My wife is looking to get a Drobo to back up all of our photos and videos. We were planning on going through PriceUSA (can't order it till the 24th though due to agent being on holidays) and using the Macbreakweekly podcast discount to bring it down to US$450.

My only concern is that the unit is only USB. Is it worth me waiting until a FW model comes out, or is the USB2 interface fast enough. As I imagine, because I will only be transferring the bulk of my files to the Drobo once, speed shouldn't really be problem in the long term. When we go somewhere and take pictures, each session is only about 1-2GB which I would imagine would be fine over USB2.

What do people think? Should I just buy a Drobo now, or should I wait until July? I have googled a little bit and found some blog posts that state a new Drobo should land late Q2 2008. Can people who have a Drobo maybe give me some input in how they find the unit.

Also I would like to know how much shipping unit weighs so I can get an idea of shipping.

Thank-you

Personally.. if you need it and can't wait.. get it now..

If you can, you'd be better off with a FW version. I've been licking my lips at one of these for ages as well, but I'm holding out till the FW version comes out because I'm planning on having it for a long time, who knows what file sizes are going to do in the future, it'd be nice to not be strangled by speed...

Being a photographer I've read plenty about the drobo on other photographers blogs.
There's plenty of them using the drobo now! They seem happy enough w/the USb speed cause they're not really trying to break any speed records.
Drobo is not my cup of tea - I use, amongst my approx 7TB, a SOHOTANK enclosure and really like it. I just keep buying SATA Hard drives (500GB at a time), and do my back-ups to two at once!

Looking at it on their site I'd consider the droboshare so you can use Gb ethernet.

do you just swap raw hds in and out of the soho tank or do you own multiple cases?

Just swap 'em around - that's the whole point to having a case isn't it?
At the moment I have something like 8 500GB hard drives amongst my collection.
I can't understand why everyone goes nuts for pre-built externals like Lacie and Western Digital et al, when all you have to do is find one really good quality external case with the interface that you like and just keep shuffling nothing but stock hard drives in and out of it!!

Edit: Incidentally - I also do this with my 2008 Mac Pro. Swap 'em in and out. Don't spend more money on junky externals!

I'm with BLINDER, I'd look at something like the SOHO Tank enclosures with the drop-in drive trays rather than something fixed like a Drobo. Using bare drives as a storage medium for backups (coupled with a decent catalogging program) is incredibly secure, and also cost-effective.

I have Drobo and like it.

I bought from PriceUSA. I would buy next one from Australia.

Hardware/software Specials You've Spotted

I was thinking about buying a drobo a couple of months ago and read some pretty lacklustre reviews at the time, so decided to leave it (google should help). Instead I bought a Thecus N4200 with some SATA drives and it's worked fine so far serving both AFP and SMB on my network.

However, depending on the size of your photo collection, you may also want to consider (either concurrently or as an alternative) buying JungleDisk (JungleDisk - Reliable online storage powered by Amazon S3 ? - Jungle Disk) to backup your photos over the Internet to Amazon's S3 service.

My photos are very important to me so I'm currently backing up automatically with Jungledisk over the net as well as to my NAS.

I'm not a Drobo expert but I suspect the USB2 connection between the Drobo and the DroboShare will remain a bottleneck even if you have a gigabyte network connection.

Would the Drobo USB work with the Airport Extreme BS?

I have been umming and ahhing about getting one myself. Might have a look at the SOHO Tank (Thanks Blinder). Is it network-able?

Can I ask why you would buy the next one from Australia? Also if you don't mind, could you PM me with what it cost you to import via PriceUSA, as I am unsure about shipping costs.

I have three DROBOs in my house - bought 2 and one was a replacement for one that didn't work when 10.5.x came on the scene. I bought them directly from a company in the States and four 1 TB Hitachi drives each (total 8 drives) - so obviously I was ready to really use some storage.

Caveat - once you install a drive in DROBO - it will be unusable anywhere else - unless you reformat it - usually at low level - so all of your "stored" data is gone. As in if your DROBO fails. Second - worst support I have ever had with an Apple related product. It took me two months to get any service. I was continually told that it was my computer's fault, blah blah blah.

Yet, when I disconnected the USB cable - all problems on my computer went away - instantly! Hmmm.... This was with 10.5.x (didn't matter which iteration) ... I had too many USB related problems to truly talk about here. And yet, the DROBO on my other MacPro works fine. Hmmm...

I have lost 2 - 1 TB drives now because of the DROBO. I do not have DROBOshare - not sure I would buy anything form these guys again.

If all you are wondering about is $$$$ - there are local companies with SATA drive bays ( Streetwise. Australia's Apple Mac & iPod Superstore! ) that have worked fine for me. I have three attached to my MacPro and one attached to my MBP and never a problem. Never. and they are FW 800, too.

Oh, if you are going to import them - the DROBO - remember to keep it under $1000 or you will pay an extra 10% GST - K.Rudd needs to pay for his trip to Indonesia and China and Japan and...

Cheers... Please understand that this is not a rant - I was absolutely sold on the DROBO until I owned one (er, 2).

@ grfxninja - BTW - the SOHO Tank is a GREAT unit... and yes it does play nice with Airport Extreme and as an addon to Time Capsule.

I bought mine from Streetwise. Australia's Apple Mac & iPod Superstore!

Personally i think it's far too expensive as it stands as a external without firewire or ethernet. For that price it should have both.