drobo anyone?

[reven]

i was just wondering if anyone had a drobo or used a drobo, and what they thought of that compared to standard RAID 5?

im looking at getting a 4 hdd NAS (the drobo has a $100 addon which converts it into a NAS), and im liking the fact i can shove any size drive in it and seems to give me more space than RAID (which gives me 3x the smallest drive in the array). but was just wondering if anyone has any experience to put them off/on it.

basically i want it to house my large dvd collection, and i dont want to lose all of my rips incase a single drive dies (i really wouldnt want to rip them a second time)

[Mvp74]

I have read a test about drobo, cause I find it very interesting.
Never heard about this thing.
I thinking about a NAS System for myself at home.
Take 4 different harddrives with different size sounds great and look easy to upgrade.

Here the test: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/meet-drobo...2337.html#

It´s very interesting, but in the end a little to expensive.
For HomeUser without great Raid/Storage skills a great system.
But I think a NAS-Upgrade is need for Drobo, cause with USB you have a limitadion for the cable-lenght...who know how loud the fan is...and 4 harddrives ain´t realy quit too

A big problem (for me) of NAS Storage System is the low read/write speed.
On Drobo-HP the tell about read up tp 22MB/s and write up to 20MB/s.
In the test they reach read 15,7 MB/s and write 11,0 MB/s.

With a realy NAS-System and a 1GB-Network you can reach up to 47,4 MB/s read and 23,7MB/s write speed. With a 100 Mbit LAN you reach the same speed as Drobo does.

But I read about a new Version of Drobo with Firewire-Connection:
http://twipphoto.com/archives/593

I´m thinking about build my Old PC to a Nas-Storage fo myself too.....
Atm I use a USB-Rack in my PC. So I can switch my harddrives like a USB-Stick for Backups. Sure..with the Speed-Limit of USB2...

Hope the link to the test helps you