Drobo S on modified MacMini - eSATA

Drobo - End of Sale Drobo S
1

I know MacMinis don’t have eSATA ports. I found this hack how to install one:
http://www.erebos.net/34/

Before I embark on this, does anyone have suggestions or warnings.

I’m not wanting to waste time/money. But I’d be happy to let you all know how it goes afterwords.

Thanks,
Byron

2

As with any hack/modification, you should be very careful to be 100% sure that things are working correctly before trusting any data-transfer to it.

Drobo is great for keeping what you send it safe, but Drobo is not magic - if your system sends it corrupt data to store, it won’t un-corrupt it.

I’d do the mod, connect a standard SATA drive to it, and run extensive data-checking functions to verify that the eSATA connection is preserving data-integrity before connecting the Drobo. That way you reduce the number of variables if you run into trouble.

3

I have a Mac Mini too (late 2009) but I would not do it : the Drobo is intrinsically slow, and unable to saturate FW800 or even FW400. So I very much doubt you will see any performance benefit in using eSATA.

4

At least according to info DRI has posted here, speeds on Drobo S on FW800 and eSATA are faster than standard Drobo on FW800.

5

Yes it has a bigger CPU so it’s faster.

6

geej? really? do you have one?