Filed under: Software, Odds and ends
Drobo Dashboard can show used/available space
Drobo was a bit of a life-saver for me. Before Drobo I had about 13 different hard drives storing different kinds of data (music on one, video on another, pictures on another, etc). My Drobo let me bring those all together in a very cool way.I just stumbled across a new-to-me feature of the Drobo Dashboard (the Mac application used to control your Drobo) which allows me to do two things I enjoy:
1. Free up space on my menu bar
2. Utilize space on my Dock better
While I was looking for something else, I clicked on the Drobo Dashboard menu, and saw the options shown in the picture. Actually when I saw it the line which reads "Show Menu Bar Icon" said "Hide Menu Bar Icon."
So I clicked on it, because I love getting things off my menu bar, and I rarely looked at the Drobo menu bar icon. What I did not realize was that when you hide the menu bar icon, the Dock icon for Drobo changes from a static Drobo logo a pie chart you see in the image here (4th from the bottom, in case that isn't clear).
As you can see, I have about 22% of my Drobo available. (I assume at that color will turn yellow when I get below 15% available space, or red if I get below 5% free space, as those are the colors and thresholds that I believe Drobo uses for "low" and "critical" levels, respectively.)
I haven't used the Drobo Dashboard for awhile so I am not sure how "new" this feature is, but it is a welcome option. The Dock icon is much easier to read than the menu bar version, and it frees up valuable real estate in the menu bar. I could not find a way to turn off both the menu bar and the dock display -- you have to choose one or the other.
Also, if you have not looked at "DroboCopy" it's worth checking out as well. It is a simple backup system to dupe a folder from your hard drive to the Drobo. It is fairly rudimentary, but rudimentary backups are better than none. Personally I use Apple's own Backup.app to automatically backup my iCal and Address Book information to my Drobo every day, in case it gets corrupted using MobileMe syncing. You can use Apple's Backup app even if you don't use Mobile Me.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Microdot said 1:25PM on 9-28-2009
alright... i dont want to beat around the bush with this, so i'll just come out and ask:
how much is data robotics paying you guys? and if not you personally... weblogs?
i have seen nothing but stories about drobo for quite a while now. and i honestly cannot remember a single bad word uttered about it. yet... nobody has touched upon the outrageous number of horror stories around the net. and yes.. im aware there are horror stories with all types of hard drives... its not something specific to drobo. however, once you throw your data into a proprietary system that only data robotics can recover... the magnitude of a simple array failure is amplified significantly.
im not hating on drobo.. or tuaw... but come on!!! what is this... the 8 or 9th positive article in the last 6 months? how about a mention of some of the competitors... like sans digital, icy dock, owc, etc.
maybe im a little touchy on the backup subject... but ive been through an almost catastrophic event with backups that almost cost me my company (two levels of backup werent enough).... and expanded upon that this weekend (you can click to view the site in my profile if you want to read my alternative)
/rant
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JT said 1:52PM on 9-28-2009
Take it easy. If you're going to rant on all perceived bias here and there on blogs you can say buh-bye to sleep...
Seriously, I'm sorry you had problems with your backup, but this is just an Apple blog, and sometimes they have random things they want to share for what it's worth.
I am sure there are very respectable sites around laying down the pros and cons of various backup solutions. And it is my assumption that anyone with half a brain will do some thorough research before investing in a Drobo, because it's an investment indeed.
That's what I did, I looked around a lot and it turned out the drobo did fit my needs. Some friends did too and they found something better suited for them... Well everyone's happy then. Good for us all.
Anyone solely reading TUAW for big purchases will eventually have troubles but it won't be TUAW's fault...
A dog is never smarter than its master.
Grant Robertson said 3:59PM on 9-28-2009
The thing that blows my mind about comments like this, is that (we) Weblogs Inc have one of (if not *the*) strictest no-pay-for-post policies in the industry. Weblogs practically invented the concept back in the early boom days of blogging.
WIN *never* takes money for posts, never takes products (hardware, books, software, etc) for review that aren't given back or given to readers, and *never* allows bloggers to benefit personally from posting.
We even make bloggers recuse themselves from posting on things they might have a tenuous interest in. A great example is, on Download Squad today, we got a press release from (redacted) and our blogger (redacted) took himself out of the discussion because the company he works a day job for has a distribution deal with the same company as (redacted). There's not really a conflict of interest there, just a vague ecosystem relation that happens a lot in software, but still he backed away to avoid *any* connection whatsoever.
Frankly, this is one of the things that makes me proudest to work here. You're right about a ton of other big blogs and blog networks, they work advertising into content in all sorts of ways, but WIN doesn't. Period. Ever.
Microdot said 2:09AM on 9-29-2009
Grant Robertson.......
i can honestly say that ive never dug into it. (hence, why i questioned it). with what you have said taken into account... i applaud you and weblogs for it.
at the same time, because there is no financial connection.... i feel a little disgusted by it. im watching a first hand case of the blind leading the blind here. regardless of what people say of how others should research their product purchases.. a certain amount of weight is given to large sites like this one that repeatedly praise and give glowing reviews about any particular item. while nothing substantial... i can say first hand, ive made several small (sub $100) software purchases based on this sites review (with minor scoping around at other sites).
the point is: the drobo... to the uninformed, sounds like a god send. on paper, this thing is great. however, those that shift through the shiny exterior see the underworkings, and can smell a proprietary disaster waiting to happen. sometimes... proprietary systems work the best. hell, we love our macs, dont we? but we are talking about raw data here. as someone else suggested in this post "if it dies, you can just take your drives and put them into a new drobo". sure can (well... you can, but only if the drobo hasnt taken all of the data with it). at the cost of another overinflated $350+ dollars (us). but, lets say you cant afford it at the moment... or... this is something time critical... or you just want to go another route rather than dropping another 3 large? you = screwed. you are forever locked into that proprietary system with those drives... if they last... or you are starting over, and waving goodbye to even more money, more time, and a lot more headaches trying to rebuild.
but... the drobo was pitched as a consumer level solution, so lets not hold it to too high of a standard.
but wait... here comes drobo pro. the enterprise solution to data backup. ever talked to support on the phone? or worse... sent them an email? if your business depends on that device... it better be able to sit on the back burner for a few hours/days. ive got first hand experience there... 3 days for a simple indexing issue, but due to the stupid proprietary system, i had to wait... and help this company run off of tape backups. had it been almost ANY other system... simply popping the drive into a vanilla external cage would have saved the day. not with drobo though.
drobo is a false sense of security. it fails (depending on which stories you believe on the net... but in my case, one at least with my own eyes) often enough, and disastrous enough, that it should NOT be considered a be all end all solution to multiple layer backup, much less a single layer backup.
all products have their pluses and minuses... but the point in this long and drawn out post is: ive heard NONE of the bad from tuaw... its been nothing but raining praise for drobo, and stories of its saving grace. and with a site this large, giving this much repeated praise and free advertising to a product... well, you dont have to be a rocket scientist.
ok. im done with this now.
/rant(2)
Hobbes said 1:50PM on 9-28-2009
I'm a happy owner of a DroboPro and other than the fact they're slow to upgrade their software I'm really happy with the product.
Currently, if I install their Dashboard software on Snow Leopard I start getting all sorts of issues with accessing the DroboPro. They haven't released an update yet and I'm not sure I trust their software to start using it once they release a SL compatible Dashboard. Right now it fails to load the iSCSI extension (I'm running the 32-bit kernel, so it shouldn't be an issue) and I start getting errors when trying to copy stuff off the Drobo.
If I don't use their Dashboard software everything works perfectly well in SL and I haven't had a single issue with it.
I agree with Microdot as far as proprietary solutions go. If my DroboPro crashes I have no way to access my data. Data Robotics should provide users with a tool to access the data in the hard drives in the case of a hardware failure.
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Sean said 2:17PM on 9-28-2009
The drobo is quite a unique item which may be why it gets more coverage that a vanillia jbod or mirror array storage device. Someone that gets burned with a double redundancy backup system sounds like it wasn't very redundant. My drobo is an online archive storage with double offline external backups. If my drobo was stolen, it would take me only a day or two to rebuild it from these external offlines. There should never ever be a case where a single point of failure takes out the whole backup.
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ecobore said 2:19PM on 9-28-2009
Yep, well and good, but when one's 'infallible' super backup protected Drobo decides to trash it's directory file all you have is 4 x 1.5TB of JUNK! I bought this thing because it was supposed to protect you in the event of hard drive failure, but somehow or other it trashed it's file directory, so all the hard drives are fine, but I can't read a DAMN THING on them!!! This is NOT AT ALL what I expected to get when I paid so much for this thing! I would have been better off upgrading my LaCies!
From a Not at all happy Drobo 2 owner!
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Actionable Mango said 4:35PM on 9-28-2009
If you are worried about HDD failure, I really think mirroring is the way to go over RAID. Get two $25 enclosures and mirror them. If a HDD fails, get a new one. If an enclosure fails, get a new $25 enclosure. No worries about having an expensive Drobo or RAID enclosure failing and having little pieces of data spread out all over a bunch of drives that you can't access in a simple manner. Need more space? Add two drives at a time and mirror them too. You'll never run out of bays either. Transfer times will also be much, much faster.
It's cheaper, simpler, easier, and faster. I understand this won't work in every scenario, but it will for most.
B said 2:59PM on 9-28-2009
You all realize that you can just take the drives out of any drobo (that may have some hardware failure) and put them in another working drobo and it should all work fine...
I have a drobo and it works fine. However, the fact that they dont have a new dashboard for snow leopard is really annoying and scary. Basically, i cant launch the dashboard or it tells my drobo i have no space and I get the red lights.
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Leo M. said 3:42PM on 9-28-2009
If you people want to talk about the pros and cons of the Drobo, do it somewhere else. This is not the appropriate post.
Thanks for the hint TJ, I've never noticed that...and yes...we need an SL dashboard now!
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donnacha said 4:05PM on 9-28-2009
How, exactly, is this not an appropriate post to discuss the pros and cons of Drobo? It is a Drobo-related post on a major Mac blog, few places could be more appropriate.
If you have serious control issues and are making it your life's mission to control the direction of discussions that arise in blog comments, good luck with that!
donnacha said 4:07PM on 9-28-2009
Can anyone tell me if it is possible to use Drobo as a Time Machine device?
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donnacha said 4:09PM on 9-28-2009
In particular, the Drobo Pro - would it be able to hold the Time Machine backup with the usual Drobo levels of redundancy?
Leo M. said 4:11PM on 9-28-2009
yes, many of my friends do this
donnacha said 4:14PM on 9-28-2009
Thanks Leo, good to hear.
Leo M. said 4:15PM on 9-28-2009
@donnacha
dang dude, what's with this "if you have control issues...life's mission..." stuff?
The appropriate place would be under a Drobo Review Article, for which there is at least one on this site. JT was bringing up a feature or something people might not know, non-related comments are distracting. I'm not trying to control anything...just saying, it might be curteous to do the griping or fanboying somewhere else.
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donnacha said 7:25PM on 9-28-2009
Leo, I wasn't quite laughing at you, I was laughing at the idea of anybody trying to police blog comments.
Seriously, if you removed the griping and the fanboying, as you suggest, there wouldn't be much left.