Big PC Geek Tech Blog

The data on our computers is important and priceless to us which is why hard drive failure is big issue these days. Data Robotics’ Drobo "The world’s first storage robot," hopes to fix this issue for everyone with a robotic smart approach to managing your hard drives. Drobo is available for $500

Drobo works like this: You fill up two to four of the four available slots for SATA hard drives, currently 1 TB is the max. Drobo gives you approximately half the amount of storage you put in it. Drobo automatically backs up another copy of your file on another drive so that in the event that one drive fails, you still have your data and you just replace the defective drive. Upgrading drives with Drobo is also easy, you just need to only replace one at a time and wait till Drobo tells you with it’s lights when it is ready. Drobo is making copies of your files to the new drive so you wont lose any data. An important note to make is that Drobo formats a drive with it’s own format each time you put a drive in, so if you take all four drive out at the same time you will lost all of your data. Drobo does withstand power outages so if you want to take out all drives, possibly try unplugging the power plug do whatever you need to do, put the drives back in and then power on Drobo. With Drobo running off of USB only, the people at Data Robotics say Drobo is not for  backup but it certainly can serve the process.

Oh wait a minute, Drobo now has a new friend DroboShare which allows more of a data backup solution with its network connectivity. Available for $200, DroboShare sits on the bottom of your Drobo and allows it to connect to your network via Ethernet.

Drobo cons: Expandability used to be my biggest worry but DroboShare boats connectivity expansion allowing two Drobos to work together. Drobo is also super loud, the fan in the back always seems to whine when I don’t want it to and I worry about heat on the drives because I see minimal airflow. Another note on the fan is if it breaks, there is no easy way just to replace the fan. The fan is necessary to cool your drives. Finally, my biggest concern is price. Why pay $700 for a Drobo and DroboShare that comes with no drives when I can pay $600 for an HP MediaSmart Server that does way more than the Drobo and comes with a 500GB drive. Why spend approximately $600 on a Drobo and a 500 GB drive when you can get the same but a whole server to for the same cost with the HP.

My final thoughts: Drobo is not worth the cost and is too loud. If you turn off your computer when you don’t use it and you don’t mind spending extra money for simplicity, a Drobo is for you. I really like the idea behind Drobo and the creators deserve to get paid for their creation. I just hope that Drobo can sell enough to drop the price closer to what I think it is worth. I do like that Drobo works with PC’s and Macs.

You can buy a Drobo here: Link

 
I always suggest you have a backup plan for your precious data on your computer and the most convenient and fastest way is some sort of on-site plan, but what happens if there is a fire?

You should adopt some way to backup your files off-site. Whether it be a VPN (Virtual Private Network) where you backup files to another computer at another location or burning files to discs and giving them to a neighbor, you should keep files in more than one place. What if you have a fire or what if someone steals your computer.

Well… Carbonite.com has a simple solution. Backup your files with them. I must say for the price, I am very impressed. Carbonite offers unlimited data backup for only $50 per year, per computer. Seriously, that is a really good deal for me because I have tons of data. If you have multiple computers, just put a couple of hard drives in the carbonite computer and backup all other computers to the carbonite computer.

Carbonite encrypts the connection so no one sees your files being transferred and it all works automatically in the background. You want the encryption and you want the automatic running in the background so you can forget about the backup. The only downside to Carbonite is the slow backup and having to select media files to upload. You would expect a slow data transfer with any online backup because it is online and you don’t want to waste all your bandwidth if you have a limit. The other downside is the fact that Carbonite did not automatically backup movie files I had. That’s ok, all I had to do was right click the folder they were in and tell Carbonite to back them up. Done and done!

Overall, for the price, you cannot find a better deal for online backup. If you subscribe to this service, you should still have an on-site backup because if you lost a hard drive full of songs it would still take a while to download all of your files. If you have a fire and lose all of your backups, it will take a while to get all of your data from Carbonite but it will be there. I keep carbonite’s service as yet another backup plan for more data redundancy and you should too. To give you an idea of the data transfer, 600 GB will take about 200 days or so to fully transfer. If you are interested use my link to get 15 days free to try it out, I get no money but I think I get 15 free days on top of my subscription. Carbonite works with Windows XP and Vista 32 or 64 bit versions

Affordable servers are here for everyone. This home Server idea is great for home and small businesses. Here I have the HP home server I bought for myself and family. From the beginning, the HP impressed me with its elegant design and won me over with its simple software.

To start, the HP Windows Home Server is amazingly small, it fits just about anywhere. Open the front door to reveal 4 slots to install SATA hard drives, turn it  around and there is the necessary Gigabit Ethernet port, a ESATA port, and a 3 USB ports for external hard drives. Supposedly drives can be swapped while the machine is on.

The HP comes with 3 discs, one for the HP as a recovery, one for installing the connector software necessary to backup your computers, and one for reinstalling windows on a failed but backed up computer. Yes, if I am to understand everything, you only need the one CD to backup any computer that needs to be restored and has been previously backed up. I suspect, during the process, you will need the original installation  disc. You will also get a setup poster, a couple of manuals, and necessary cables to get up and running.

Upon installing the connector software, I noticed there were some pretty cool features HP added. Namely, the ability to keep all your music in a central place and make it available in iTunes in every computer on your network. Each computer has its own backup and can have shared folders. You automatically have folders setup so you can share files with every computer. This is possible  with current Windows but because you will always leave your server on, the files will always be available. You can setup a way to log into your PC when you are not in your network, share photos online making your server a web site and much more. What is really worth mentioning is the fact that Windows created some sort of challenge for developers to develop software for the server so you will see software that will make the server better soon.

The main thing that makes this Home Server so good for everyday people is because it backs up your computer and you can forget about everything. You don’t have to worry about anything, changes on your computer is backed up every night. You can backup your whole system in the even of a failure or just backup certain files or drives. File backup is necessary because it is not a matter of if your hard drive will fail but a matter of when.

The only downside to Windows Home Server is going to be fixed soon with the recently announced Power Pack 1. The Power Pack will fix some bugs and more important, allow 64 bit connector support. Most people only use the most common 32 bit but anyone using x64 is out of luck for a little while. The release is set to be sometime in the first quarter of 08 so pay attention, it will coming soon.