Network Storage: Home Server or Drobo?

Locust76

I'm currently running out of space on the mirroring RAID in my desktop computer and am thinking of getting a secure network storage device to keep all my data secure, though I'm a bit confused as to what I really want.

Basically, I want to be able to move my main store of data off my main computer onto something that will automatically keep it replicated and redundant. I checked out the Drobo and it looks really good. Like, really really good. But then I started looking into Windows Home Server boxes and they seem to do more than simply store data, though achieving the same kind of functionality as the Drobo takes some configuration.

Does anyone have any experience with these sorts of things? I'd be looking to set up a reliable data storage point for up to three computers on my network, with hundreds of gigabytes of music and photos that absolutely need to be redundant. Being able to access said data remotely would definitely be a neat advantage, but not absolutely necessary. What are some of the pros and cons of a Drobo vs WHS?

Lewisham

I've done research on this issue too, and I'd say none of the above, and go for the ReadyNAS Duo. It's a small box, with one drive included, and space for one redundant drive to be put in. It runs all sorts of server daemons, letting iTunes, Xbox 360, PS3 access it, to name but a few.

And it's about $300 less than the Drobo + DroboShare.

DrFrylock

I'm not sure about WHS, but look at the Drobolator first. Put a 1TB disk in there. So you've got about 500GB free, which is sort of weird because the assumption is that if your hard drive fails, half of it will fail before the other half. That's sort of a weird assumption but I guess it might happen.

Now put one of those spare 250GB drives you've got lying around in there. Now you've got 1.25TB in your array, but you have 230GB of space.

Other configurations make more sense, especially if you put several large similarly-sized hard drives in there. But some combinations don't work well at all.

RandomEngy

Have not tried the Drobo but I have a WHS and it's really nice. Differential backups nightly, with single-instance storage, which means if two computers share a lot of files, those will only get stored once. Adding drives to the storage pool is drop-dead simple with the HP one I have, you open it up, snap it in (no screws), and without a minute, without restarting, the new drive is added and ready to use. The cool thing about the WHS storage pool approach as opposed to RAID is that you can mix and match all kinds of capacity drives, so you might have a drive or two to start, but then later when you need more storage you slap on another, bigger drive, which happens to be much cheaper than when you first got the box. You can also add drives to the pool from eSATA or USB.

You can also create network shares and specify certain ones to replicate the data on them.

It also makes remote desktop to any of your computers pretty easy, gives you a free domain name: <name>.homeserver.com and contains a nice web-based interface to get at your shared files.

And you can install the connector software right off the machine's default share.