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Old 08-21-2009, 10:38 AM
mrhobbit mrhobbit is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2009
Posts: 4
Network assessible RAID storage gives you one small bit of extra assurance a single drive Backup solution doesn't. But the price difference in the hardware is daunting. Nevertheless, it's the 'top of the pile' wrt to sensible solutions.

I do believe that Data Robotics is playing on that advantage, but ignoring the golden rule of 'interoperability or bust'. Their approach appeals to the Mac crowd's lust for simplicity and 'it just works' mentality. But, as always, there is a price to pay for that. Closed shops, secret handshakes (that is keystrokes), premium pricing... sometimes that's just how it all plays out in the 'it just works' arena.

In the meantime... computer professionals stand back from it all and use RAID boxes with wee little OS's tuned for transperancy in a ubiquitously networked world. A Drobo is not that at all. The price you pay for 'so simple an 8 year old can use it' is that you end up with hardware that often ends up only fit for an 8 year old. Once again, human nature burns the house down to get rid of a rat... rather than meeting the challenge of simply outsmarting it.

The best solution now costs only a wee bit more money than a Drobo alone. The better bet is only an option if most of what you've generated in the way of data represents 1000's of hours and dollars worth of your irreplaceable data - a single redundant local drive for every computer, (SD is perfect for your Mac mirrors) and a smart remote RAID box that 'pulls' images across the network and refreshes them on a schedule. Fortunately, the market is driving that arrangement towards being as affordable and idiot proof as just a single local direct attached redundant box of drives.

When the right time comes, I too will be dropping the Drobo (has a nice ring to it...) and moving to much cheaper single local mirrors and a humongous smart NAS all my computers are 'attached' to from anywhere with TCP/IP. I wonder who's going to perfect a NAS box like that - built-in WAN transparency for adhoc archiving/backup plus idiot proof scheduled SMART drive imaging?
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