In answer to you second question, yes I’ve used Drobos and in fact have been for about 3 years now. I have two of them sitting on the desk next to me connected to a Mac Mini via FireWire 800 that I’m using as a file server. The Mac Mini is then connected to my gigabit network allowing the files to be accessible to all of the computers in the studio. One Drobo is used as primary file storage and the second is used as a backup drive for Apple’s Time Machine. Unfortunately the Drobo FS was not available when I purchased the other drives and the Mac Mini. If it were I probably would have just bought two of those and connected them directly to the network saving myself $600 on the Mac Mini.

Since the Drobos uses a fast FireWire 800 connection to the computer, and an even faster gigabit connection to the network, it makes it possible to work directly off of the Drobos, even on large files. If you’re working with really large Photoshop files or are capturing audio or video, I would recommend working off your internal drive for faster performance. Since the Drobo FS uses a gigabit interface to connect with the network, you should see faster performance as compared to my setup.

I certainly recommend Drobos to anyone working with a lot of files and who are concerned about data protection. Mine have worked flawlessly and with it being so easy to expand storage, I don’t see a need to change my setup anytime soon.

Hope this helps

Have you used any of the Drobos, Trevor? If so, under what conditions and how have they performed?

Thanks.