Data Protection with the Drobo S

For a long time I have been struggling trying to effectively manage my growing image library.  At first it all fit on one 120GB external hard drive (remember those days), but recently it has been split between two 2TB hard drives in my MacPro tower.  I have also been using Backblaze for an online backup, and keeping an Apple Time Machine as well.  But every time I come back from a big shoot it takes weeks for the online backup to catch up.

After placing my order for the new 36mp Nikon D800 I knew this problem would only get worse as the file sizes are several times larger than the ones from my current cameras.  Thus I started searching for a more robust and fast system that would allow me to keep redundant copies of all my files, at an affordable price, and have fast access.  I first looked into faster cloud storage options, but the prices blew me out of the water for the amount of space I needed.

Enter my wonderful Dad!   He is a manager at an industrial company in the Seattle area and deals with all their network technology stuff (or in layman's terms he is a computer geek).  I was lamenting my storage issues with him one day on the phone and he mentioned Drobo and how his company had just bought a big 8 bay version to run their entire multi-million dollar company.  He suggested I look at their systems for photographers and gave me a contact name at Drobo to follow up with any questions.

Fast forward a couple weeks and this fancy looking black box with 5 green lights (Drobo S) is now plugged into my MacPro Tower.  It will hold up to 5 regular hard drives of any size (they don't all need to match in size), and stores my data spread across all the inserted drives.  It can run with as few as 3 hard drives and still have a single drive fail without any loss or work slow down.  I currently have 4 hard drives inserted and thus have the ability to have 2 hard drives fail at the same time and still not loose any data.  Aside from the unit being stolen or the house burning down... You know the rest...  Knock on wood. 

When I start running out of space I'll just insert one more drive into the box and it will get larger.  If a drive fails I'll just eject it and replace it (hot swap).  No managing data, formatting, RAIDing...  Strait out of the box I just inserted the drives and put in the install CD, after that it was ready.  Just plug and go! More time to shoot!

For safety sake I still plan to keep an off site backup, but having a fast and safe storage system in my office helps me sleep better at night.  The Drobo will also work when I end up replacing my aging MacPro with a newer iMac that doesn't have the space for multiple internal hard drives like the older tower.  For the serious photographer with lots of photos that represent their income Drobo is the way to go!

5/18/12 update...
Still running the Drobo, but things have really slowed down now that I am using the Nikon D800 with its 36MP sensor.  Looks like it is about time to replace the 5 year old desktop and see how that changes things.  Hopefully its the computer and not the Firewire 800 connection, since Drobo's don't do Thunderbolt and iMac's don't do USB3.

8/19/12 update...
So after a wonderful summer shooting in Central America I home with thousands of images that needed editing, so I bought the bullet and ordered a new 27inch iMac with all the goodies.  After some research I also discovered that no matter what did the Drobo S was just too slow for editing major files in a timely manner.  Thus I also dropped another bunch of cash and am now the proud owner of a Promise Pegasus Thunderbolt hard drive bay.  While expensive it more than lives up to its name in terms of speed.  With the new computer and Pegasus I can edit photos faster than ever before, and you know what they say about time vs. money:-)   The Drobo (which is still working perfectly) is now my very safe and redundant off site backup.