I was an upgrade hold-out form the original Drobo which was attached to my Windows 2008 R2 server (yeah, I don’t think it was technically supported but it was working great). I was looking to eliminate having the server running so when I one of the 5N deals come along, I went for it.
I basically slapped a few drives I had that running/laying around for my original Drobo (a 1TB Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EADS and a 2TB Hitachi HUA722020ALA330) and copied all my data over to the 5N.
After it was all copied, and linking up my iTunes Library to the share on the 5N, performance was not good. I could not stream a song without stops/gaps in playback as it was trying to buffer or whatever.
I finally had enough. Seeing I have iTunes at the core for my whole-house audio playback system, I had to do something. After reading various posts and feedback it seems like I wasn’t alone. I read about people using utilities to set the drives’ head park/read speeds, etc but I did none of that. All I did was invest in some quality hard drives and now things are working/streaming flawlessly. In case others want to know, here’s my setup:
Drobo 5N (latest firmware 3.1.1 [8.35.45])
(2) Western Digital 3TB drives (WD30EFRX)
This is going through an ASUS RT-AC66U router followed by a TP-LINK TL-SG1024 24-Port Gigabit switch.
Hope this may be helpful for someone else new to the 5N!
(usually there are problems when trying to edit large files over the network, or with multiple spreadsheets interlinked with other files and other users, but what sort of problems do you see which are stopping you from accessing the files remotely, and do you have some more info on an example of what you would like to be able to do?)
Thanks for taking the time to inquire. Apparently I didn’t select to watch this thread lol.
I travel and work off-site quite a bit. Inevitably, I find myself needing a file that is on the NAS. The simplest solution would be for Drobo to have a VPN Server app natively so I could just VPN into the network and access the shares.
I’ve tried, in a pinch, connecting to an iMac on the network via my MBP, but that means I have to edit the file in Share Screen mode IF the iMac is showing up that day.
I’m simply trying to find a solution to go from the WAN to the Drobo5n, select the files i need to see, edit, etc. then get out.
I have switched to a cisco router with VPN, but it sometimes won’t let me access the network. Nothing seems reliable for trying to get to the Drobo 5n.
Love the 5N, it’s never given us a lick of issues, Just need a way to directly edit the files and not work with copies of them when remote.
I have a 5N with 3 WD 4TB Red drives.
Running Asus RT-N66U which is a very reputable and reliable router.
I have a very strong wireless connection to the Drobo, but transferring files is slow. I’m getting 3-4MBps max.
I have an old HP Mediasmart Server running older drives and I get no less than 9MBps.
Same computer, same network, yet Drobo is a fail.
Tech support not much use, of course just want to blame network, hard drives and anything else other than their product.
I think I do recall a post about the WD Red drives needing a firmware update but I’m apprehensive about losing data.