I'm looking at getting a desktop Drobo in addition to my Drobo FS because my media has outgrown the 4 TB external drive I'm currently using. I'm looking at just the standard 4 Bay Drobo.

I've been really happy with my Drobo FS and I've even seen it recover from a drive failure flawlessly. It had four drives installed and I walked in one day to see the red light on one of the drive slots indicating a failed mechanism. I pulled the bad one, dropped in a new one, the system did its thing and I didn't lose any data or have downtime. I shipped the bad drive back to Seagate on an RMA and less than 10 days later had a replacement from them.

I just finishing doing the nuclear option on my desktop iMac. It's been behaving oddly and rather than sort out why, I just made a list of the applications I use on it, wiped it out, and did a full reinstall from scratch. Since I save almost everything to Box.net or to a server drive here in the office, I didn't have to worry about data loss. I also have an hourly Time Machine image of this machine, so even if I did screw up I can just pull the offending file from that drive.

Now I have two more machines to do. I'm moving one of the other 27" iMacs into the studio to replace the 24" iMac that has been the Pro Tools machine for a few years, and then the 24" iMac becomes the general office iMac. So two more machines to wipe and do the full reinstall on.

I really need to come look at your whole setup some day, ND.

Hey, so Time Machine can only back up HFS volumes, not EXFAT, right? So I have the choice of having that volume be Time Machineable or visible from my Windows part of the multiverse, correct?

And also, why can I see the Time Machine partition of the external HD as a shared drive available on my Windows machines, and not be able to contact the other partitions on the same HD? I can see them all, but can only get to the Time Machine backup files.

(I know you said not to partition the Time Machine drive, but I'd already done it by the time you said it! Sorry! When I get the big NAS, I'll move the other files off the Time Machine and reformat it, I think.)

Yes, I believe that Time Machines can only do HFS volumes. All of the Windows machines that I have are NTFS, but they are for rental machines so they aren't part of my backup plan, that's all on the Mac side of the business. For the rental boxes we take any needed files and move those to the Drobo FS archive manually when the on site portion of projects like HHN complete each year.

Any time you guys want to come and visit I'm happy to show you the whole setup. I think it sound more impressive in print then it is to actually see it in person, but I'm always happy to walk folks through things. I know that over the years I've just developed a process that makes sure I have a lot of redundancy to my data. In my opinion drives are cheap, so I might as well have a lot of them with data in multiple places.

Yeah, I agree with that assessment.

I just finishing doing the nuclear option on my desktop iMac. It's been behaving oddly and rather than sort out why, I just made a list of the applications I use on it, wiped it out, and did a full reinstall from scratch.

I did that for my laptop. Took notes, made sure apps could be downloaded again and be functional, have backed up data and nuked it from orbit.

I really need to come look at your whole setup some day, ND.

Sex on racks.

I'm better at helping others figure out their setup needs than dealing with my own. I have wireless backup and a prayer. I have Time Machine backing up wirelessly to the Capsule because I lucked into having a dead machine and a good enough backup. But it was pure luck. So now I have a slightly better plan. One that does not include me remembering to do much.

Nuclear option underway.

...and it's alive!

Sex on racks

remind me to wear rubber gloves when next working on Diablo Sound racks.

Okay, so I think I've (finally!) made up my mind. Looking at this 2 bay Synology which I'll fill with the 3TB WD Reds, with the possible intent of swapping them out for the 4TBs when they become available (later this year?), and with the definite intent of expanding the whole system once I've started accumulating enough project data to make it necessary (2 years?).

If I stick with RAID1, that will not give me quite as much space as I'd hoped, i.e., only 3TB, where I think I'll need about 5. But I think I can mitigate that by only using the new NAS for long term storage. Once I've got the new machines loaded with all their current files, I'll prune the old NAS for duplicates, which should give me enough space to allow it to continue as the primary automated backup for the Windows machines. The 3TB USB I'll repartition and dedicate to the Time Machine backups for the iMac. The 1TB USB will remain the active project drive.

And maybe I'll set up the zombie laptop as the media server.

I dunno why I'm telling all of you this, just thinking through the process, I guess.