Drobo

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I've really been considering purchasing a Drobo 5N for regularly accessible data storage and backups. "N" being for network accessible. I like how the drive rebuilds after a swap. It seems to be not a lot of hassle.

I think the one thing that is deterring me is what happens if the Drobo unit itself fails? If all the drives are put into a new unit, is the data recoverable?

Any insight or recommendations would be much appreciated

-Brent
 

Raz0rEdge

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All NAS' rebuild data after a single drive swap, so that really isn't a differentiating factor.

If you have catastrophic of all the drives or sufficient number of them at the same time, you do face the likelihood of data loss. If something is important enough for you, you might want to employ a secondary backup mechanism for just those files on the cloud on any of the services like DropBox, Copy, Box.net, Carbonite and so on..
 
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The fear that you have is a valid one, but this is a concern on any NAS / DAS device. Failure is an option on any piece of hardware without notice. Drobo has come a long way in terms of reliability over the years. I had a hardware issue on one of my early 4 bay Drobo's and my data was OK once I moved the drives over. I have seen horror stories as well with catastrophic data loss.

I use a Drobo mini right now, and I copy the whole unit to a Synology NAS for backup. The Drobo is my working data and I have not had one hiccup on the device in over a year of using it. Having a RAID array is not backup, and as already noted you should have something else in place to safeguard the data that cannot be lost.
 
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Thanks for the replies. Currently I have 3 locations where I keep my pictures which are the most important. Believe me I'm a bit paranoid about losing those so I'll have backups of backups. What I'm looking for primarily is a main place to consolidate my data; about 3TB worth across 4-5 different internal and external hard drives. I want to be able to access the data across my network whether I'm home or away. I want to be able to share media. I also want to be able to swap the drives in the event of a failure.
 

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