Question 1

I do lots of photography and use lightroom 5 for manipulation of my photos My Imac 1 TB is full  Can I use the Drobo 5D for an external hard drive for processing  as well as for storage ?  TWW

Accepted Answer

Good question. Here's my workflow set up:
- Lightroom app on system drive (standard)
- Primary Lightroom catalog on a fast external work drive (7200 RPM) via Thunderbolt (USB 3.0 will work too).
- Backup Lightroom catalog on Drobo 5D. Auto-backed up each quit via Lightroom Catalog preference settings.
- All my photo files are also on the Drobo 5D.
And since I'm a bit obsessive about my 40 years of work, The catalogs and all the photos are backup up again onto a Drobo 5N, and again on another (older) Drobo off-site (and then to cloud service!). It's a manual process at the moment, though I should figure out how to automate it. Next on the to-do list.

Question 2

Just wanted to know if this works with the new Asus Thunderbolt PC Motherboards?

Accepted Answer

I can't answer that…I'm a Mac user and don't know anything about non-mac motherboards. As far as I know Thunderbolt is an Intel standard PCI-bus interconnection protocol, so if Asus has implemented it according to the standard… Probably oughta ask someone less ignorant of such things (like Drobo or Asus) than me.

Question 3

If I use Drobo 5D with older MacPro (2.8 Ghz Quad Core Intel Xeon) and connect via Thunderbolt with converter to Firewire… will performance/transfer speed be OK?

Accepted Answer

Doubtful.  The firewire data rates are significantly slower than thunderbolt or the USB 3.0.

I was unable to get the USB cable to work with the mac and I read some commentary from users that the mac os kext driver does not support the USB functionality. (It may also be that the USB 3 cable that was shipped is defective, but I don't have additional cables to test with)

Nonetheless, you are not able to use the thunderbolt -> firewire adapter in this way.  Thunderbolt must be connected to the mac and firewire to the device.  That may put a hiccup in your design plan.

You would likely be much better off with the Drobo 5N as the MacPro has Gb Lan and you can get some pretty nice speeds with a decent switch/router ~15Mbps with average consumer equipment.

If you decide to go with the 5D anyway and use with USB 2.0, I don't recommend purchasing the mSata accelerator as you would just be throwing money away for a tiny performance boost.

I would normally recommend talking to a non-sales / Drobo engineer for specific details... Unfortunately, the Drobo tech support is hands down the worst one I have ever dealt with (worse than Dell) so you have my prayers.

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