Last Friday evening was made even more wonderful than usual by the sudden appearance of a delivery truck bearing a big brown box, inside of which I discovered an amazing device called a DroboPro FS!!!
And just what exactly is a Drobo, you might rightly ask? You can watch this for a far better explanation than I am capable of, but basically it is a very smart data back-up system that is absolutely perfect for what I need while working on The Price, and is, quite simply, a Thing-‘O-Beauty. Take a look for yourselves:
I can put up to 8 hard drives into this sleek black housing, and happy blinking lights reassure me that all of my precious files are being copied and duplicated. In the unfortunate (and seemingly eventual) event that one of the drives fails/crashes/dies, instead of me freaking-out and leaping from a building rather than face the reality of losing so much work, all I have to do is unplug the faulty drive and swap in a new one! It will even work in the extremely unlikely case that 2 drives should fail at once; it “self heals” and restores everything back to the way it was — and I don’t even need to turn it off! I can add more drives or bigger drives as my storage needs grow … seriously, what could be cooler than having a hard drive system that never runs out of space and never fails? I’ll tell you what: Having Kevin Epstien, VP of Marketing at Data Robotics (who created these beauties) send you one because he is crazy about Mr. Neil Gaiman’s amazing work and who thinks The Price will be a great little film!!! HOW COOL IS THAT???!!!
I have a very early model, and it’s one of the best IT purchases I ever made – totally intuitive (and Mac-like). Truly awesome to get it as support!
That’s good to see! There’s a short movie on one of the Toy Story DVDs about how they lost nearly all the data for one of the movies when someone accidentally unplugged the mainframe and all the back-ups were corrupt.
Very cool indeed!
That is awesome and I want one.
Ah, isn’t technology great! Drobo is amazingly COOL. And, yes, Kevin Epstien, THE PRICE will be a great little film.
The Drobo is SWEET! Neil Gaiman is freakin’ cool. The Price ROCKS! Ergo, quod erat demunstratum, summa cum laude, you and this project must also be teh awesome. Be well, and rock on!
That is amazingly cool! I went over the weekend to get my poster framed (in metallic purple, of course) and can’t wait to have it hanging on my wall. Chris, it is very exciting to read your updates as this project unfolds.
All nice, but if the house is on fire, your first reaction is “The Children/Cat” and not “The Drobo”. Make sure you have off site backups that are refreshed once per week and check that the backups are working. And off-site really is off-site. At least 10 miles away and not in a flood area. And do check your backup is working. I have seen 1 scientist losing 3 years of work because his backup was unreadable.
This is an amazing device and a must-need type device for anything of this sort of work. I have a friend that does a lot of photography and has the four-slot device and I must say that it is very very cool.
Happy usage and keep up the good work!
Not losing work is very, very cool indeed! Yay for drobo!
Looks awesome for dealing with computer issues. However, will it work as well as a black cat against evil spiritual attacks?
Hah — good question! I guess we’ll find out …
This really is the coolest. I am quite awed by the creativity and generosity that The Price inspires. Thank you for sharing!
You are welcome!!!
Ah, Christopher you are truly a geek for being excited enough to blog about this. That being said… I’m truly jealous… I’ve had one foot off a tall building over data loss often enough to know this is a wise tool to have!
Looks like a great little device. I will have to check it out. As a graphic designer I am always looking for a cheap easy way to backup files.
Wow! Cool tech! It is really horrible when you lose your data because of a hardrive malfunction, even when it is not much , you feel so helpless… so it is good to know that your work is going to be safer than before
Just another exciting step along the way! Have fun with DROBO – we eagerly await the outcome!
Cheers,
Suzi Skutley
That’s very cool. I’ve got one of the small 4-bay Drobos and it’s excellent. I had a drive go bad, I checked the warranty and it was covered. Western Digital sent me an advance replacement, I swapped it into the Drobo and returned the dead one… My data didn’t even notice and it didn’t cost me a penny. I love it when technology just does what you need it to. Having the ability to cope with two dead drives must be even more reassuring.
That’s fantastic!
This project is truly a ‘life moment’, as in: there was ‘before this’, and there’ll be ‘after this’ … but there’ll never be another like ‘this’
Thanks for sharing ‘this’ experience, Christopher –
j
Well that was a well placed product. Was looking for a new NAS solution to replace my RAID box. This will fit the bill nicely. Thanks!
That’s very cool. I’ve got one of the small 4-bay Drobos and it’s excellent. I had a drive go bad, I ckcheed the warranty and it was covered. Western Digital sent me an advance replacement, I swapped it into the Drobo and returned the dead one My data didn’t even notice and it didn’t cost me a penny. I love it when technology just does what you need it to. Having the ability to cope with two dead drives must be even more reassuring.
That is so great to know, and yes, the dual protection is pretty cool! Thanks for sharing, Wendy!