05-18-2010, 06:01 PM
Some answers to above and a comment...
Drobo is simple - but very comparatively slow and expensive as a solution IMHO.
Heat - drives do warm up under load - but in our solutions and under stress load for 24/7 - they still operate well within the MFR approved range. As long as drives are not over heating, there is no harm in a drive running up to it's max approved temp which shouldn't be near the case. Google did a huge study on impact of drive life from temperature and found that fewer drives failed when allowed to run warmer, but within rated spec vs. drives cooled to the lower end of the operational spec... and, not surprisingly, drives overheated failed more than both. All of our enclosures are chamber tested to insure that they keep drives within MFR spec temp ranges when used in within the temp ranges we specify (which are, pretty sure, the same range Apple specs for it's computer operating environments).
The Elite and the GMAX share a lot of the same design elements and chipsets. The GMAX has the additional hardware to support drive status display for the RAID-1 mode. The Elite can do RAID-1 as well, but is a feature we don't officially support since there is nothing to tell you if one of your RAID-1 Set drives has failed... The GMAX can be set to run in Raid-0 and SPAN modes in addition to RAID-1 Mirror, but the GMAX is primarily aimed as a RAID-1 plug and play and go solution - keep it simple and secure. The current GMAX and the Elite-AL Pro Dual Quad models both use the same Oxford936 chipset solutions and, again, main difference is the extra status display on the GMAX to fully support/communicate RAID 1 function and drive health.
Drobo is simple - but very comparatively slow and expensive as a solution IMHO.
Heat - drives do warm up under load - but in our solutions and under stress load for 24/7 - they still operate well within the MFR approved range. As long as drives are not over heating, there is no harm in a drive running up to it's max approved temp which shouldn't be near the case. Google did a huge study on impact of drive life from temperature and found that fewer drives failed when allowed to run warmer, but within rated spec vs. drives cooled to the lower end of the operational spec... and, not surprisingly, drives overheated failed more than both. All of our enclosures are chamber tested to insure that they keep drives within MFR spec temp ranges when used in within the temp ranges we specify (which are, pretty sure, the same range Apple specs for it's computer operating environments).
The Elite and the GMAX share a lot of the same design elements and chipsets. The GMAX has the additional hardware to support drive status display for the RAID-1 mode. The Elite can do RAID-1 as well, but is a feature we don't officially support since there is nothing to tell you if one of your RAID-1 Set drives has failed... The GMAX can be set to run in Raid-0 and SPAN modes in addition to RAID-1 Mirror, but the GMAX is primarily aimed as a RAID-1 plug and play and go solution - keep it simple and secure. The current GMAX and the Elite-AL Pro Dual Quad models both use the same Oxford936 chipset solutions and, again, main difference is the extra status display on the GMAX to fully support/communicate RAID 1 function and drive health.