As a photographer and someone who also has video storage of all those images has become a problem. It’s a hassle to deal with several Firewire drives and if the drive fails you’re SOL. So I bought a drive enclosure called a Drobo. This sucker holds up to four SATA drives (of any capacity) and does automatic mirroring, and drive diagnostics. So you don’t have to mess with building a RAID or worry about a drive failing and losing your data. A very cool device. The only drawback is that it is USB 2.0 only at this point so transfers can be slow. But now that I’ve freed-up my FW800 drives I can use those for video capture and use the drobo for archiving. Check out the pics below.
The Drobo with the cover on. The 10 lights on the bottom show how much capactiy I’m using, so I’m at 40% right now. The lights on the right indicate drive health so both are green and healthy.
My drobo with two 750GB SATA drives inserted with two free slots to go. Easiest external drive I’ve ever put together. The cover holds on with magnets sealed in the plastic. It also has a Kennsington slot on the back along with USB and power ports.
The Drobo Dashboard application shows you drive health along with how much free space you have. Because I’ve only got two drives in it my capacity is cut in half due to mirroring. But that’s fine for the peace of mind.