Fortysomething Geek

Ever since the floods of Thailand, I've been hoarding drives as they go on sale. Just for me, I probably have over 60TB of drives in various sizes. These 4TB Backup Plus drives were dirt cheap the other day on Amazon for 140ドル. 7200 rpm, SATA III 6Gbp/s and Thunderbolt upgrade-able.
These external drives usually cost much,much less than their internal counterparts. There are plenty of youtube videos on how to crack open these enclosures for you to use as internal drives.

I may just want to upgrade my Drobo 5D and replace all the 3TB drives.

The SansDigital TowerRaid TR4UTBPN is a 4 bay RAID enclosure with eSATA and USB 3.0 interfaces. It was recently on sale so I picked one up.



I've had this sitting around for a few weeks and I've finally freed up some time to play with it.


SanDigital makes over a dozen different enclosures and it can easily get confusing which one to get.
You may have seen some on sale combined with eSATA cards. Take note, many are simply JBOD (Just a bunch of disk) enclosure box that require an eSATA port with port multipliers to function. Otherwise, you only see the first disk. Hence, the reason many come with eSATA card bundles. Port multiplication is not common on many eSATA interfaces; including most laptops and motherboards. Those cards often require some sort of software to run them in RAID.
So it is very critical you are aware of the difference when you shop for these type of enclosures.

Luckily, this is not a JBOD enclosure. This has a built in RAID controller and when it was priced the same as a JBOD box, I decided to pick one up. This device supports RAID 0,1,3,5,10 and as well as JBOD. These go for 179ドル-199. I was fortunate to pick this up for 99ドル.

Physical characteristics:


The box is rather tiny and minimal to accommodate 4 drives. They drives do not use a tray but do require you to fasten them down with screws.



The back takes a standard prong power plug (power supply is internal). There are two interfaces - eSATA and full size USB 3.0. There is also a dial and reset button to set the RAID modes. The front side has some little ventilation but I would prefer that the front door provided better airflow.



Setting the RAID mode is a straightforward affair. You simply turn the dial to the mode you want. You can also overcome the dial settings through the RAID manager application.


Front indicator shows activity and which drives are failing. In this case, the 3rd drive has gone bad.


The Raid Manager app shows you status and has other options to create and delete new RAID sets.




The application also provides diagnostic and notifications controls. I've read that the email settings may have some problems with SMTP servers using START/TLS authentication. I did not test to find out. Unfortunately, I could only get the Windows version to run. The Mac app didn't appear to work for me. This may be a Mountain Lion compatibility issue.




USB 3.0

Forget about it. USB 3.0 simply didn't work for me. I've read this complaint on various customer reviews and it appears the JMicron controller has some incompatibility issues with other controllers. I've tried on 4 different machines under OSX, Linux and Windows 7. All had problems with disconnects or simply not mounting. Under OSX, it would disconnect under heavy load or large file transfers. Under windows and Linux, it would randomly disconnect and reconnect every few seconds. Windows 7 would prompt me to format the unit every 5 seconds.



There may be a firmware update and I'll look into it and update this post later. For now, I would not recommend this as a USB 3.0 RAID enclosure. I've been reading other brands and make have similar problems.Customer reviews on Newegg and Amazon corroborates similar experiences. However, under USB 2.0, I didn't notice any problems.

Speed

Unlike most of the customer reviews I've been reading, I've been getting the 200 MB/sec sequential read transfers in various testing when using eSATA. The drives I used were 500GB 7200 rpm Seagates.

Windows appears to perform better (using benchmarks as well as real copies).

I only tested RAID 0 and RAID 5 but I did not see much of a performance loss going to RAID 5. The 4k/512k was about 1/4 slower in writes but the sequential read/writes were similar to RAID 0. In short, copying large files saw little loss while your random files will be faster under RAID 0 as it should be.

Here is a RAID 5:


Link: http://www.sansdigital.com/towerraid-plus/tr4utbpn.html

I've had some time to play with the Drobo 5D; filling up about 6TB worth of data (out of 10.89TB in my 5X3TB setup). I've been using it in a mix-use environment. I think I have enough time to form an opinion. So here is my non-professional, regular end-user hands on review of the new Drobo 5D Thunderbolt / USB 3.0 raid box.

Introduction

The device was originally announced during the summer and there was a series of delay, waiting and anticipation. Drobo did not release performance figures until they neared shipping. This was not a very promising introduction.

I was ready to give up and go elsewhere. The Pegasus R4 is the closest competitor to the Drobo and I'm sure it will be cross-shopped. The Pegasus R4 (4 bay RAID) system can be had for 1,000ドル with 4TB of disks (985ドル at Provantage link, 1100ドル amazon link).

The Drobo 5D is 850ドル and it comes bare (enclosure-only) but does include a Thunderbolt cable (which is worth 50ドル by itself). You will need to load it up with drives. If you are a savvy shopper, you can start off with three 2TB drives to give you 3.63TB of useable data (according to the online calculator) to match the Pegasus R4's storage capacity. So if you shop around, three 2TB will cost about an 300ドル (with heavy slickdeals-like discount and bargain hunting) which still makes it more expensive than an R4 setup.

Even though the Drobo 5D is more expensive (with drives), you do have 5 bays vs R4 only having 4 bays. You also have the added benefit of USB 3.0 which the R4 lacks. This broadens the use of this device over a Thunderbolt only system. With 5 bays, you have the potential of filling it up with 4TB drives; giving you around 14.5TB useable storage (from 16TB). That in itself is very compelling.

You can start off cheaper with a Drobo because you can add drives at any time. But, I doubt anyone buying a Drobo at 850ドル will skimp out by using 1 or 2 drives.

So why would I go out and buy this device? Well, I was already allotted a budget and "gifted" funds to buy one from a job I did over the summer. In short, I had to buy one or return the bonus funds I got from that job.

The Drobo Sales Pitch
Drobo claims this device will yield 400 MB/s reads with 256 MB/s writes on average. That doesn't sound as compelling as their competition who posts higher Megabytes per second. Rather, Drobo prefers to bench based on I/O per seconds (IOPS). They believe that "real-world" performance is where the 5D will shine.

They explain this in detail on their performance page: http://www.drobo.com/how-it-works/performance-professional.php

In short, they claim:

"While benchmarking give you a good indication of how well a storage device performs when it’s healthy and for a single task, it is still not a replacement for real-world performance. Benchmarks are nice, but real-world performance is everything."

Real-world performance includes a mix workload; copying various random small files in addition to large bulky files. This is where the IOPs figure comes into play. If you are copying a Photo Library folder with lots of small thumbnails or large volumes of small text files (say a web project), your transfers will be slower than if you normally copy something like large video files. I've seen this happen in the real world where I copied GIT repo of a website with thousands of files and it did indeed take longer than copying large movie files.

They claim 400 to 1280 IOPS. For comparison, some single SSDs are rated at 40,000 to 80,000 IOPS. The Samsung 830 SSD has benched 4K random read IOPS of 80,000.

Other HDD manufacturers do not bench on IOPS and I could not find any reviews on the net to compare the Drobo 5D to when it comes to comparable storage/raid redundancy.

If you are used to thinking in Megabytes per second, you need to acclimate yourself to IOPS.

The Drobo uses a form of RAID which is similar to RAID5/RAID6/RAIDZ. They call it Beyond Raid and it has a some unique characteristics both real and perceived. It provides single or dual disk redundancy. This in itself is very important. This is a redundant RAID system.

Unlike traditional RAIDs, you can mix-and-match drives sizes (called Mix drive utilization). You can also grow your array at any time buy swapping out smaller drives for larger ones. You can start off with 1TB drive, add 2TB in a few months, or opt to mix and match with 3 and 4TB drives as prices drop. This provides un-paralleled flexibility.

Unlike other RAID systems, Drobo implements their version of data-tiering. Tiering, not to be confused with SSD caching, basically will automatically stores the files that require faster access on SSDs. The system automatically tunes itself and migrate data across SSD/HDD depending on usage. This is similar to the "Fusion" drive technology that Apple recently announced for their new iMacs/Mac Minis. Like the Apple's Fusion drive, the Drobo requires an SSD in the form of a mSATA drive that is installed in the bottom bay. This is the key to increasing IOPS performance.

Their pitch on data-aware tiering can be found here: http://www.drobo.com/how-it-works/data-aware-tiering.php

Using SSDs for acceleration, smaller and random reads benefit significantly while the larger HDDs are used for storing larger data. This whole process is automated. Transactional tiered data goes to SSD and bulk data goes to platter drives. I can see the benefits for databases and virtual machines.

For a non-technical person or someone unfamiliar with RAID technologies, the Drobo 5D is a simple and easy to use system. In theory, you can't go wrong. You won't get the fastest drive setup but you will get ease-of-use and a rich feature-set. Automated data-tiering is a very compelling proposition.

The things I like

• Battery backed cache. This is found in more expensive RAIDs and helpful in case of power failure.
• The software has a nice GUI interface with tools like email notifications.
• Two Thunderbolt ports for daisy-chaining and it does indeed work well.
• Black thunderbolt cable that is slimmer than Apple's cable. Where can I buy another?
• Ability to mix drives and upgrade in the future.
• Thin Provisioning.
• Ability to boot from Drobo.

The Competition


As I wrote earlier, the Pegasus R4/R6 are the closest competitors to the Drobo 5D. The Pegasus R4/R6 yields 635 MB/Sec read 535 MB/sec writes. R6 averages both 680 MB/sec read/writes.

Testing


Let me preface by saying I am NOT a professional journalist or reviewer. I am enthusiast end-user and a normal consumer like you.

My source drive is a Crucial M4 512GB SATA 6.0Gb/s running on a Macbook with Mountain Lion 10.8.2. The Crucial M4 random reads bench at 45-50,000 IOPS (http://techreport.com/review/20646/crucial-m4-solid-state-drive).

In short, my source copies will not be bottlenecked copying to the Drobo.

My Drobo 5D setup:

• Five Seagate ST3000DM001 3TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s
• Crucial M4 mSATA 6gb/s 128GB SSD w/ latest firmware 01MG as the cache accelerator drive

My set-up gives me 10.89TB useable space (15TB of drive, actual size 13.64TB).


Knowing that the Drobo 5D will not bench that great using MB/sec, I attempted to evaluate this device on Drobo's premise of mix-real world usage. However, I will also present synthetic Black Magic numbers for reference.

Next, Thunderbolt. the best I could muster over several tries were 210-240 MB/s writes and 290-300MB/s reads. This is actually good for a consumer RAID but fall short when compared to something like the Pegasus R4.


Again, these are just synthetic numbers that an application produces and is not indicative of real-world use. Im not a professional reviewer so I can't give you IOPs numbers.

To follow Drobo's assumption of real-world mix usage, I attempted to see how well it performed copying a mix of different file types.

Instead of trying another synthetic test, I did it the old fashion way. I timed it. My test is all writes. I am more concerned about fast the drive writes my copy rather than how fast it reads.

Instead of copying large 30GB files to see the sustained transfer rate, I opted to try a typical usage of copying my photo backups. This s a 28.76GB folder of 2,277 photos in RAW format from my DSLR. This is 2-3 months of photos and typical usage example to test performance of copying a lot of medium sized files where the should Drobo shines.

I called this the Photo test.


I did another test with extremely small files. A webserver folder with 27,759 items clocking it at 1.5GB. These include small 5k HTML/Javascript files. So this would be a typical thing for a web developer to back up his/her files of a working project.

This is the WebTest.

• Samsung 830 SSD via USB 3.0 in an Oyen Mini-Pro enclosure (with ASMedia 1051e chipset).
• Samsung 830 SSD w/ Seagate Thunderbolt Adapter
• Internal Seagate Momentum XT 2.5 " 7200 rpm drive. This is the Hybrid XT drive.
• 5400 rpm USB 3.0 Seagate Go Flex portable drive
• 5400 rpm Firewire 800 Seagate Go Flex portable drive
• USB 3.0 Hitachi portable 2TB drive. 5900 rpm.
• HDD Thunderbolt comparison against a LaCie 2Big 4TB in RAID 0.

Conclusion

You need to heavily weigh your needs and your usage to consider this device.

Filling up a Drobo is not cheap. 5x 2TB drives would cost you around 500ドル (if you can get the drives at 100ドル a piece) and this would yield you 7.26TB of usable space according to their drive calculator.
Dont even bother with 1TB drives. The difference being 70ドル vs 100ドル 2TB on sale, go for the 2TB or 3TB HDD drives. Hence, we are now talking about around 1350ドル to begin. This does not include the mSATA cache accelerator drive. With a 128GB mSATA cache drive, you are looking at 1500ドル.
1500ドル can buy you lots of drives, SSDs, and even a few RAID enclosures.

As for a redundant backup system, you may want to skip the Drobo 5D because I do believe the 850ドル is a bit pricey for that type of use. If you absolutely need to have something faster than your current backup system, then the Drobo 5D may be an option for you.

As for a performance oriented work drive, it is a tough call. The Pegasus R4 is a proven performer with little problems (according to end users and message boards). You can buy an R4 for your fast RAID5 and a few external USB 3.0 3TB drives for your secondary backups. Or you can buy a LaCie Big Disk (I got a 4TB refurb for 200ドル) and a lot of spare 3-4TB external drives.

The picture below exemplifies this hard choice. 900ドル can get you a LaCie 2big, 2 SSDs, three 3TB USB 3.0 external drives (totaling 9TB) vs an empty bare Drobo 5D enclosure (with no drives). 13TB vs 0 on the Drobo.



For me, it boils down to this, how big of a scratch work drive do I need? If you need 6 TB and larger, the Drobo is a good buy.

There is no substitute for the fact you can get up to 16TB of storage with good speed. 200-350 MB/s is still very good.

If you are looking for a combination of both in terms of mix-use (backup drive and work drive), then you might buy the sales pitch Drobo is making.

As for me, I think a mix-setup that I currently have is more preferable: A fast 4TB cheap Thunderbolt striped RAID or SSDs for work disk and a NAS for backup along with multiple external drives/cheaper RAID setups.

If the Drobo 5D was 100ドル-200ドル cheaper, I would totally recommend it.

I'll probably end up keeping this device. I can always use the storage.

Update 2012年12月03日: Thunderbolt does not work under Windows. Read more on my blog post.

People often ask me for an opinion on what hard drive to get. They need something simple, portable and good enough to carry their music collection.



My blog pretty much covers fast drive setups such as SSDs and Thunderbolt but for most people, they want something with more storage at a reasonable price.

My recommendation would be the portable Seagate Go-Flex hard drives.

They come in 5400 rpm so they aren't blazing fast but they offer great flexibility and they often go on sale. 1TB normally goes for 70ドル and can be as low as 60ドル (discounted at Target). Why do I like them?
Well, I like the detachable end-piece that allows me to connect drives to a variety of different computers.

Picture below is an illustration of what I mean.
You can get end piece connectors that swap out for any computer configuration.

• Firewire 800 adapter
• USB 3 & 2
• Thunderbolt
• and even eSATA

I have an old Mac Mini and FW800 is the way to go. Some of my PC's have USB 3 so the USB 3 adapter comes in handy. The end pieces are easy to replace and there are even 3rd party docks and adapters that work with the Go Flex drives. You can even park them in and convert them into NAS drives as well. The great thing about Go-Flex is that you can use the adapters on other 2.5" laptop drives. Hence, you don't have to worry about future proofing your investment.


I have 8 of these drives and so far, they work great for storing music and files.

Last week, I blogged about getting a LaCie 2big Thunderbolt drive.

Original post can be read here. It was a quick test using them with SSDs instead of the included 7200 rpm Seagate drives.

Today, I will give you my layman unprofessional review.

My unit is a 4TB model and replacing the drives is pretty easy. LaCie's claim of 320 MB/s is pretty accurate in my testing and that claim has been confirmed by various reviews. In fact, when I replaced the drives with SSDs, I was getting 400/475 MB/s.

For some people (mostly Mac users with Thunderbolt before June 2012), this may be the best bang for your buck. Solid State drives (SSDs) will give better raw speed but at the cost of disk size. This unit cost me as much as a 256GB Crucial M4 or Samsung 830 SSD. Instead of 256GB, I get 4TB. You can try an e-Sata RAID box but you'll be topped out at 200 MB/s which is e-Sata's theoretical ceiling.

So, there is no denying that units like this can be appealing to a certain audience. I can see that target audience being video and sound editors who need a big fast scratch drive. Note, I said "scratch" drive because this unit is a striped RAID 0 array. If one drive goes, the entire array is gone. So if you intend to use this drive, I suggest you keep regular backups.

Next, in terms of usage,I had no problems with daisy chaining drives (see picture above) or monitors. Nor did I have any problem with computers going to sleep.

Now, there are only two (maybe three) complaints:

1) This is not a true hardware RAID. The RAID is done via OSX Disk Utility RAID tools. This is buried in the specifications if you care to read. I didn't.

2) By not being a hardware RAID, this is not a bootable drive. I tried and tried installing a clean OS. Apparently, with Lion (and Mountain Lion), there is no recovery partition on a software RAID volume.

3) This in turn means you can't have multiple partitions. You can't split the drive up into multiple partitions (one for time machine, another for scratch, another media).

Are these criticism worth demoting the product? That is up to you to decide.

Overall, I can't complain considering it is a big drive to shuttle files around.

Since hard drive prices are still insanely high after the Thai floods, I have resorted to buying cheap external drives. I simply remove the drives from the enclosures and use them bare.


These drives cost around 110ドル-120 which are cheaper than their internal counterparts. I'm still flabergasted that external drives cost less than internal drives. Seagate now supposedly uses the 3TB ST3000DM001 7200 rpm drives in these enclosures.


The only downside is that you lose your warranty. With one year warranties on most drives, I am willing to take those risk for my personal archival needs. These will be great in a Drobo 5D I plan to get.