Drobo Advice

Hi Dave,

I woke up this morning to yet another Lacie drive failure. I have two 1TB Lacies and have had three failures in two years.

Between Time Machine and Backblaze I’ve been able to restore the data files on that drive.

I’m thinking of switching to a Drobo and need some advice...

My current backup scheme, prior to the failure, is as follows:

• Lacie #1 / 2 partitions: Full Backup A and Data files
  
• Lacie #2 / 2 partitions: Full Backup B and Time Machine
  
• I use SD! to backup to Full Backup A and B on alternating nights and make them bootable

I would like to do the same with a Drobo. A few questions?

• Is it possible?
  
• Would you recommend four partitions as I have had until now? Is it advisable to have two separate bootable partitions for SD! Backups on a Drobo?

Are there any hard drives you recommend using or avoiding? Would you recommend something other than a Drobo for what I want to do?

My computer: MacBook Pro / OS X 10.6.2

Thanks for your help with this. SD! has saved me more than once; it’s a fantastic program.

Lew

[dnanian]

Remember: all drives fail. Always.

LaCie tends to use Hitachi drives in their cases, and Hitachi drives have a good reputation, and I've found their cases to be reliable.

But, anyway - the four partitions I see here look fine, save for "Data files", which doesn't seem to be backed up.
You can certainly do the same thing with a drobo... but having two volumes that contain the same data doesn't have much point if they're on the same physical drive. You could, however, have a daily backup and a weekly backup.

Thanks for your reply, Dave.

I hear you about all drives failing eventually. However, three failures within two years is more than I care to put up with.

Doing a daily and weekly scheduled backup to bootable partitions makes a lot of sense. I'll do that.

With respect to the files on the "Data Files" partition, wouldn't Drobo duplicate those files automatically on a different physical drive in case of a drive failure?

Lew

[dnanian]

That protects you against a hardware failure, but not against other kinds of trouble (and not against a dual-drive raid failure, or other problems that could happen with the drobo).

Remember: if a file doesn't exist in more than one place, and on more than one device, it doesn't exist at all.