June 8, 2018 | 8617 Views | By Hudson Henry

How Photographers Use Drobo in Their Workflow

Hey Everyone!
I’m excited to share a review of a company’s product that I’ve been using for quite some time as my main photo & video storage and backup solution. I have a brand new Drobo 5D3 that I’ll go over and show you how I use it and ON1 Photo RAW 2018 together in my professional workflow.

The new Drobo 5D3 solves many problems that myself and many modern photographers and videographers currently face. With raw file sizes becoming larger and larger, advanced camera capabilities becoming more accessible and easy for use, and with the rise of mobile photography and videography- managing, storing, and backing up files can quickly become one of the biggest pain points for creatives.

Using both the Drobo 5D3 and ON1 Photo RAW 2018 I not only can access and organize my files extremely fast and efficiently, but I also can rest easy knowing that all my files are automatically being backed up for me by the 5D3. Watch my product spotlight on this great product from Drobo and how efficiently it works with ON1 Photo RAW 2018.
And, we even have a special offer from Drobo for all ON1 customer’s for a limited time! Head on over to Drobo and you can save 10% on any item using the discount code DROBOON1.

Categories:Product Spotlight

11 comments on “How Photographers Use Drobo in Their Workflow”

  2. On June 12, 2018 at 8:23 pm Kevin King wrote:

    Kevin King

    I love/hate my new 5C. But mostly love it, probably.
    After about a month with my Drobo and my Mac, here are a few things NOT in the marketing materials:
    -DO NOT partition it for Time Machine. Use a separate drive. It’s the only thing that saved my butt (see below).
    -over half of your largest disk drive will be rendered unusable for data storage. I have 16 TB across 5 drives (4, 4, 4, 2 and 2 TB). However my (usable) data storage capacity is 10.72 TB (67%). The remainder? 3.80 TB “Used for protection,” and 10.10 GB used for “overhead.” Be warned not all your “there” is there.
    -you can’t just slip a drive full of data into your NEW Drobo, because, inconveniently, Drobo will erase it and reformat it. Finding this, I put 2 brand new 4TB’s in the new device. As promised, my 5C reformatted them, but as noted above, not all of the 8TB was available for data storage. So I bought a THIRD 4TB to get my data storage capacity up.
    -staring at the remaining two empty drive bays, I was hesitant to insert the two populated 2TB’s I had harvested from my Mac Pro for fear they too would be reformatted and I’d lose years of images, documents, etc. Cloned them (just in case), then inserted them (as recommended in Drobo Article AA-01416). These two drives did NOT reformat, my data remained intact, but after a long “sleep,” Drobo wouldn’t mount to the Mac (see next point). 56,000 photo images were “in there,” but still lost.
    -Drobo’s have a history of going incognito with Mac OS. Google on “Drobo doesn’t mount with OS “and you’ll see what I mean. As you expect, respondents say Apple and Drobo blame each other.
    -here’s what actually worked for me: after assuring myself that my Time Machine backup was populated with current info, I used the Drobo tools to reformat (!) all 5 Drobo drives. You’d think this would be all I needed to do before repopulating Drobo from Time Machine. But nooo, once again after a “sleep,” the device was visible, but wouldn’t accept files copied from Time Machine (error -50). What seems to be working now was rebuilding the directory with DiskWarrior. MAKE SURE YOU OWN DISKWARRIOR (I’ve had to use it several times)!
    My 5C is a sturdy little box, and the USB-C is super fast. I love the way the drives are completely accessible and the lights give you pertinent info at a glance, and assuming it will work consistently, I’m pretty sure I will love the device.
    NOTE: High Sierra came out in 2017. I just installed a DROBO update which they claim makes it compatible with High Sierra… hmmm, 8 months? But maybe I won’t need DiskWarrior so often?

  3. On June 14, 2018 at 11:40 am Hudson Henry wrote:

    Hudson Henry

    I’m glad you’ve got it running well now. Sounds like some really frustrating times. I’m happy to report I’ve never had an issue with my Drobos, but then I’ve never tried to partition one for Time Machine. I’ve always just used a big separate Time Machine drive for system files, preferences, ad more recent work that I’m editing (the last two years). I use Chronosync to keep incremental backups of older data on other drives. I just love how the Drobo grows with your data storage needs, provides a first level redundancy for backup and has that SSD accelerator to boot.

  4. On June 15, 2018 at 3:52 pm Kevin King wrote:

    Kevin King

    Although fairly fluent in PS and LR, my interest in photography had plateaued. But upgrading to RAW 17, then 18 fired me up again. On1 PLUS tutorials, especially yours, have me rockin’ ‘n rollin’ again! Even when I think I know a topic, your tutes teach me something new! Didn’t know RAW accommodated a scratch disk, and will look into Chronosync. Thanks Hudson! PS: beginning to love the DROBO!

    1. On June 18, 2018 at 10:24 am Hudson Henry replied:

      Hudson Henry

      Thanks so much Kevin. I’m so glad to hear that. Yes the scratch disk is really critical for big files and especially panos. Too cool about your reinvigoration!

  5. On June 25, 2018 at 3:10 am Andrew Morgan wrote:

    Andrew Morgan

    Thanks for the rundown of the new Drobo. I’ve been a Drobo user from a few years now and love them. I currently have an old Drobo FS hanging off my modem/router so I can access it from my desktop and laptops. I’m about to upgrade to the 5N2 with an SD drive to boost speed.
    Do you use your Drobo on more than one computer or as a separate backup as I didn’t think the 5D could be networked?
    I am a little unclear about your speed demo. Isn’t the RAW file loaded onto your laptop from the Drobo and all the edits then done in RAM. So isn’t the editing speed you are showing due the laptop and not the Drobo? What would be great to see is the speed of moving large numbers of files (like when downloading from a card) or your single large mosaic files you mentioned.
    ps I’ve now got the sensor dust under control thanks to your 3 tutorials. Thanks!

    1. On June 27, 2018 at 4:48 am Hudson Henry replied:

      Hudson Henry

      You have a point about the RAM when editing, but it loads the photos from the Drobo into the RAM seamlessly and with 46MP D850 files, that’s no small feat. 🙂 you’re right though about looking at transfers for a lot of files. My experience is that it is as fast or faster than any traditional internal drive I’ve used in the past and faster when pulling up data cached in the SSD accelerator.
      I do sometimes connect the Drobo to both my laptop and my Macpro but not simultaneously.

  6. On June 25, 2018 at 6:53 am Erik Zimmerman wrote:

    Erik Zimmerman

    Thanks Hudson. I still have my Generation 2 Drobo that I bought almost 10 years ago, still chugging along like a champ. I use mine as a backup system so I can keep all my graphic design and photography files portable. I have a 4TB Western Digital portable (primary) drive that gets backed up to the Drobo regularly using Super Duper. Then that Drobo gets backed up to the cloud using Backblaze. I set up that way so all files are portable and the Drobo is always connected so it can sync with Backblaze at any time. Will definitely upgrade my Drobo in the near future, although still working I know it’s life is probably getting near the end and would rather not wait until that happens.

    1. On June 27, 2018 at 4:50 am Hudson Henry replied:

      Hudson Henry

      Glad to hear of someone else having a great experience with an older Drobo. My older 5D is running strong too. I think they are more limited by the hard drive’s inside then the Drobo hardware. My older one recently warned me that a drive was nearing the end of it’s life and should be replaced (green light went yellow). I just used the dashboard to upgrade to a bigger 8TB replacement and it never skipped a beat.

      1. On June 28, 2018 at 6:14 am Erik Zimmerman replied:

        Erik Zimmerman

        Yeah, I’m definitely limited, but, it’s enough for me for now. Sometime in the near future, I’ll upgrade the unit and slowly upgrade the drives.
        That’s awesome, gotta love when they keep you from losing data. One of the primary features I like about the Drobos.

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