Drobo and ATA/IDE drives

[dusanmal]

I am interested in getting Drobo but one of the crucial issues is reuse of my existing IDE/ATA drives (both in terms of expense and of Drobo essentially replacing their present function). Adapters exist that would allow IDE drive to be connected via SATA. And, they are cheap (10-15$). But, how will this work with the Drobo? Adapters I have seen are small boards, so my guess is that the disks would stick-out from the Drobo enclosure. I don't care for aesthetics of this - but will Drobo work under such conditions (ex. is there a sensor checking that the front of the drive have "snapped in")? Adapter manufacturers claim full compatibility. However, is that true for the Drobo setup (ie. will Drobo fail because of some technical issue with these adapters)? Do you know of an adapter that is "cable like" - flexible so that the things do fit in neatly?
Finally, could you please practically test one such adapter in Drobo with IDE disk (I assume you already have big ticket items needed for the test in the Rev3 land, and maybe there is already an IDE/SATA adapter 'round there too...)? It would make for an interesting and useful segment (likely not only for me but for other viewers, there must be truckloads of old IDE drives out there...).

PS If of practical interest my IDE drives are two 250GB and one 300GB to which I'd add one new 500 or 750 GB (SATA is fine for the new one) drive to form the functional Drobo...

[damnedeyez]

(likely not only for me but for other viewers, there must be truckloads of old IDE drives out there...).

No kidding...I couldn't believe it when I looked and found Drobo only worked with SATA drives. I mean, considering how many IDE drives people may have from uprgading, it seems like the perfect idea to use them.

Anyway, I hope they check that for you...I know I'm interested (and not shelling out $500 for a drobo just to try it myself.)

[mikec]

Maybe you should contact Drobo's maker. Tekzilla is just sponsored by the thing, they aren't the official support source for it.

If Tekzilla or any other show was sponsored by Chevy, would you expect them to tell you if brand X spark plugs are better then the factory plugs?

[jeffk813]

IMO, I wouldn't want to use anything less than a SATA drive in a drobo. RAID arrays can slow down throughput in some cases and it seems to me you'd want the fastest drives you could reasonably get to make up for it. SATA 300 drives are MUCH faster than any IDE drive.

But that's just me.

[slonkak]

...RAID arrays can slow down throughput...

There's a reason you don't see server-class hardware using IDE drives with RAID controllers. They're not meant for that kind of abuse. SATA is the lowest end you should be using for RAID if you care, at all, about performance. SCSI and SAS are the way to go, but usually you only find those in servers (and they're really expensive).