It’s the age old question since we’ve started to shoot digital. How can I make my workflow faster? More efficient? Or more importantly, how can I get more free time and peace of mind? Well, here’s where I hopefully can help out a little. I was lucky enough to get my hands on the DROBO 5D with a couple of Seagate 2TB SATA HDD’s to do some long term testing for my photo and video production workflow…and the short answer to the question? As much as we can get our hands on!
The Drobo 5D is a USB3 and Dual Thunderbolt, (this is great if you have limited ports since you can daisy chain up to 6 Drobo 5D’s together!), port Direct Attached Storage Device (DAS) with five 3.5″ bays for Hard Drives giving a max capacity of 64TB with the latest firmware. While similar to many of the previous models from Drobo, this unit has added support for both HDD and SDD drives, an increased/additional Memory, faster processor, and a battery backup. This unit was designed with Media Creatives in mind, knowing their need for high capacity, and high performance. So much so that a mSATA SSD (128GB or 256GB ) bay was added (not included by default) to cache critical & frequently used data for improved performance.
A vented magnetic door covers the front of the device giving the HDDs room to breath and providing easy access when needed, (hot swapping), and i’ve got to say, this was one of the most painless setups for a RAID device i’ve EVER used.
The back of the device is entirely vented with just the 2 thunderbolt ports, the USB3 port, power connection, and switch near the bottom. The interesting little clip on the very bottom of the device is where you’d install the optional mSATA SSD to boost the devices performance. Fort the purpose of my tests, this was NOT included/used…so keep that in mind. Also i’m only running with 2 drives installed. As Mykii says in his article (linked below), the performance improves noticeably when you have all 5 drives installed and in use!
There are several other articles on Photofocus regarding the setup, installation, and operation of the Drobo units, so I won’t dive into those territories at all (i’ll include links in the bottom). For this, I’ll just talk about the performance, and specifically pertaining to my older 2012 MacBook Pro using just USB 3 and/or thunderbolt for Photo and Video editing.
Some base testing with the USB3 and Thunderbolt showed only a slight improved performance using Thunderbolt so for the majority of my tests, I stuck with the USB3 (keep in mind, my machine is older….hahah). And instead of using the standard “send 1 – 5g file and 10 – 1g files you always see online, I wanted to hit things the real photographer way! So I started by copying an entire client catalogue for Lightroom including RAW files, video files, and a mess of audio. and using USB3 I was given about 150 megs a second of write speed, and 208 megs a second for read which is pretty incredible, especially when compared to a NAS system. Switching to Thunderbolt gave about a 10% performance increase over the USB3 connections also.
The issue i’ve always faced was Preview Loading times with Lightroom/Capture One, and then actual render times within Photoshop. The Drobo 5D was able to increase the performance speed of my workflow by at least 10% if not more! Frankly, I got so lost in my seamless editing that I forgot to stop/start the clock a few times haha.
I’ll be honest…going into this test blind, having only read the not-so-positive reviews of Drobo, I was a sceptic expecting the worst out of the DAS unit I was testing. However, after months of rigorous testing and day to day usage, I was shown my preconceived worries were wrong. The Drobo 5D definitely delivers an easy to use quick and intuitive drive installation with a straightforward management dashboard. With the option to mix and match Solid State and Regular SATA Drives, as well as the optional mSATA addition, the Drobo 5D is a very high capacity and responsive Direct Access Storage Solution. Running a 100 Gig+ Lightroom catalogue worth of RAWs, JPGS, Videos, and Photoshop files stored on my Drobo provided me with very fast and responsive experience where my only real limitation was from the Software Products themselves…but that’s a whole other article on its own haha. The speed tests above (while confusing to look at without a lot of digging into), basically show that the Drobo can provide a faster and smoother working experience, (that improves with more HD’s chained), than when working with just your local drive alone! So, throw in the added security of the redundancy of RAID, the Drobo 5D provides MORE than enough speed AND security for a working Photographer/Videographer in todays market! The only bottle neck I could encounter was the software itself used in my workflow. At an entry price point as low as $279 (on sale) for the Enclosure, and configurations available for whatever you need, this unit can more than handle ANYTHING you throw at it.
How much speed does a photographer need? When you’re on the clock and turnaround time on your projects is tantamount, you can count on the Drobo 5D to deliver for all of your needs!
Wonder how this would work for my wife and I between two PC’s connected to a basic file server.
How exactly would you be connecting/using it Dan? If you’re connecting to the drive (shared and that works) by your network I don’t think you’ll see that much of an improvement in performance…HOWEVER…it should still work great.
Guess that wouldn’t be bad having a Drobo. But I have heard of many horror stories about Drobo failures and how people were unable to retrieve their data. I’ve been using a WD system the past 3 years without any problems. If it fails, I can remove the HD from the cabinet and install them in my PC and be up able to continue working. From what I have read and heard, that is not the case with Drobo. Unless you had an extra one on hand to be able to move the HD to, you’re out of luck. Having to shell out an extra 5 or 6 hundred dollars is really not very practical for us armature’s. I am fully aware that all things will break eventually, but it gets very expensive if the gear you by is not all that reliable.
No one wants to experience data loss, but let me address some flaws in your logic.
I have heard of many horror stories about Drobo failures and how people were unable to retrieve their data.
I personally have more than 2o units in my office and home. I have had hard drives fail (that’s what they do). I have had one Drobo fail, which was repaired by the company and replaced. I simply moved the drives into another unit.
I’ve been using a WD system the past 3 years without any problems. If it fails, I can remove the HD from the cabinet and install them in my PC and be up able to continue working.
If it is a single drive, that’s true. You are protected against the case failing. If it is a RAID that’s not true. If it is not a RAID, you have zero protection against the drive failing. You are also limited to the capacity of a single drive. My photo library is well beyond what a single drive can hold.
From what I have read and heard, that is not the case with Drobo. Unless you had an extra one on hand to be able to move the HD to, you’re out of luck.
with all RAIDs (not just Drobo) you need to be able to move drives to a new case. That is if the UNIT fails. FAR more likely is a drive fails (they do that with time). In that case you just replace one drive in the unit and it repairs itself.
If you’re unit fails and you have a warranty (they sell extended coverage just like your computer manufacturer does) they send you a new unit if it fails. Otherwise, yes you but a new unit and simply move the drives over and are up and running again.
Having to shell out an extra 5 or 6 hundred dollars is really not very practical for us armature’s. I am fully aware that all things will break eventually, but it gets very expensive if the gear you by is not all that reliable.
The Drobo units ARE very reliable. That’s why I run my personal files and business n them. The drives themselves are as reliable as you buy. You can purchase premium drives or cheap drives. All drives fail… the Drobo protects against that.