Backup and storage help

A-j


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May 14, 2010
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2.66 GHz Intel Core i7 MacBook Pro
Hi

Sorry in advance if this is the wrong place to be putting this under i wasn't entirely sure where to put this and as i couldn't really find what i was looking for i thought i'd post.

Now to my question. I have recently been contemplating buying a mac mini
to use at home as sort of my families little server to share all our files ranging from videos to pictures to just about anything. Right now i am just thinking of which type of external storage i should use to make sure that all my data is safe and protected as most of the pictures are pictures that i have tediously converted from negatives to digital(of the joys) and family movies on VHS and particularly do not want to spend another billion hours doing that again. Some of these questions are pretty amateur but i would rather ask them and be sure then be uncertain and waste money.

I have been looking at a drobo FS to use as the external storage to my mac mini and had some questions about it. Main question is, is it a good backup/storage solution? from what i read it rebuilds a drive if it fails. Does that mean that if one of the drives dies out of the five i have in it and the drive was full of photos that it would rebuild it with all those photos on it to be exactly the same? Would i be able to access the data stored on it from multiple computers in my house?

My main concern is making sure that the data stored on these drives will be accesible from multiple computers and that it will be protected incase of drives failures. If there are other better solutions to doing what i need done please post and let me know as any and all help is appreciated. If any more information is required please let me know!

Thanks in advance

A-J
 
Joined
Jul 24, 2010
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Your Mac's Specs
2 iMacs, 1 MBP, 1 UMB, 1 mini
The Drobo FS is probably exactly what you are looking for. You data will be protected in the event of a failure, and the Drobo provides you that security with very little loss of total data capacity. I believe that on the FS, you maintain about 75% capacity for data storage, and 25% for protection. What this means is that if you fill the Drobo with 10tb of hard drive space, only about 7.5tb will be usable for data. And yes, the Drobo will rebuild itself in the event of a failure (after you replace the drive).

The FS is network attached, so it will be plugged into your router or ethernet bridge (not the mini). When you do this, every computer on your network will have access to it (provided you want them to).

There are a lot of cheaper RAID boxes out there that will do almost the exact same job as the Drobo, but the Drobo does make setup and maintenance almost foolproof.

I have set up 2 Drobos (not the FS) for family members that know squat about networks and file sharing. They could have done it themselves. It was that easy.

Good luck....
 

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