Comments on: Don’t think you need to backup a Drobo? Think again!

By: LS3

LS3 — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 04:36:04 +0000

Hi Terry — I have had major failures twice. The first time an ‘expert’ had installed and checked my backup system BUT…there was none). The second time two new Western Digital HDs both failed. I have a new system, but my problem is that I have a ton of recovered data (including photos from jpg to both Canon and Nikon RAW) on various drives (different recovery attempts). The files all have the time they were recovered and many have file names bestowed or altered by the recovery. Its a major mess and I’m looking for a program that will find true duplicates and will also let me see/give me information on files that have different versions so I can sort my original and edited files and delete what I don’t need. This is terabytes of stuff — way too much to ever get through manually. Many thanks for any advice.

By: terrywhite

terrywhite — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 07:45:04 +0000

I guess not since I have a second one now after this happened. The point of the post was that even Drobo’s should be backed up which I knew going in and thankfully I did.

By: T.J. Powell

T.J. Powell — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 02:43:15 +0000

Terry: Does this incident change how much you like Drobo?

I am looking for a solution for additional storage space for an iMac. I have read lots of reviews online about the Drobo. They are either very good or very bad.

Are there any other suggestions? That I should look at?

I have looked at the Western Digital My Book Studio II like this one http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0016P7H3Q/ref=s9_simi_gw_p23_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0D7103493K009R3TXR3V&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846

By: Backup Like Nike – Just Do It : A.J. Wood – Adobe Instructor - I don't have a solution but I admire the problem.

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 06:03:12 +0000

[...] 2009 Update – Still think backups are not important? Checkout what happened to the Drobo setup of Creative Tech Guru Terry White. Share and [...]

By: nb

nb — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:18:14 +0000

Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. For me, there are days when a backup is critical and days when it’s not such a big deal.

And some days, all my work is pure shit and I’d almost welcome a hard drive fail.

I guess the question remains to be tested in the real world: does more frequent use of a drive make it fail sooner? I suppose on an individual-case basis, you could never know for sure.

By: Terry White

Terry White — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:28:36 +0000

Backup frequency is all about how much can you afford to lose? Daily works for me and I don’t feel like they are being over worked. If you can afford o lose potentially 2 days work then go for every other day. I can’t.

By: nb

nb — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:52:06 +0000

I know this is an old post, but maybe people are still interested.

Terry: do you think perhaps you are over-working your hard drives? Are DAILY backups really necessary? How much work do you do in a day? If I lost one or two days of work, it would be unfortunate, sure, but not the end of the world. It seems if you changed from nightly backups to semi-nightly, you’re hard drives would last much longer. Maybe not twice as long, but much longer.

Am I wrong?

By: Julie K

Julie K — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 13:25:44 +0000

And if data becomes corrupted, couldn’t your SuperDuper backup just have the same corrupted data? I thought of that after my Mac mini (used as data server) had problems. I keep 2 external SuperDuper backups for that reason. I also use TM and SuperDuper so hopefully TM would have the incremental backups.

By: Rich

Rich — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 20:32:08 +0000

What about RAID 1?

I just got a CalDigit VR which allows RAID 0/1 or JBOD via SATA. If a drive fails you supposedly have one good drive redundancy….

By: Terry White

Terry White — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 22:49:51 +0000

Roger,
A system like Drobo still has use for “drive failure” which is what it’s designed to protect you from. With a regular hard drive, when it crashes that’s it. You have to rely on your latest backup. With Drobo, it would warn you that the drive is failing and automatically protect the data. You replace the bad drive and keep going. Also with Drobo, you have the advantage of adding more storage just by swapping drives without having to backup and restore the whole thing each time. The purpose of my post was to share that even Drobo is susceptible to “data corruption” and that no matter what you use, you should back it up! Drobo is still doing its job which is to monitor the health of the drives. But if you accidently delete files, have a virus, get a corrupt directory issue, etc. Drobo can’t help you in those cases. Backups are still necessary!

By: Roger

Roger — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 22:41:59 +0000

Wow, if a redundant mirroring system like Drobo can fail, then why even bother with it? You might as well just get a regular external hard drive. Also, backing up your backup must be a pain. In any case, there is no such thing as being “paranoid” when it comes to backing up your data. We all know that we need a 100% fail safe way to protect and back up our data. Im not saying that a 100% fail safe way exists, but we need to try to get as close to it as possible. Keeping a backup offsite will definitely get us closer.

Currently, Im using online backup. I use Carbonite, but I also heard good things about Mozy as well. I probably dont have as sensitive data as you do, but Im sure that they encrypt and cannot view your data. Thats it. I dont need to deal with any external drives whatsoever and the backup storage is unlimited. Now the only way I can possibly lose all my data, is if the online backup company’s storage goes down (including their backup as well) AND my local hard drive crashes at the same time. I would say there is a 1% chance of that happening.

By: Alan Valek

Alan Valek — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 22:21:04 +0000

Man, that sucks I’ve been reading your review on the Drobo, as well as this post and I’m thinking of still getting one though. I’ve got 5 different Lacie drives now, and daisy chaining them together has caused problems so I have to plug them in separately to grab files = nightmare. My only concern after calling Data Robotics is the proprietary file format that it uses, but from what I understand, all raid systems work that way. So what if by chance Data Robotics goes out of business like a lot of companies are lately due to the jacked economy? Will I have to rely on a hacker kid in the middle of Kansas that will know how to extract my files? LOL. Kinda scares me. Data Robotics told me that if you physically take the 4 drives out of the Drobo and put them in a safe, you can only plug them into another Drobo to access the filesâ€”kind of a scary concept to me, maybe that’s just how this raid stuff works?

I read that you ran Disk Warrior on the Droboâ€”I take that it didn’t cause any problems? I’ve tried running it on a internal Time Machine drive and it didn’t work and just stalled on the locating directory part.

I’ve been saying that "I need to buy a fireproof safe" for all my drives for a while now…I read that you put yours in a safe deposit box…I was like "Duh", I had a "why didn’t I think of that before" moment!! Thanks for that idea, I never thought of that……that made my day, thanks!!

By: Roger

Roger — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 03:40:49 +0000

Terry,

I have a similar backup strategy as you do and honestly I sometimes wonder if it’s enough. The good news is that I have lost very little over the years by being overly cautions. Knock on wood! Since youâ€™re talking about TBs I was wondering if any of your readers can recommend a web based option. All the ones Iâ€™ve looked at seem way too slow for an internet based back up strategy based on the amount of data Iâ€™m trying to back up.

By: Chris Lewis

Chris Lewis — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 18:25:17 +0000

A similar thing just happened to me with my LaCie NAS device. Luckily for me it was just a power supply problem & a replacement supply solved it with no data lost. It was enough to scare me into looking at a second backup though. I ended up backing up to the cloud with Mozy home (www.mozy.com). It’s free for 2 gigs of storage or $5 a month for unlimited. The backups themselves are encrypted, and you can even create your own encryption key if you are extra-paranoid.

However, as you mentioned, the downside is the volume. That first backup can take a VERY long time if you’re talking hundreds of gigs. Still, the thought of losing my wedding & honeymoon pictures was enough to convince me that it was worth the cost and time. Like you said, if it’s not offsite, it can still get lost from fire/flood/etc.

Glad you were able to get it mostly back to normal, though. And from a fellow Michigander, keep warm!

By: Mike Hanson

Mike Hanson — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 17:51:44 +0000

This is PRECISELY why software based RAID is NEVER a solution.

Send your data on a regular basis to the cloud (using multiple vendors if you’re paranoid) and ditch the Drobo paperweight.

A RAID 5 SATA card is cheap … and an OEM or home built solution will last 10x longer than anything Drobo makes.