Ben's Bargains Serving Fresh Deals 24/7

Many folks like the Drobos. This is not a NAS, it is just a slow USB2 or Firewire external array.

Realize that this price doesn't include any disk drives, those will cost extra. The software really isn't that amazing. Any FreeNAS deployment with an eSATA connector can perform the same using ZFS with 3Gbps speeds (the same as an internal SATA drive). I've previously seen Rosewill external eSATA 4 disk arrays (minus disks) for $125 (newegg) and $180 http://www.addonics.com/products/raid_system/mst4.asp (Addonics).

The Drobo is a fine solution if you don't want to get your hands dirty and have $150+ extra to blow. That simplicity could be worth it for many.

Disclosure: I've owned an Addonics 4 drive external array for 3+ years and I'm extremely happy with it running Linux software RAID. It is fairly quiet too.

Can't see the price or use of this thing. 20 or 40MB sustained rates according to the instructions? Uggh. Backups will run all night and into next week at that speed.

No Gigabit interface? Uggh. You're better off with an eSata external drive.

Drobo was a great idea before WHS hit the market. A WHS is more useful and cheaper.

WHS is just more Microsoft garbage that can be replaced by better, cheaper, more reliable open source products. Only Windows weenies buy that crap.

#5 - To be truthful, most people expect WHS to follow in Microsoft's proud tradition of building buggy software that does things just they way Microsoft believes things should be done. However, WHS is a jewel in the rough. So naturally, Microsoft hates it.

I love WHS because it does everything I need it to do; perfectly, quickly, simply, and cheaply.
Can it saturate Gigabit ethernet? You better believe it!
Simple web hosting? Yep, so simple my retired father can set it up
Expansion? Mine is at 13.5TB right now and I can add eight more drives.
Reliability? In almost three years mine has never crashed/locked up. Only been rebooted when Powerpacks and updates have required it.
Automated backups? It is protecting four computers right now. A network restore due to a different PC's failed drive worked perfectly.
Folder-level duplication? Makes the most sense. Despite what you hear the fanbois say, RAID is not a backup. Of course, I do offsite backups of key data in case of fire/flood/theft.

@ #1:

I tried reading about setting up FreeNAS with ZFS to be able to dynamically expand mixed drive sizes, but it all seemed like a foreign language to me. Currently, I'm still experimenting with unRAID and have installed Netatalk 05 to get AFP and Time Machine functionality.

I also have two Firewire Drobos. While a bit more expensive and speeds are moderate at best, there is something to be said for the simpicity and its elegance. They are both connected to a Mac mini that I picked up used for cheap and does the file sharing over AFP and SMB among other services. For my needs, they have performed flawlessly.

hey i put this on!!!

this is an awesome system...nothing to worry about...OUT OF THE BOX setup!!! interchangeable hard drives...the problem with other servers is that they have to be the same exact hard drive..with this 5 years down the line if I wanted to buy a 5tb hard drive for $80...lets just say...i could...with other systems you would have to go and FIND the same type of hard drive you installed 5 years ago!!!...
so in the long run you actually SAVE money!!!

it is recommend you start with 2 drives so you dont wait for days to get everything "backed up"...and also i heard WHS...really sucks ass...cause when it breaks..which it most likely will...your screwed cause you probably lost all your data...

this product will be around for YEARS to come and maybe even blow the market out...well thats the way i thought about HAVA and its still the best one out there but slingbox is now a household name in the dork world...

"the problem with other servers is that they have to be the same exact hard drive.."

Or not. WHS has no such limitation. Several other solutions exist (ZFS for example) that will work with any hard drive you throw at it.

"so in the long run you actually SAVE money!!!"

lol. Compared to what? A couple days ago I bought a refurbished HP EX-485 for $10 less than this thing. A complete computer with a network connection, 4 hard drive bays, does everything a Drobo does and more, AND included a 750GB HD. Tell me again how this fancy disk enclosure is going to save me money?

"and also i heard WHS...really sucks ass...cause when it breaks..which it most likely will...your screwed cause you probably lost all your data..."

Many many people have many many thousands of terabytes under control of WHS. There WAS a data corruption bug in the original RTM software (show me a filesystem that hasn't had a data corruption bug), but it's been fixed for like 2 years now.

Nice thing about WHS is even if you lose all the fancy Drive Extender stuff, the underlying hard disks are just plain-ol' NTFS and can be read by any system.

These things were novelties when they first came out, but the proliferation of WHS appliances has rendered them obsolete, overpriced, and redundant.

While WHS may be a good solution for many, it isn't the end all, be all solution to everyone.

One of the problems I have with WHS server is it's folder duplication. It may be a good solution for people who don't want all of their data protected, but for those who do, it will mean usage of more storage. The redundancy of the Drobos, traditional RAID 5s, ZFS, etc. protects all of your data against a failed drive while using less drive space by using parity. Obviously, the ideal solution would be to mirror all drives and have backups in remote locations, but, to many, this is just not economically feasible or even possible.

The second problem I have with WHS is that it doesn't support AFP. This limits its usefulness to those who use Macs.

I find on-demand folder duplication to be much more reliable and flexible than any form of parity-based RAID. It's easier for the average person to understand, allows you to avoid wasting space on stuff that has no need to be duplicated, and greatly reduces overhead and potential problems when something goes wrong.

I'd love to see an AFP add-in written for WHS, but it's not the end of the world. Macs will happily talk CIFS/SMB or NFS all day long right out of the box.

Again, one of the selling points for the Drobos is its simplicity, especially when it comes to upgrading and replacing failed drives. Pop out a failed drive, pop in a working one that's the same size or larger and the Drobo does the rest. I've done it to my Drobos quite a few times upgrading drives of smaller sizes without flaw. It requires just about zero technical knowledge.

While Macs can connect via SMB, you will find that it will have difficulty writing certain files/folders to it due to filename issues. I successfully installed Netatalk 05 to my unRAID setup to get AFP and Time Machine support.

Anybody try this yet?