The honest answer from me is that I have one and well I have had multiple issues with it over the past year plus I have had it.

I have the Drobo Pro – Actually won it in an online contest so I am not complaining but here is the list of issues both related and none related to the Drobo itself.

1. Tons of issues with getting iSCSI setup – when it finally worked after about 6 firmware and software / dashboard updates it does work well – but there were definitely growing pains early on with WIN XP especially – it’s much easier to use on WIN7 now.

2. It’s pretty loud – just take it into consideration – I know it has to be loud but if you are putting it in your room vs. an office it is a constant fan drone you will hear.

3. I had massive drive failure issues with Seagate – Not related to Drobo – I purchased 8 Seagate drives for it and basically all of them failed in the first month of operation – Seagate replaced them all but this was pretty scary and I am very lucky I setup the pro in double redundancy or I would have lost data.

4. Speed – Unlike some here the speed over iSCSI is actually good – it’s not like a local drive but it’s good.

5. Virus Scanning – Some virus scanning software will severely affect transfer rates – you can in some exclude the Drobo location – so if you are moving files the scanner will scan them and thus slow your transfer way down..

6. Cool Feature: If you are using Backblaze etc – it will look at this drive on iSCSI as just more local drives and back it all up – that said Backblaze can get a bit overwhelmed with this much data and can cause your system to run slow when it is producing file lists each day. If that happens call Backblaze… I had to re-upload all my data twice so far to backblaze because of issues locally with the config files.

7. Support – Support for Drobo is good – thou in the beginning it was not so good – the people are great but even they did not have answers to the questions I had – after some time we got the issues worked out thou.

Pretty sure I have many other things to add – Watch this post for other issues as I remember them – Sadly one of the issues of having a blog for me is so i can post things so I remember them. To do this thou you need to remember to actually post them in the first place!

It was time for a refresh and links to all the work I seem to have accumulated online in different places. If social networking was not so helpful I would love to place all this in one location. Seems that sometimes the internet and the industry is just impossible to keep everything updated.

Modo Pocket is the world’s smallest tripod, a result of Manfrotto’s sensitivity and years of experience in the world of photography. Modo Pocket gives a wide variety of solutions for the amateur photographer, providing an answer to the need to have stable, yet very versatile support whatever the situation may be.

http://www.manfrotto.com/Jahia/site/manfrotto/pid/16411

** This is the best mini tripod I have used… Great with the Canon G10 **

That’s all for the fireworks… I think its time to go back to the regular job… change of pace for the site thou..

And you get to take photos of the reason you sat in traffic for an hour..

How a person can do this in stop and go traffic is beyond me…

Link to Full Size

Updated 6/28

Note from the Developer:

“Hi, thanks for featuring Bulkr here.

The search section, by default, only shows Creative Commons licensed photos. That is why they are all downloadable. If you select “All” in the left menu you will get the actual Flickr result and as you will see, copyrighted photos cannot be downloaded!”

** Great News – And thanks for the clarification **

Have you worried that you might need to backup your Flickr Photostream? Well in case you were here is an interesting piece of Beta software that might be able to help – Watch the Exif download option as it can get stuck – But it is a beta and thus there are bugs to still work out.

  http://clipyourphotos.com/bulkr

Easily download/backup your photostream, all of your sets, your favorites or photos from Flickr search

Bulkr v0.50 beta features:

• Backup your entire Flickr photostream
• Download your sets (select few or all of them)
• Download photos in 6 different sizes
• Write title, tags etc to photo EXIF
• Download metadata to a separate file
• Preview images before download
• Resume download if connection breaks
• Download up to 500 photos in batches from:
  • Flickr search
  • Your photostream
  • Your favorites
  • Any Flickr group
  • Explored photos
  • Any user’s photostream

Now this is interesting and sort of scary:

Search enables you to search all of Flickr and download basically anything you want….

I did a search for “Ford” and got 2849 Results of which I could download all of them 500 photos at a time at any resolution.

So you tell me – I think this is a very helpful tool that could easily be used for bad… that said most good tools have that issue.

While it is still around thou – I would grab it and backup your photostream.