Drobo vs. Internal Drives – Transfer Speed Comparison

drobohome-networkingnasusb-storage

This question makes me reconsider Drobo, but I have a concern about data transfer rates. Wouldn't the USB (or LAN) connection be a significant bottleneck to my system?

My home media center PC has a system disk and 2 x 1TB data disks for video and audio = 3 SATA drives on the motherboard controller. It's a hassle to expand this storage, but perhaps a NAS could help.

If this were on a Drobo, and I use USB to connect it, wouldn't I have much slower data rates? Or if I had a Drobo with LAN, then my LAN would be the bottleneck, right?

I realize a Drobo or any other NAS solution just covers storage, not backup, so ideally one would have another NAS (if I win the lottery) at a friend's place and mirror the two.

Best Answer

If you're connecting over gigabit ethenet and you don't have super-fast HDDs, LAN will not be the bottleneck. USB, however, could be a serious bottleneck. Rough estimation of speeds:

Item                 Bytes/s      Bits/s
----                 -------    --------
USB 2.0:              60MB/s     480Mb/s
7200RPM HDD:          70MB/s     560Mb/s    (average hard-drive)
10000RPM HDD:        100MB/s     800Mb/s
Gigabit Ethernet:    125MB/s    1000Mb/s
2x 7200RPM RAID0:    300MB/s    2400Mb/s
FireWire 800:        400MB/s    3200Mb/s

1 Byte = 8 Bits

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