Drobo issues

[Peter De Smidt]

Bryan (Corran) posted about a system not that long ago. It sounded really good, but I don't remember the specifics.

[Fred L]

A friend's Drobo 5D turbo gave up the ghost and he's now looking for a better solution. basically I think he's looking at Qnap NAS, which another friend has been running for years with no issues.

Software RAID seems to be great idea but failures are catastrophic I've learned.

[Corran]

Bryan (Corran) posted about a system not that long ago. It sounded really good, but I don't remember the specifics.

unRAID (https://lime-technology.com/)

This is NOT a traditional RAID system, it's a JBOD (just a bunch of disks) with the added capability of protecting your data in case of a drive failure with a parity drive.

A basic system is free but with your storage needs you'll need the full version - but it's cheap!! If you have an old computer sitting around you can build an unRAID system with nothing more than fresh disks and a USB drive for the custom OS, assuming the motherboard has plenty of SATA inputs (most modern boards do, made in the last half decade). As already mentioned, get "enterprise" level disks for a bit more reliability, but also as already stated you WILL have failed disks. But my enterprise disks seem to hold up better/longer.

If you don't know about building a computer have someone do it for you, but it's really simple. You could get ten 4 TB drives and have 36 TB of storage (one disk is the parity drive, perhaps get a 6 TB instead to future-proof yourself). I think it also supports a double parity system but I'm not sure it's been a while since I looked. Built my system several years ago and it's rock-solid, same as the day I built it. I'll probably start replacing disks here or there to give me piece of mind, and with larger disks (I did 2 TB disks which were pretty middle of the road back when I built it, so I'll start replacing them with 4 TB drives).

Western Digital drives are the best in my opinion (least amount of failures).

[bob carnie]

I just got it fixed, and sure as shit a second drive is now warning me to replace...

Question, for those who obviously know tons more than me on this.

The work I am storing is projects done for myself and others, which I do not access on a daily basis but have it in ARCHIVE STATUS.

If I downloaded to a portable drive and just put it in storage until possible use later , can I expect less failures this way. I can have my clients pay for a portable drive
so the cost of multiple large drives is not problematic for me...
I am constantly accessing the Drobo now which has current work and Archive work, so by putting Archive work to sleep so to speak am I able to sleep better not thinking about lost data??

[williaty]

HDDs fail because of starts/loads and because of total run time. In this case, keeping the drives powered down should extend overall livespan. However, I certainly wouldn't trust a drive to (mechanically) survive sitting for 5-10 years and then working the moment you plug back in. Some of them will start back up (probably most) and some of them won't (probably only a few). To me, that's just too chancy to trust. You'd also run the risk of not realizing some upgrade had made your old drives unreadable in the meantime (either no longer have the right port to connect to or no longer have the software to read the data).

Long term archival storage is a mess. At work, my wife generates about 4TB a month and federal law requires it to be stored permanently. It's a mess.

ETA: If you want to try off-line storage and you don't want to look at burning BRDs (which really look like a good solution for this) take a look at solid state storage. I'd need to google to check this out myself but if the data is long-term stable when powered down, at least they wouldn't have any problems starting back up again in the distant future.

[bob carnie]

HDDs fail because of starts/loads and because of total run time. In this case, keeping the drives powered down should extend overall livespan. However, I certainly wouldn't trust a drive to (mechanically) survive sitting for 5-10 years and then working the moment you plug back in. Some of them will start back up (probably most) and some of them won't (probably only a few). To me, that's just too chancy to trust. You'd also run the risk of not realizing some upgrade had made your old drives unreadable in the meantime (either no longer have the right port to connect to or no longer have the software to read the data).

Long term archival storage is a mess. At work, my wife generates about 4TB a month and federal law requires it to be stored permanently. It's a mess.

I am beginning to think we are revisiting the Kodak Colour for life situation, remember when all the negatives and prints faded from 60's onward, it is the reason I moved to Black and White .
Some projects I work on start at set date and do not get printed until 5- 10 years later, with black and white negatives we never have issues but I am beginning to wonder now.

I have scanned over 2 thousand colour and Black and White negatives for Alternative Work, took me over two years to do this, I am very much creeped out that I could lose these scans, and
I do not see me printing these all within the next 5 years... a MESS is right.

I do have the option to make BW separation silver negatives to print size and am actually starting to do this , as I know the film if processd right will last over 100 years, long enough for me to print .

The problem is the roll of film is expensive and unless I win the lottery its going to take me 5 years to do this option. I am starting now as Pictorico does not last well so Ortho Ilford is the plan.

[Corran]

I just looked and Google Drive has cloud storage packages up to 30 TB ($300 per year for that). If you wants a hands-off solution with no maintenance costs or headaches honestly that's probably the best option for you. And personally I would imagine that Google is going to be safe and available in the future, barring some cataclysmic solar flare event or worse, at which point it doesn't really matter.

Other than that, personally if some of this is client projects that are finished, I would seriously consider making long-term storage and protection their problem, or charge them appropriately for storage if you think that's paramount. I used to be a "free cloud" for my clients and after amassing many TBs of useless data I had to purge it all and make sure my clients understood that the onus was on them. Burn them some high-quality discs of the work, archive it for them for up to 6 months or whatever you feel comfortable, and then purge. I understand your situation may be different but just throwing that out there.

EDIT: one more thing - is a lot of your data raw scan TIFFs or similar? These can be losslessly compressed for storage. And not WinZIP which is old and not as efficient as newer programs. An oldie but goody that I use a lot is WinRAR.

[bob carnie]

Hi Bryan

I am thinking exactly like you state to put the onus on them and not me as I cannot control the issue, so why take the risk.
As I said for my personal work I may consider Google Cloud storage , not a bad price to pay until I get all my images converted back to separation printing film.

thanks

Bob

[Fred L]

I would ditch Drobo and get cloud storage (multiple if you're really paranoid) and keep duplicate hard drives in town. One at the lab or wherever and another off site. I'd also get into the regimen of copying onto new drives every couple of years. I use Western Digital portables and desktops and, (knock on wood) so far they're been issue free.

[DennisD]

+1 to what Fred L says above.

The problem with any single electronic storage unit, hard drives in particular, is they can be good today and mysteriously unreadable or dead when turned on months or years later.

For that reason, backing up your backup is really important. Perhaps the best is a combination of cloud and something else, hard drive, blue ray, or any other alternative you deem reasonably reliable.