The Future of Backing Up & Drobo-like Technologies

I'm in a real dilemma about how to back up our three, Airport-networked
Macs. Up to now, I've used Retrospect and backed them up individually
to external hard drives, using alternating, dual, incremental backups.
But now, with iTunes, iPods, Apple TV, iPhoto, as well as downloadable
movies and other visual media, it seems that a very large amount of
backup space will be needed in the near future. Likely some people have
already reached a critical point.

When I first heard about Drobo, a backup device that handles an array of
standard, "hot-swappable", hard drives, I was very enthused---
especially with regard to the device's purported ability to handle
backups absent the user tedium that usually accompanies manual backup
activities.

Then I found out that Drobo (not really a robot) starts at five-hundred
smackaroonies and that does not include a singe drive. It's a USB
device, not Firewire and I have no idea if it can plug into Airport and
backup three or more computers. I know that Cali Lewis likes hers but
most of the other reviews I've seen are mixed. It would give me a place
to use all my Seagates, especially if I swap out my G4 desktop for a TOL
iMac in the near future. I could take the two internal drives and pop
them into a Drobo or similar device. It does seem like an array is a
good solution for data security as well as large amounts of data. But
$500 just for software and a box of drive bays? I just don't know...

What are others of you, with multiple computers, doing or planning for
future backup strategies? And what do you think of Drobo? Are there
other alternatives?

Madeleine

In article
<wyvern->, Madwen
<> wrote:

> Then I found out that Drobo (not really a robot) starts at five-hundred
> smackaroonies and that does not include a singe drive. It's a USB
> device, not Firewire and I have no idea if it can plug into Airport and
> backup three or more computers.

for what it's worth, reports are that it works well on an airport base
station.

> I know that Cali Lewis likes hers but
> most of the other reviews I've seen are mixed. It would give me a place
> to use all my Seagates, especially if I swap out my G4 desktop for a TOL
> iMac in the near future. I could take the two internal drives and pop
> them into a Drobo or similar device. It does seem like an array is a
> good solution for data security as well as large amounts of data. But
> $500 just for software and a box of drive bays? I just don't know...

another option is the infrant/netgear readynas. it's a similar price
to the drobo (unfortunately, a little higher now that netgear bought
them), and has similar expandability, but with a *lot* more features.
it's interface is gigabit.

> What are others of you, with multiple computers, doing or planning for
> future backup strategies? And what do you think of Drobo? Are there
> other alternatives?

drobo is interesting, but it's usb and it plays games with what it
tells the operating system about how much storage there really is.

after looking at various options, i ended up getting a mac mini and
then attached several drives to it. it costs roughly the same as the
drobo or readynas, but it's a *lot* more flexible (and the monitor
doesn't matter since it runs headless 99% of the time). disk utility
can create a raid if you want to go that route, or preferably, get
hardware raid enclosures, or set up superduper to clone a drive every
few hours or whatever interval works best.

In article <tph-2AF4AC.14094210012008@localhost>, Tom Harrington
<> wrote:

> Well, GB Ethernet, which is good if your Mac has it.

all current macs have gigabit, and they have for a few years. gigabit
routers are fairly inexpensive now ($40ish and up).

> Where are you
> seeing it for a price similar to the Drobo? At
> <http://www.netgear.com/Products/Storage/ReadyNASNVPlus.aspx> the
> cheapest one available for direct sale is $1049. It looks like New Egg
> has one as cheap as $799, but that's still a pretty significant premium
> over the Drobo.

last year, an empty readynas was about $500-600 or so, but after
infrant was purchsed by netgear, prices went up, particularly that
configuration.

In article <tomstiller->,
Tom Stiller <> wrote:

> In article
> <wyvern->,
> Madwen <> wrote:
>
> > What are others of you, with multiple computers, doing or planning for
> > future backup strategies? And what do you think of Drobo? Are there
> > other alternatives?
>
> I've rejected the Drobo because of it's weak interface. FireWire 800 or
> even gigabit ethernet would make it more of a contender for me.

You know, the other concerns I had are that perhaps it is a bit too
proprietary and it only has a one year warranty (!). You're paying a
minimum of $500 for a backup system without any drives and (1) What if
the darn thing fails in 13 months? Have you lost both your system and
your data?; and (2) What if Apple changes the OS and the Drobo folks
decide that updates to their system are not practicable, instead
requiring that you buy a whole new system?

In article <100120081231447858%>,
nospam <> wrote:

> In article
> <wyvern->, Madwen
> <> wrote:
>
> > ...I have no idea if it can plug into Airport and backup three or
> > more computers.
>
> for what it's worth, reports are that it works well on an airport base
> station.

This discussion gave me pause:
<http://www.drobospace.com/comments/1...e-Drobo-on-a-N
etwork--Apple-Airport-Extreme/>

> > I know that Cali Lewis likes hers but
> > most of the other reviews I've seen are mixed. It would give me a place
> > to use all my Seagates, especially if I swap out my G4 desktop for a TOL
> > iMac in the near future. I could take the two internal drives and pop
> > them into a Drobo or similar device. It does seem like an array is a
> > good solution for data security as well as large amounts of data. But
> > $500 just for software and a box of drive bays? I just don't know...
>
> another option is the infrant/netgear readynas. it's a similar price
> to the drobo (unfortunately, a little higher now that netgear bought
> them), and has similar expandability, but with a *lot* more features.
> it's interface is gigabit.

That sounds even more expensive. Our Airport Extreme works so well for
us, I can't imagine returning to a wired network.

> > What are others of you, with multiple computers, doing or planning for
> > future backup strategies? And what do you think of Drobo? Are there
> > other alternatives?
>
> drobo is interesting, but it's usb and it plays games with what it
> tells the operating system about how much storage there really is.
>
> after looking at various options, i ended up getting a mac mini and
> then attached several drives to it. it costs roughly the same as the
> drobo or readynas, but it's a *lot* more flexible (and the monitor
> doesn't matter since it runs headless 99% of the time). disk utility
> can create a raid if you want to go that route, or preferably, get
> hardware raid enclosures, or set up superduper to clone a drive every
> few hours or whatever interval works best.

I've read too many bad things about software RAIDs to attempt that. Too
bad Superduper isn't Leopard compatible yet and Retrospect does not work
for Intel Macs. Time Machine just doesn't seem like a good solution for
a 3 computer network as yet.

In article
<wyvern->, Madwen
<> wrote:

> This discussion gave me pause:
> <http://www.drobospace.com/comments/1...e-Drobo-on-a-N
> etwork--Apple-Airport-Extreme/>

yea, that doesn't invoke a lot of confidence. that thread is more
recent than from when i was looking at the drobo almost a year ago.
also, the airport's network sharing is not exactly great even with
normal drives, so i wouldn't necessarily blame drobo for all of the
problems.

> > another option is the infrant/netgear readynas. it's a similar price
> > to the drobo (unfortunately, a little higher now that netgear bought
> > them), and has similar expandability, but with a *lot* more features.
> > it's interface is gigabit.
>
> That sounds even more expensive. Our Airport Extreme works so well for
> us, I can't imagine returning to a wired network.

apparently it is...from another post, the price is higher than i
thought it was. still, it's a very slick device. it will also work
over wireless, but it will obviously be slower than gigabit, although
802.11n should offer decent performance.

> I've read too many bad things about software RAIDs to attempt that. Too
> bad Superduper isn't Leopard compatible yet and Retrospect does not work
> for Intel Macs. Time Machine just doesn't seem like a good solution for
> a 3 computer network as yet.

i tried disk utility and softraid. the latter is quite good, but it
would occasionally fail to detect both drives within the allocated time
window, thus flagging the raid as invalid and forcing a rebuild when
the other volume came on line seconds later. otherwise, softraid had
some useful features, like write protecting one drive of a raid so it
can be removed and stored off site. however, i still prefer hardware
raids over software ones, and for my needs, periodic cloning is
sufficient.

In article <tph-841B76.16213010012008@localhost>, Tom Harrington
<> wrote:

> > all current macs have gigabit, and they have for a few years. gigabit
> > routers are fairly inexpensive now ($40ish and up).
>
> Not all. My MacBook Pro tops out at 100Mbit Ethernet. I don't know
> which others have this limit.

there's something wrong with your setup, because according to apple's
specs, all macbook pros have gigabit:

<http://support.apple.com/specs/>

In article
<wyvern->,
Madwen <> wrote:

> I'm in a real dilemma about how to back up our three, Airport-networked
> Macs. Up to now, I've used Retrospect and backed them up individually
> to external hard drives, using alternating, dual, incremental backups.
> But now, with iTunes, iPods, Apple TV, iPhoto, as well as downloadable
> movies and other visual media, it seems that a very large amount of
> backup space will be needed in the near future. Likely some people have
> already reached a critical point.
>
> When I first heard about Drobo, a backup device that handles an array of
> standard, "hot-swappable", hard drives, I was very enthused---
> especially with regard to the device's purported ability to handle
> backups absent the user tedium that usually accompanies manual backup
> activities.
>
> Then I found out that Drobo (not really a robot) starts at five-hundred
> smackaroonies and that does not include a singe drive.

What is the loss of your data worth? I'm not being silly here,
as I've lost disks and data. And I've messed with lots of
different backup medium including various tape systems, individual
SCSI, Firewire, and USB attached storage.

I've come to the conclusion that if the hardware allows me lots of
storage, redundancy, and an easy to use human interface, I'll pay
the price.

> It's a USB
> device, not Firewire

2 things. First Drobo is announcing new stuff at MacWorld this
month (or so their email to existing customers said). So maybe
they will be offering additional interfaces. If you are at all
interested in a Drobo, it is not a long wait to find out what they
have planned.

The other thing is how you are going to do backups. If you are
going to do repeated full multi-gigabyte on a regular basis, then
the fastest interface you can get is what you want.

However, if you are going to do mostly incremental backups and the
modified files are not themselves huges multi-gigabyte files, then
a USB interface will work fine.

Personally, I have my Drobo attached to an older iBook G4 which
I've setup on a closet as my home Network Server with the Drobo
being the primary storage device (it currently has a terabyte of
usable storage). All of my backups are over the home Airport
network (802.11g speeds), along with a backup of my Mom's iMac in
Pennsylvania over the internet (she only has a 768kilobit DSL
uplink), so a USB connection for the disks is way faster than my
needs.

And of course since I'm using a Mac OS X system as my network
server, I have 100% compatible AFP and HFS+ support (the iBook G4
is running Leopard, so I can even do Time Machine networked
backups).

> and I have no idea if it can plug into Airport and
> backup three or more computers.

Yes it can, HOWEVER, at the current time the Airport Extreme will
not support Leopard's Time Machine backup service. I assume this
is because either it's HFS+ file system support lacks new Leopard
features, or changes in the Appletalk Filing Protocol are missing
from the Airport Extreme (just guessing). Again, by using a Mac
running Leopard I side step these issues.

> I know that Cali Lewis likes hers but
> most of the other reviews I've seen are mixed. It would give me a place
> to use all my Seagates, especially if I swap out my G4 desktop for a TOL
> iMac in the near future. I could take the two internal drives and pop
> them into a Drobo or similar device. It does seem like an array is a
> good solution for data security as well as large amounts of data. But
> $500 just for software and a box of drive bays? I just don't know...

Again, how much is the loss of your data worth to you? Digital
Pictures, or movies of your family that do not exist anywhere
else. TurboTax info from last year that you will want to carry
over to this years Tax returns. Music? Email? Bookmarks?
Passwords saved in your Keychain (or maybe 1Password). The
customizations you have made to your Mac that make it feel like
home.

> What are others of you, with multiple computers, doing or planning for
> future backup strategies? And what do you think of Drobo? Are there
> other alternatives?

There are less than $500 1TB storage boxes out there (most are
just two 500GB disks in one box that can be configured as two
500GB disks, as one 500GB mirrored volume, or as a concatenated
1TB volume. You can find boxes like this for anywhere between
$250 and $350, where the lower prices tend to be USB or USB &
eSATA, and the higher end tend to be Firewire 800 capable.

You might consider something like Mozy.com (an EMC servcie) as an
on-line backup where you encrypt before it leaves your Mac. The
free services gives you 2GB of on-line storage, or $5/month per
system, for unlimited on-line storage for your internal disk
(commercial licenses are available that will include external
disks).

Jungle Disk which provides a similar service to Mozy only it uses
the Amazon S3 on-line storage service (15 cent/gigabyte/month).
Again your data is encrypted before leaving your Mac. Jungle Disk
and S3 do not limit what disks you backup, so you can include
external disks.

From what I've read, if you want a network storage server, that is
not an old Mac (like I'm using), then Infrant's ReadyNAS is the
best Mac compatible network server.

Of course if you want the most "Bang for the Buck", then you get a
no-name PC box with lots of internal disk bays, and run FreeNAS or
a similar Linux or FreeBSD based network attached storage system.
Of course you will have to get your hands dirty, but for some
people that is half the fun.

> Madeleine

Bob Harris

In article <100120081524561359%>,
nospam <> wrote:

> In article
> <wyvern->, Madwen
> <> wrote:
[...]
> > > another option is the infrant/netgear readynas. it's a similar price
> > > to the drobo (unfortunately, a little higher now that netgear bought
> > > them), and has similar expandability, but with a *lot* more features.
> > > it's interface is gigabit.
> >
> > That sounds even more expensive. Our Airport Extreme works so well for
> > us, I can't imagine returning to a wired network.
>
> apparently it is...from another post, the price is higher than i
> thought it was. still, it's a very slick device. it will also work
> over wireless, but it will obviously be slower than gigabit, although
> 802.11n should offer decent performance.

Our AP Extreme is the older model but we'll likely be updating it in the
near future after I replace my G4 Quicksilver.

> > I've read too many bad things about software RAIDs to attempt that. Too
> > bad Superduper isn't Leopard compatible yet and Retrospect does not work
> > for Intel Macs. Time Machine just doesn't seem like a good solution for
> > a 3 computer network as yet.
>
> i tried disk utility and softraid. the latter is quite good, but it
> would occasionally fail to detect both drives within the allocated time
> window, thus flagging the raid as invalid and forcing a rebuild when
> the other volume came on line seconds later. otherwise, softraid had
> some useful features, like write protecting one drive of a raid so it
> can be removed and stored off site. however, i still prefer hardware
> raids over software ones, and for my needs, periodic cloning is
> sufficient.

Thanks for all the info. Interesting discussion.

Madeleine

In article
<. goldmark.org>,
Jeffrey Goldberg <> wrote:

> In <jollyroger->,...:
>
> > (http://www.exabyte.com/products/vxa_...amovieview.cfm).
> >
> > I back up to two sets of tapes, rotating sets once every week. One set
> > of tapes is always off-site in a fireproof safe. I recycle (erase)
> > backup sets once a month. With this setup, I can retrieve files deleted
> > from one day ago all the way back to one month ago. I have lost count of
> > how many times it's saved my ass! It's such a nice feeling knowing I
> > don't need to worry about my data anymore. I am spoiled now - I wouldn't
> > dream of living without it.
>
> But if you were starting today, would you go for a system based on tapes
> or a system based on removable hard disks?

Precisely my point. Traditional methods are getting quite cumbersome
and inefficient. I've been running alternating backups for 3 computers
to 4 separate (non-arrayed) HDs and I'm getting tired of it, especially
in view of much larger amounts of data on the near horizon.


> I've got a heteorogenious network. Like you I want to be able to store
> back-ups off-site. And I want to back up systematically.
>
> My daughter is getting into iMovie so there is ever more data to actually
> back up, which makes makes the speed of disks much more appealing that
> tapes.
>
> I've been looking at bacula, but I haven't sorted out the actual server
> and media for the backup data itself. I expect that my back-up server
> will be running FreeBSD, thought I could use a Mac mini if that solved
> some problems.
>
> -j