Drobo + Time Capsule

I've plugged in a Drobo S into the USB port on an Airport Extreme when I needed fast and dirty file sharing. It worked fine. It was only for a week, but I didn't notice any sort of unusual behavior.

Once you've done the initial setup/config via the Drobo interface, the drive acts just as standard USB drive. It's not the fastest thing in the world, but you're limited by the USB 2 anyways, so your experience regarding speed will depend more on your actual usage.

Here's my setup:

• MacBook Pro (mid 2009)
• Drobo 4bay - Misc. Files
• External Drive (I forget the manufacturer) with 2 partitions:
  • Time Machine
  • Carbon Copy Cloner partition
• Backblaze

This works great and provides lots of protection for my data.

• My laptop drive is backed up 3 times:

  • A bootable clone (with a daily archive)
  • A time machine (which has hourly snapshots)
  • Backblaze remote backup.

• My drobo is backed up only via Backblaze, but it has the redundancy of the RAID array.

This is a pretty sweet setup. The only downside is how long it takes to backup the drobo over the net, since it tends to have large files (videos, games, etc.)

I had planned to use my Drobo for Time Machine, but to do that you will want to partition the drobo into multiple logical drives so that Time Machine does not fill the entire machine with backups.

Here is the relevant info on the Drobo web site explaining how to set it up. Drobo Fact #12: Which Drobo Should I Use with Time Machine? [Link removed]

"Time Machine for a Single Mac Using Time Machine with Drobo is simple. Just setup the Drobo and then select it for Time Machine back use in the System Preferences. You want to create a separate partition for exclusive use by Time Machine. This way you can have a separate location and not co-mingle the Time Machine backup folders with other data. This article in the Knowledge Base provides more information: http://support.datarobotics.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/119/related/1/kw/time%20machine/r_id/100004"

The newer Drobo products (Drobo FS/DroboPro FS/B800fs) have the idea of a "Share" which allows you to limit the amount of space Time Machine can use. [Link Removed]