Drobo FS vs Synology NAS 4-bay
 

OK, I am preparing to get a NAS drive. I've decided that I'd rather pay a bit more for more/better data reliability, so I've decided to go with one of the 4 bay units that support more than RAID 1. It seems that no one is completely happy with any of the consumer models. I briefly looked at the Buffalo Quad Pro which is half the price of the 2 mentioned above, but the reviews are moderate at best. Drobo and Synology both seem to have a fair amount of good reviews and a few bad/moderate reviews which these days at non-enterprise prices are probably the best that you could hope for.

Does anyone have any first hand experience with the Drobo FS which is a multibay, network attached drive that supports RAIDs 0, 1, 5 & 10 or the Synology Diskstation DS411 series which is similar to the above.

Also, I don't want to spend a fortune on drives. I'm thinking that I'll start with 4 x 2TB drives initially. Any recommendations on which drives would offer the best reliability?

You must be looking for the Foreign Language Forum.

Hahahah. Nice. I was thinking, "damn, that was fast." thanks for the laugh.

We've got a few geeks around that will chime in eventually.

No se

Just to confuse things more, I went with this.

TowerRAID TR8M-BP - 8 Bay eSATA RAID 0/1/10/5/JBOD Performance Tower w/ 6G PCIe Card (Black)

No built in networking as I need the thruput so eSata to Rocket Raid card inside one of my towers. 8 1.5 TB drives.

If you set up sharing on a host then you don't really need NAS.

I like Seagate drives, not a fan of Western Digital. WD for me have been spotty. You'll hear the opposite from others.

For raid 5 you can start with as few as 3 drives.

I'm on a Buffalo now, just an LSV2, but it's fantastic compared to the Seagate I had. Interface is excellent the support from them has been great. They have been dragging their feet on the new 1.6 codebase, but they updated the release date on their forums yesterday. Also nice that they are based in Texas and their support is domestic as well.

I've bought 2 of the Iomega units off amazon. They are 4 bay, dual LAN and are an appliance, meaning minimal brains needed to make them work. I have one stationed at home for offsite backup of essential business files.

If you go this route, buy the bare unit. Cheaper to add drives than buy with drives.

I'd really like something that connects to the network. I used t share a printer, and much prefer my current which is a network printer.

The Iomegas are network connected

NAS - means it is network connected, that's the N

Right. I'd looked at some of the Iomega smaller boxes. I'll have to check out some of their higher line units.

thanks , my comment was directed towards stomackmonkey's post. I'm a network engineer and techie. I'm familiar with the acronym's root.

wanna fix my PC?

Are you talking about the px4-300d?

hahaha. Sure, wipe format, fresh install. I'd be more useful if you had routing problems, firewall problems, etc....

Yep

Cool, thx

James, what drives did you use in the Iomega? Did you get some from the approved list or did you purchase something else?

I guess that is one of the big advantages to the Drobo, you can use dissimilar devices. I suspect the Iomega may also be more reliable and faster for the same reason.

I had a previous model that worked well. I wanted more space and the 4 drive bays. I have also built a couple of low power servers which can do more, but they require a lot more setup. The Iomegas have an easy web setup and just work. They still can do quite a lot.

Thanks.

Anyone else have any thoughts before I pull the trigger?

Whats the application? Drobo is better for all windoze stuff.

I am battling with free rght now, i've got an old DL360 with lots of drives, I tried FreeNAS but it's too flaky, now trying OpenFiler but it too is not being nice, so I'm still looking. All i want to do is ackup my VM's but without sending any money.....

Use the Western Digital Caviar Black (not the Green consumer drives).