A couple weeks ago I finally decided to drop the hammer, purchase a Drobo and pick up a couple 2TB Green Caviar Hard Drives. First off…Drobo…Green Caviar…fabulous names! I’ve put this off for almost 2 years and finally broke down after cratering over 60G of hard drive space on my Mac Pro within 2 monhts. Not to mention that I maxed out my other external drive earlier this year. My lackluster backup system would be crippling on so many levels that I had to do something.

The Drobo offers dead simple setup but it stirred up all sorts of ideas and new possibilities which turned out to be a good thing. After playing around, researching and trying to sort out the “best possible” configuration, I finally got it situated. Here’s what I learned that might interest to you…

My Purrrfect Backup World

In my perfect world, Apple’s Time Machine wouldn’t be such a douche bag and consume every morsel of bytes on an external drive. Time Machine has always annoyed the hell out of me because it oversimplifies backup and recovery and tends to give the uninitiated a false sense of security. Sure, there are some ways to limit it’s hunger but I didn’t want to deal with that headache. Via the Drobo knowledge base, I came across a couple backup and recovery programs that could take the place of Time Machine. After a bit more research, I decided to go with Carbon Copy Cloner from Bombich. I also looked at SuperDuper which runs $28 but Bombich hooked me with their “try it ’til you trust it” model.

Our philosophy is that you should try the full-featured product until you trust it, then consider a donation to support the development of Carbon Copy Cloner. That’s right — try ALL of these features, for FREE, let the software establish your trust, THEN donate. Isn’t that the way it should be for such an important task? We think so too. – Bombich.com

I should also point out that the Drobo software has a “DroboCopy” feature. DroboCopy can be setup to automatically copy a drive, folders or files onto the Drobo. At first glance, this seemed to be ok but after mulling it over for a bit, it wasn’t quite a fit for what I wanted. Installing Carbon Copy Cloner was a cinch but configuring it gave me reason to pause. Another testament to the Bombich team, Mike got back to me in less than a day with one of the strongest support responses I’ve seen. Not only did he answer my question, provide guidance but he seemed genuinely concerned with ensuring that I didn’t screw things up.

My original idea for Drobo and Carbon Copy Cloner setup looked something like the image above. Since the Drobo is nearly always connected to my computer, I figured I would just clone my Mac drive on a monthly basis to the Drobo and then send it to the cloud for storage. The challenge with that scenario was that I also wanted to use the Drobo as a “live” working drive for k-weight heavy files (video, images and audio etc.). Rina and I have a pretty full digital life with a Flip video cam, a Canon HV20 and digital cams, so when it comes editing and creating little projects, storing things on the Mac can get intense. So basically, I wanted the ability to drop files directly onto the Drobo and skip the Mac altogether but still have Carbon Copy Cloner.

The Real World

Based on Mike’s response to my scenario on the Bombich support forum it seemed I was on the right track but if the Mac crashes, backing up from a separate external might be easier. Likewise, I discovered that cloud backup providers like Carbonite, Mozy, BackBlaze and the like, aren’t as impressive as they first appear because they limit external drive backup (Carbonite) and several file types and sizes. BackBlaze at this point seems to be the best fit but it’s still leaves a bit to be desired.

1. Carbon Copy Cloner is setup to do a monthly auto-clone of the Mac
2. BackBlaze continuously back’s up the Mac and Drobo

Resources

• Backup to The Cloud - BackBlaze
• Carbon Copy Cloner - Bombich
• BeyoundRAID storage technology - Drobo
• Eco-friendly hard drives - Western Digital – 2TB Green Caviar