Path: csiph.com!usenet.pasdenom.info!weretis.net!feeder4.news.weretis.net!npeer.de.kpn-eurorings.net!npeer-ng0.de.kpn-eurorings.net!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!newsfeed-00.mathworks.com!panix!not-for-mail From: Bread Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system Subject: Re: Drobo end days. Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2014 10:43:30 -0800 Organization: lined up neatly Lines: 61 Message-ID: References: <5-ydnf7VLLc9HZvOnZ2dnUVZ_v6dnZ2d@giganews.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: reader1.panix.com 1393353811 5576 127.0.0.1 (25 Feb 2014 18:43:31 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2014 18:43:31 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Unison/2.1.10 Xref: csiph.com comp.sys.mac.system:57297 On 2014-02-20 22:24:32 +0000, Alan Browne said: > On 2014.02.19, 23:53 , Bread wrote: >> On 2014-02-20 01:03:16 +0000, Alan Browne said: >> >>> (The Drobo for all its glory is not esp. fast - even with FW-800. >>> Only a hair faster than the USB 2.0 docks/drives that I have for >>> direct copying.) >> >> "not esp. fast" is an understatement. I love my Drobo. But it's >> downright slow. Copies to/from a USB*2* connected drive are much faster >> than the Drobo at FW800. The bottleneck is not the interface. > > When copying from the Drobo to a Ram Disk, the Drobo is about 30% > faster than the USB 2.0 dock/drives I have; > > But copying from the Ram Disk to the Drobo is about 3X slower than the > USB 2.0 docks I have. (Timed on an 800 MB video file). Now that I think about it, that sounds about right - *read* from the Drobo is reasonably quick. Writing to it is what's painfully slow. Pulling up a big directory listing on it seems slow, too. Nevertheless, my iPhoto repository, for example, since it no longer fits on my internal drive, lives on a FW800 single drive and gets backed up to the Drobo (via TM and crashplan). > >> Similarly, I just saw a great deal on a USB3 128GB memory stick. I have >> a USB2 one and it's a fraction of the speed of using USB2 with a hard >> drive, so, again, I wonder if they're working hard to speed up parts >> which really aren't the bottleneck at all. > > USB Flash drives come in a range of speeds with the very simple > equation: faster = more expensive. Still, it's just not obvious, at least to me, whether one will be faster than another and it's certainly not as simple as USB2 vs USB3. I may buy that USB3 one just to compare. Can't seem to have too many of these handy devices anyway. > > I see one in Montreal (5 bay, no addition disks) for $390 (Craigslist). > > I'm selling mine (4 bay, with two disks (1 + 2 TB) for $390 (Craigslist > and local computer store). > > I see lower priced ones (4 bay, no HD's) on ebay as well. > > These are CAD $, which at present go for ~91 cents/US $. I've got my one Drobo and really haven't worried about a replacement. I just checked Craigslist and there are three within an hour drive of me, 2nd gen with FW800, all at around $150/ea. with no drives. That's actually kind of tempting, just to have a backup for my main drobo, though, as I said, even if mine died, its main purpose is as a backup drive in the first place.