Why using a Drobo for Apple’s Time Machine might not be a good idea

We’re fans of the Drobo data storage device here at MacMedics. They are a fantastic, low-cost solution for storing large amounts of data with relative safety.

In a repair that I’m working on that involved a Drobo 4 bay device, I’ve come up with some thoughts on why a Drobo device is not a good idea for use as a Time Machine volume.

1. We already know that Time Machine really puts a strain on the directory of a hard drive. We commonly see TIme Machine volumes with severely corrupted directories. When you combine the action of Time Machine along with the process that Drobo uses to protect and preserve your data, I think that intensifies the strain on the directory of the RAID.

2. Time Machine is a workout for any hard drive when it’s running all the time, and we have seen a few hard drives that have succumbed to the strain of that duty. In the case of the Drobo combined with Time Machine, the drives just go non stop all the time at a fairly intense level. When you consider that all that hard drive activity could prematurely shorten the life of a hard drive in your Drobo. Don’t forget that increased hard drive activity means more heat which can shorten the life of a hard drive.

When you consider both of these factors and add in the fact that having an ever expanding Time Machine volume, Drobo is not the best choice as a Time Machine volume.

Time Machine is the most powerful feature of Leopard and Snow Leopard. Having said that, having a Time Machine backup is highly recommended, but in almost all cases we DO recommend a “Double Backup”. In most cases this can be accomplished with one hard drive. If you have a large hard drive, you can create a partition that’s slightly larger than your hard drive, and then use the remaining amount of space for Time Machine. The trick here, is to clone you hard drive to the small partition and allow Time Machine to use the large one. This way if you ever have a failure, you can boot off your “clone” and then have access to you Time Machine data from as recently as one hour ago.

See my post about Time Machine and for a link to a program that will allow you to adjust it’s frequency here.

See my post about doubling your Time Machine back up here.