- Sep 1, 2010
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My Drobo DDR3-A decided it didn't want to work anymore and now I'm without my 8TB volume of priceless memes, YouTube rips, backup archives, photos, and other miscellaneous nonsense I like to use with my HTPC. The hard drives themselves are fine but I don't have a working external enclosure. I don't really need a full fledged 'NAS', per say, especially since they are expensive and I don't really need it to have its own proprietary OS and software etc.
What are my options here? I'm already in the process of recovering the data off of the four WD Red drives but nothing is critical to save. Originally, I wanted to see if I could source replacement Drobo parts but that proved fruitless; I don't want to replace it if the next one is just gonna crap out at some point too. I was looking at 4-bay RAID enclosures but most seemed like Chinese junk with either lousy power supplies or cheap and gaudy-looking features; some even needed a RAID card that's sold separately...
I also considered building a NAS with FreeNAS but I don't really need access to these drives over my network. It's basically just a big external volume and USB 3.0 is preferable; eSATA as a "if I absolutely have to" option. I also want something that uses relatively low power since it will be ON for a good amount of time. I liked the Drobo because it was simple and worked great initially, but new ones are pricey and nobody seems to offer replacement parts. The internals are quite rudimentary so I certainly could replace components but I wasn't able to find exactly what was wrong--it just doesn't power up anymore.
What are my options here? I'm already in the process of recovering the data off of the four WD Red drives but nothing is critical to save. Originally, I wanted to see if I could source replacement Drobo parts but that proved fruitless; I don't want to replace it if the next one is just gonna crap out at some point too. I was looking at 4-bay RAID enclosures but most seemed like Chinese junk with either lousy power supplies or cheap and gaudy-looking features; some even needed a RAID card that's sold separately...
I also considered building a NAS with FreeNAS but I don't really need access to these drives over my network. It's basically just a big external volume and USB 3.0 is preferable; eSATA as a "if I absolutely have to" option. I also want something that uses relatively low power since it will be ON for a good amount of time. I liked the Drobo because it was simple and worked great initially, but new ones are pricey and nobody seems to offer replacement parts. The internals are quite rudimentary so I certainly could replace components but I wasn't able to find exactly what was wrong--it just doesn't power up anymore.
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