in free Security Advisor check my system and tell me what I needed to do to lock my system down. Geeks aren’t required to use or act on the recommendations it suggested, so I loved having this feature available to me.

For the geeks reading this, common suggestions are reassigning port numbers, disabling the admin account (which can be locally restored without a bare metal restore), using strong passwords and other traditional safeguards. External and quick connect services are disabled by default, so you have to opt in before putting your device on the net.

Things to consider

There is much to love about this product, but there are a few things that you should know before you purchase this product:

1. Noise – Under normal operating conditions this device sounds like a typical tower computer from 10 – 15 years ago. You hear it, but it is white noise that you get used to. However, people used to silent or fanless systems might be taken back by this noise. Sadly when the device gets hot, which is easy when you think about the fact that only 5 hard drives are buried in this massive beast – the fans go to maximum RPM(a good thing). When that happens, you hear an audible sound from the fans that I found to be annoying (a bad thing). As a result, if you are going to get one of these it is advisable to store it in a well ventilated place with Ethernet cable access where you won’t hear it but it can also pull in cool air to keep it from cooking itself.
   
2. Size – What do you think of when you hear the term safe? Big and heavy, right? Yeah, well that’s exactly what this is too – it is very big and very heavy. Protection comes at price and in this case that translates to about 95 pounds and roughly 15 x 9 x 13  inches (h w d)!
   
3. Expensive – At about 2x the cost of a Synology DiskStation DS1515+ 5-Bay NAS Server which is the core of this device but without the fire protection, the cost of physical protection is steep. The price doesn’t include hard drives either, so it is definitely a major investment. However, some will find that peace of mind worth it – especially if disaster ever strikes and you need it!

Storage Requirements

Disk Calculator helps you to know how much storage you’ll really have for your data

If you’ve never had one of these type of devices before, you’ll be wise to use the Disk Calculator before ordering disks. While the graphic shows a bunch of drives, it is important note that this device only supports 5 drives – not the 12 drive bays shown.

I’d recommend you creating a disk group with Synology Hybrid Raid with 2 disk fault-tolerance (aka SHR2). This offers more flexible disk usage than traditional RAID and protects you against up to 2 disks failing simultaneously while still allowing you to access your data while your two new disks get rebuilt. This important because that means if you fill all five drive bays with 6TB of disks, 12TB will get used for protection so you’ll only have 18TB to hold your data. For most people this is more than they’ll need so smaller drives can be used or one slots can be left future expansion. Please note that SHR requires that replacement drives be the same size or larger, unlike Drobo which can take any size drive at any time.

Unlike Drobo which just flashes a light and you replace the drive without doing anything special, you are required to do a manual intervention to rebuild when a drive fails. A failure will be indicated by an audible alert (which you can clear remotely via DSM). It isn’t necessarily a difficult process, but it is more stressful than some Drobo users may be accustomed to.

Performance is Excellent

Any company in the storage business always quotes maximum possible performance numbers, but when you get the devices home and test yourself you never see those actual numbers. Here’s how they get the numbers, but I just never see those type of numbers in real world scenarios.

There are so many variables and tricks that can done to make the numbers look better than real world experiences that I never trust those numbers. A better test for me is to grab a folder full of JPEG & RAW images and copy them to a new folder on the same device as that limits the variables to the drives installed and the content of the data.

Using this test on a device freshly opened up out of the box with no modifications, I saw about 60mb/sec actual sustained performance with 1TB WD Red NAS class hard drives. My DroboPro saw about 42mb/sec under similar conditions.

When I copied a batch of files from my local SSD over to the 1515+ via iSCSI I was able to see sustained speeds as fast as 90mb/sec, so this is fast device when you eliminate disk IO bottlenecks.

Transferring data from your computer, camera, or other devices which most likely have slower transfer rates means you’ll probably never see those speeds in real world usage! However, this device is fast especially when you consider the same test on the fastest locally installed SSD’s I’ve tested were in this same range as well.

Oh and if you are wondering if it makes saving those huge 500MB+ Photoshop files any faster? Personally I noticed an improvement, but much of the slowness really seems to be Photoshop – not disk IO. Lightroom was much faster when I stored files on the 1515+ instead of my aging SSD’s or DroboPro, so I’d definitely move all my working files to this drive and continue to use the SSD just as a catalog cache.

A Cheaper Alternative

Synology DiskStation DS1515+ 5-Bay NAS Server

The ioSafe 1515+ is a big device that is rather pricy, so if it is too large or expensive for your needs then you can consider Synology DiskStation DS1515+ 5-Bay NAS Server. It is the same type of device WITHOUT the fire and flood protection. This means you’d be out of luck if any disaster situation should occur, but you could enjoy all the same hardware and software benefits of the device itself.

PLEASE NOTE: The purchase price does NOT include ANY hard drives! You MUST purchase drives separately

Drive Recommendations

Backblaze Hard Drive Reliability Update – Sep 2014

With over 34,881 drives storing over 100 petabytes of data, BackBlaze.com is a pretty trusted source about drive reliability. As you can see from the chart above the HGST drives have served them well, so I recommend NAS or Enterprise class (only) HGST Drives on B&H and Amazon. Please beware that you should avoid “green” / energy efficient and desktop class drives as those aren’t built to withstand the heat of drives running 24/7.

WARNING: PLEASE consult THIS LIST and only use compatible drives. If you have a newer drive that you are considering that is not on this list then please contact support for approval before purchasing. Remember, unsupported drives really means unsupported so save yourself the frustration by only using supported drives.

Please note that the difference between Synology's supported drive list and ioSafe 1515+ Qualified Hard Drive List is that ioSafe has subjected all of their qualified drives to the burn test and confirmed that the drive was still working properly afterwards. While the larger list from Synology might work, you lose the peace of mind knowing they will survive a fire – which is the purpose for buying this device! As a result, using non-qualified drives from ioSafe’s list doesn’t make much sense. Contact product support for the status of drives not listed if you have any questions.

Warranty & Support Info

Click here to learn more about the no hassle warranty which also includes one year of data recovery service.  It should also be noted that there is both telephone and email support, and I did a blind test of this during my review and my interactions with Matt were excellent.

Click here to see the FAQ and

Conclusion

Like Scott Kelby, I’m done with Drobo. It’ll take me a while before I can get everything moved over and retire my drive, but that day is coming – this month! Based on all the research I’ve done, I’ve decided that Synology devices which ioSafe uses are the best bang for the buck over the more expensive competition like QNap.

If you’ve done any research on NAS devices then you’ve probably seen reviews for the Synology DiskStation DS1515+ 5-Bay NAS Server already. Synology DSM based devices are well known for being great media servers that work great with your DLNA compliant TV’s as well as backup solutions, and this is all that plus flood and fire protection. It’s also a brilliant solution for photographers who want a device that can host files for their clients without having to use external services and the monthly fees that go with them!

While average photographers will still probably need help from a geek to get things going, this device is brilliant and worked flawlessly for me during my testing. The web based DSM user interface was excellent too! Average computer savvy users what know how to configure their router and manage network shares shouldn’t have any trouble at all.

Flood and fire protection come at a steep premium for footprint, noise and weight, but that added peace of mind will be worth it for those who can both afford it and store it. My advice is to keep it in a well ventilated alternate location besides where you’ll be working for when the device is under load, but if you can’t don’t worry as the noise is generally inaudible for normal day to day use. In fact, when not under load it was certainly a lot less noisy than my DroboPro.

I highly recommend this product for those users who want the ultimate in on site data protection. It is true that it isn’t as simple as connecting a Drobo via USB, but it’s not too much harder and you get a lot more bang for your buck.

Where to order

Click here to order a 1515+ direct from ioSafe, or click here to learn about their full product lineup starting as low as $349 with a 2TB drive included (the Solo G3). Please note that not all devices are NAS devices and only the NAS devices powered by Synology come with DSM.

You can also get some ioSafe Devices at B&H and look for the 1515+ model on Amazon. If your budget is tight and you want to forgo disaster protection, then check out the cheaper 1515+ Synology Devices at B&H and Amazon.

You may also want to consider the following sources for hard drives (which often beat Fry’s, Newegg, etc…):

• HGST Drives on B&H and Amazon 
• NAS Hard Drives on B&H

PLEASE consult THIS LIST and only use compatible drives when placing your order.

SPECIAL OFFER for ioSafe.com (Expires May 31, 2015)

Example of entering the coupon code in the ioSafe cart
(please note that codes change and are case sensitive)

• Click here to order and use the coupon code ronmartNAS to save 10% OFF on any 214 or 1515+ when you buy direct from ioSafe.com.
• Click here to order and use the coupon code ronmart to save 5% OFF on any Solo G3 or SoloPRO.

WARNING: The discount coupon codes are CASE SENSITIVE!

Other articles you may enjoy

If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy these:

• ioSafe Solo Review
• ioSafe SoloPRO Review
• NEC PA302W Photography Monitor Review
• NEC PA322UHD 4k for Pro Photography & Video Editing
• Ron’s Recommendations 
• Discount Coupon Code Page
• Camera Bag Recommendations and Special Offer
• Nikon D810 (includes SIGMA 50mm Art & Otus 55mm)
• Sony a7R
• Zeiss Otus 55m f/1.4
• Zeiss Otus 85mm f/1.4

Disclosure

If you make a purchase using links found in this article, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you a penny more, but it does help to support future articles like this. ioSafe provided me with a short-term loaner unit for this review.

REVIEW: DroboPro–Up to 24TB with Fast iSCSI Support–

DroboPro (Adorama, Amazon, B&H)

February 2015 UPDATE – I DO NOT RECOMMEND DROBO ANYMORE

What follows is my old review and what I thought about the product at the time I reviewed it. It seemed promising, but the real test of a storage solution is how it performs over time. A better test of a backup solution is how the product and company respond to a failure. Sadly this is where Drobo has let me and others like Scott Kelby down (Scott’s Drobo failure story).

In my case the connection between the Drobo and computer stopped working so I could no longer access the 12TB of data I had on this device. Numerous attempts to reach Drobo support and management went unanswered during my data loss scenario. Another pro photographer I know have had similar problems with firmware updates that have gone bad and again Drobo support would not respond.

As a result, I personally can’t in good faith recommend this product which seemed to have so much potential. When it works, it’s great, but if you are left up a creek without a paddle when things go wrong, what good is it?

See also ioSafe 1515+ NAS powered by Synology DSM–The Ultimate in Photo & Video Storage

For years Scott Kelby and many others have been singing the praises of Drobo as an inexpensive way to reliably backup your data using spare or inexpensive hard drives, and grow as your budget allows. Even one of my mentors last year had a drive crash in his Drobo, but thanks to the dual disk redundancy feature he just swapped the drive and kept going. He was ecstatic and sang the praises of Drobo, so I decided to finally give it a look.

I’m not your average Drobo customer.  Are you?

When I started to do this article I spoke with the folks at Drobo and explained to them the dilemma that myself and other pros have expressed. We need fast, reliable, redundant storage that just works and doesn’t cost a bazillion dollars. When I need to free up space off my laptop or system drive I want to be able to move it quickly to a safe location and not wait weeks for CrashPlan or some other backup service to catch up with me.

I also expressed my concern about some solutions like my Buffalo 4TB LinkStation NAS that uses RAID 1+0 because I had the network card stop working for a few days. I thought I lost the 2TB of data I had entrusted in it, but the network card came back to life. It’s a good thing too because Buffalo's support was horrific!  I also wasn’t able to use online backup with a NAS (without a hack), so that data was very vulnerable. I wanted reliability, but when I needed to pull something out of the archive like a 650MB PSD file I wanted it quickly (in fact, editing in-place should be an option).

I already had 2TB of redundant storage filled, and then I had a 500 GB C drive, a 1TB E drive, a 500 GB ioSafe Solo D drive, and a 1TB ioSafe SoloPro drive. After many, many months I had all of this data backed up to Mozy only to have their service price go up so I had to move it to CrashPlan and start over. While I liked the idea of online backup, it’s just too damn slow to protect me against short term losses or accidental deletion so I needed a better solution.

I thought I had a lot of space requirements, but when I started talking to other pro photographers who are dumping their 8 and 16GB cards onto their drive frequently, I found out that I was small potatoes. I heard horror stories of 6 – 10 drives that were configured to be the perfect fire hazard and no reliable backup existed (beyond some cd/dvd’s burned occasionally for an important shoot).

I decided that I needed a smoking fast solution that would keep up with the frantic pace of new big files being added to my machine, but it also needed to run non-stop with backing up to the cloud. In short, I wanted:

1. A local copy of my original protected on my ioSafe (the only product I trust for my original photos) so I was covered against fire or flood.
   
2. I wanted all my local drives backed up automatically to a device with dual disk redundancy so even a hard drive crash or two wouldn’t lose my backup.
   
3. I wanted redundant backup in the cloud so that I’d be covered against local theft or other unforeseen losses.
   
4. I wanted something that would grow with me so my 8TB needs of today wouldn’t be an issue when I needed 16TB or 24TB down the road. With 100 megapixel sensor cameras and 4k video already in development, being future proof was critical.

I also wanted it to be affordable (i.e., not more than a new camera like a 5D Mark II or a great lens like a 70-200mm). Granted, gear like that isn’t cheap, but it’s peanuts compared to my life's work, so I figured that was a reasonable starting budget.

In all my research everything kept pointing back to Drobo. It was recommend by some peers and others wanted my 2 cents before investing. After talking with the folks at Drobo we concluded that the Drobo S would meet the needs of most “normal” photographers, but guys like me really needed the DroboPro.

For this article I tested a DroboPro on a 64-bit Windows 7 PC because that is where I keep all of my data. Drobo’s work with Mac’s as well, but given the nature of this device I did not test it on my MacBook Pro.

What is a Drobo?

Simply put a Drobo is like a empty computer with no hard drives. It’s a device that has its own intelligence on board that can control how it works with your hard drives to give you all the things you need (and I mention above), but you provide the hard drives. This makes sense when you think about it because you may have a handful of small drives lying around that still work but are just not in service anymore. If they fit, they’ll work (unlike RAID which requires matching drives) and the system is designed to grow with you. It also allows you to shop for the best price on drives or add more storage as hard drive sales happen.

Unlike a NAS, your connection to the Drobo is local so it just acts like another external hard drive on your computer rather than a separate computer on your network (a NAS).

Here’s a page to learn more about how Drobo works, but the key bit is its BeyondRaid technology.

BeyondRaid

Drobo has a great page that explains how BeyondRaid works, but the beauty of the design is that it is flexible and it grows with you. In fact, when I began my testing the maximum size my Drobo could support was 16TB, but a firmware update to support 3TB drives boosted the limit up to 24TB. That can never happen with RAID, so I was pretty jazzed to see this technology grow without me doing anything on my end!

How does the DroboPro differ from the smaller models I’ve seen?

The Drobo and Drobo S are effectively the same as the DroboPro but they have fewer storage bays and neither support the super iSCSI connection type (think faster than eSata & USB 3). Drobo FS is a NAS, which has strengths and weaknesses, but not what I wanted for my solution (where speed was critical).

Here’s a look at the front of the DroboPro where you insert your drives after you take of the sexy magnetic cover:

It can hold up to eight 3.5” SATA I, II or III drives, but you’ll want to use their guide to see what drive is right for your Drobo. These bays are not hot swappable though, so you must power off to add or remove drives. Due to the performance characteristics of iSCSI and the potential for heat, Drobo recommends Enterprise (business) class drives:

• Seagate Constellation ES
• WD RE4

Sadly despite my best effort to clear my drive selection with Drobo in advance, I ended up with non-Enterprise class drives (which BTW are not refundable). Fortunately they still work, but they aren’t designed for 24/7 use so I might be testing out the dual disk redundancy feature more often than if I would purchased what I was supposed to.

Here’s a look at the rear of the unit where you connect your cables:

I started with USB to get things going, but eventually I moved to iSCSI to get the best performance. As you can see, Mac users can also use Firewire and there’s a Kensingston lock port for locking the device down (which makes little sense because you can just remove the drives out the front).

iSCSI vs USB

iSCSI sounds odd, but simply put it is just the act of plugging a network cable from your computers network card into the Drobo and away you go. It’s cheap, fast and works. The kicker is that you need a free network port, but I just switched to using wireless to free up my port and I was in business. If you can’t do that then you will need to support a second network card that is compatible with your computer (and be careful as network cards these days want to go in the slot dedicated for your graphics card).

On the PC when when things work as they should, it’s just plug and play. If it doesn’t, then begin here. On the Mac you have to install some software to get it working so you’ll want this article handy.

Drobo Dashboard

Once you’ve installed your drives, got things set up and have updated your software and firmware as needed from http://support.drobo.com, you’ll begin setting up your Drobo using the dashboard as shown above. It’s a sexy UI that is easily approachable, so when things work smoothly it’s a pleasant place to be.

Speaking of drives, I managed to use a variety of brand new drives that I got on sale from New Egg (some based on the advice of my Drobo contact) and ended up with a configuration like this:

Yes, you are reading that right. I have three 3 TB drives, four 1 TB drives and a 2 TB drive (15 TB) yet I only have 8.15 of available disk space. This is partially due to dual disk redundancy and partially due to how BeyondRaid uses the disks. Here’s a nice UI in the dashboard that shows you how it uses the drives:

Confused? At first I was too! Essentially the algorithm is that it uses your two largest drives for protection and then what’s left is usable. However, dual disk redundancy is just that – using twice the space for each file for extra protection so you end up with a lot of space used for protection.

Drobo has a fantastic capacity calculator tool to show you exactly what to expect when you use your drives. Of course you have to keep in mind that manufacturers approximate so your 3TB drive might really be closer to 2.7TB, etc… and you can see the impact of dual disk redundancy via the checkbox.

Here’s where I currently stand with the DroboPro:

But I’ve accomplished all of my storage goals. Of course I wish they had deduplication technology to conserve space for obvious wasted duplication (i.e., same file in multiple locations, 10 photos of the same thing with just minor differences in the exposure, redundant metadata, etc…). Sadly they don’t, so it’s up to me to do that task which I have zero desire to do.

Things have been working flawlessly with my current unit (shipped 11/28/11), so I’m very happy with the DroboPro overall.

Drobo Copy vs Drobo PC Backup

DroboCopy shows such promise when you see its user interface:

but sadly it is a very low tech file copy was very fragile. If files are open it’s game over and you’d be surprised how many files are open when it runs! If it has trouble with a file for any reason it would just quit instead of skip and continue. You are much better off using robocopy (included with Windows) than using this delicate daisy.

The good news is that some units (although sadly not the DroboPro) offer a free license for Drobo PC Backup. This is a “better than Drobo Copy” solution that isn’t so fragile, but like Drobo Copy it will bring your computer to its knees. As a result you’ll need to schedule it to run while you sleep or else find a different computer to use when it runs.

In the UI above the failed to backup files are files that are locked and won’t allow read access (i.e., the registry, pagefile.sys, etc…). The huge difference in backup size was due to me putting all of my data from my Hawaii trip onto my computer at once.

While the UI has its quirks that will drive you mad (like try to only backup your profiles in c:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color), it gets the job done. It also beats manually doing an XCopy, RoboCopy or BeyondCompare.

My 9+ months with the DroboPro

When I first got my DroboPro I had an old Dell XPS420 that was overdue for retirement, but I wanted to back everything up before getting a new system. It seemed like a good idea, but that system proved to not work well with iSCSI and was having some issues that made it really hate the DroboPro. While I think I did manage to get a defective DroboPro at the start, since I’ve been on my new machine my DroboPro has operated absolutely flawlessly for over 6 months now. It’s been super fast and a pleasure to use.

My Configuration

Here’s the drives I used in my configuration:

• Hitachi 3TB Deskstar 3.5" SATA Internal Hard Drive Kit (x 3) – I know Hitachi Deskstars are called “Deathstars” but in 3 years of using Hitachi’s I’ve never had one fail. With dual disk redundancy, I think I’m mostly covered if I’m wrong though.
• Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 2TB (x 1)
• Seagate Barracuda ST31000524AS 1TB (x 4)

Since these are not the recommended “Enterprise Class” drives, these are technically unsupported. I’m not in a position to plunk down the money for Enterprise class drives, so I’m taking my chances here. For 9 months I’ve been in good shape, so let’s see if my luck holds out.

My total cost for all of these drives was $938.60 thanks to some screaming sales on B&H and Amazon, so this was an expensive review to bring to you. However, with the flawless operation ever since I got my new machine I’m confident that I have a reliable storage solution that will grow with me.

I’m currently enjoying a fast and error free performance using iSCSI, but it has cost me a little bit of overall performance since I went from a wired connection to my router to wireless. The biggest place this hurts me is in my backup to the cloud performance which seems to take about 4x longer now.

I have one 16 TB NTFS volume as shown below, but I regret doing this for performance reasons. A more intelligent approach would have been to have done two 8TB volumes.

Conclusion

With complex electronics failures can and do happen, so I chalk up my unfortunate initial experience to bad luck. Based on the 200,000+ customers Drobo has had and all of the great testimonies I’ve heard, I’d say that your odds of getting a bad unit are about the same as being struck by lightning.

My DroboPro with my Alienware Aurora R4 system has been extremely reliable via iSCSI for over 6 months so I’m very happy with the reliability with the unit I currently have. As a result, I’m confident in recommendation of the DroboPro for anyone who needs great performance managing a lot of storage.

Recommendation: If you don’t need a huge 8 bay, then go for the Drobo S for a local storage solution. If you’d rather have a NAS then go for the Drobo FS. If you find down the road that you need more storage you can always get a another Drobo S, turn off dual disk redundancy and let Drobo PC Backup send copies to both units when you backup. I also recommend a max volume size of 8TB (or smaller if you can live with it).

Generally speaking, I’d stay away from USB 3.0 connections as I’ve been finding a high number of issues with a wide variety of machines using USB 3.0 on non-Drobo devices. This has ZERO to do with Drobo, but I mention this to save you some headache as the only machines I’ve used with reliable USB 3.0 so far have been select Lenovo and Sony machines.

Disclosure

Drobo provided me with a DroboPro unit to review at my request. If you use the links in this article I may get a commission.