PLEASE NOTE – this Q comes from an IT numbnut – really don't have a clue… 🙄

hard drive on the macbook is chocca (tis backed up at home to morrored drives…)
Looking for something to sit on the desk here to act as working (and backup?) drive as the photo collection mounts up.

I'm thinking – keep piccies on (insert external drive here…), leaving the MBP hard drive free for pretty free except for the o/s and applications?

Am I barking up the right tree?

Cheers

Chris

Not sure that's how a drobo's meant to be used. If the photo collection matters to you, then a *proper* backup should be kept somewhere else too.

If you have a break-in, chances are they'd grab laptop + everything else? Or what about fire etc etc.

Thing is, as storage is cheap, why *wouldn't* you keep the photos on the MBP too?

If it's for speed, then you'll need the drobo to be fast, and it won't be over USB or firewire, compared to an internal drive.

Cheers IA – I'm guessing then that i'd be better using a portable drive for the 'workaday stuff' then, to free up some space on the MBP, the have the likes of a DROBO off site (ie home, with the daily backups (TimeMachine) on as yes, this is archiving og client stuff were talking about.

Ha d also thought about real offsite stuff – ie getting myself a bigger cloud on mobile me or similar – good idea or too costly and (ultimately) no control of who has your data and where it is?

How much space do you need in the MBP? I put a 500gig drive in mine for £55 recently, and unless you're already filling that much space (which i guess you could be?) then if you can afford Drobo + drives money, you can afford a nice big drive in the MBP too surely.

cheers IA – currently 200gb (i think) in the MBP….
told you I was a dufuss as i figured i could not drop a larger one in……. 🙄

current plan – only have the 'in progress' stuff on the MBP, all else to reside on the backup system until needed….
may put a drobo in as the backup system – just occurred to me that current back is full – 2 x mirrored 250 GB drives….

had a look at these recently as they looked pretty ok – FIL was interested in one for his photos/artwork (ex graphic artist with a ton of stuff he did in the 70s that he is backing up digitally now)

found an interesting site about why people are dumping them for other things.

My thoughts (and I proved today I can be an IT numbnuts too) – if I had an old pc lying around I would make a NAS and load freeNAS onto it – very easy to configure and works like a dream (or at least it does for me – does RAID, works with certain SATA controllers etc), and the money I saved I would use to pay for some off ite backup eg carbonite or similar – and also faster tjhan the USB connection f the drobo