Big PC Geek Tech Blog

I recently purchased the Lite-On Blu-Ray player/ DVD burner, model number DH-4OIS for $150 and have been very happy with it. I purchased this drive to watch Blu-Ray movies in my computer. Having a Netflix account, I am able to watch as many Blu-Ray movies as I want and have had a few that caused a slight inconvenience.

I have a super Rig, Core 2 Duo 7750, Vista x64 Ultimate, 6 GB of Ram etc and was surprised to hear what might be the drive buffering on some Blu-Ray discs. Blu-Ray discs have super encrypted copy protection that does require a lot of horse power in a computer but I am just not sure what the issue is. I doubt it is my computer but it may be… But it also may be the drive itself. Possibly the buffer in the Blu-Ray drive is not big enough!

Rest assured, this only happened in 2 of 10 Blu-Ray discs and I was able to hit pause, then wait, and then press play to resume my movies but I don’t want to have to do this when I am watching a movie. If anyone has had similar issues, please let everyone know your experience. If you are thinking of buying this drive, do some research before you buy.

This tip assumes you have successfully installed your new hard drive and the jumper settings are correct.

Most people think they have to use the software CD that comes with their purchased hard drive simply because they don’t see the hard drive in Windows when they turn on the computer. This is simply not necessary because Windows has a tool built in to add a hard drive. All you need to do is right-click on My Computer or Computer depending if you have XP or Vista respectively, and select "Manage." This will bring up the Computer Management console. From there, click "Disk Management" in the left column. All of your drives will load. You will see your newly installed disk, right-click on whatever number it is and select New Volume and follow the steps. My mind is fuzzy at this point, but after this, you may need to right-click again to the area of the right of the disk number and select format.

Finally, the 1 TB drives are coming down in price. I just Found a SATA 300, 32 MB buffer, 1 TB drive for $235.

Hurry, limited time only! http://shop2.outpost.com/product/5478279 

Personally, Im waiting to se $210 prices but this is still a really good deal.

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