Posts Tagged DroboShare
Mac Mini as a Media Server.
Posted by Mark Dalton in Personal, Technology on February 1st, 2010
Back in May 2009 Don McAllister who runs and hosts ScreenCastsOnline did an episode on using the New Mac Min as a Media server. Now I have owned a Mac Mini (G5) for a while and have been using it as a basic media server, and when I say basic, I mean I have Snow Leopard installed, but only use it connected to my iTunes Library via FrontRow. Well, after buying a new Samsung Series 7 LED HD TV I moved my Series 6 up to the bedroom and had it wired into Sky via a Sky Multiroom subscription, but this got me thinking again about the Mac Mini as a Media Server, so I decided to revisit the original shows (SCO198, SCO201, SCO204) and see what I had missed.
I did a clean install of Snow Leopard on the Mac Mini and then a Software Update whilst watching SCO198, and then set about installing Sapphire. Now Sapphire for me doubles the usefulness of the Mac Mini straight away as it gives me full access to my ripped DVD library that lives on my Drobo. Sapphire simply provides another option within the FrontRow interface, aptly named Sapphire that connects you to your media. This media can be on the Mac Mini itself, although Don didn’t recommend that, or on an external or network attached drive. Now at present I have my DVD’s located on a Drobo connected to the network via a DroboShare. This is functional but three is some lag. Once I have things as I want them I will once again look at the storage element as I don’t really want external drives all over the place but if its flakey I know I won’t use it.
Following Don’s instructions the installation was simple and was completed in less than 30 minutes. Importing the meta data and choosing the correct artwork did take a while, but given how many DVD’s I have on the Drobo that was to be expected.
The second show (SCO201) moved things up a notch and introduced Plex. Plex was just as simple to install and configure using Don’s walkthrough, but right from the outset it was obvious that Plex was a lot more powerful than Sapphire and there are many more options to explore / play with. Obviously Don could only cover the essential ones in the show, but this was enough to get me up and running. Importing the meta data and selecting the Album Artwork were easy and I know it’s sad, but quite good fun, especially with the added ability to use Fan Art which is top quality I must say from what I have seen so far. The interface is not as intuitive as it could be and some of the menu options are simply not named correctly as they do not actually do what they say they do. However once installed and configured this is certainly a small price to pay for the experience the application provides, and with luck the developers will quickly correct. Plex hooks directly into iTunes an iPhoto to provide you access to your music and photos, and better still Plex also supports “Applications”, which easily allow you to connect up to other services such as the ScreenCastsOnline feed.
In SCO204 Don takes a look at ways to remotely control the Media Server, but I must say I am perfectly happy with the Apple supplied remote. I did purchase the Aluminium remote for use with the Apple TV in the lounge, and may at some point buy another for use with the Media Server. I did explore using the iPhone and use the Apple Remote application to control my iTune library on the Apple TV as I do like to skip tracks and move between albums, but with the Media Server it is more select movie, click play, fall asleep. Why complicate perfection!
Drobo Update
Posted by Mark Dalton in Personal, Technology on January 18th, 2010
I received an email today from Drobo Support, and what was kind of scary was that the engineer had found my blog and read what i had done over the weekend. At the same time it was also kind of reassuring to know that I was dealing with someone that was tech savvy and Internet aware, not always the case these days unfortunately.
Now in all fairness I probably didn’t help myself with my impatience but in my own defence I wasn’t really expecting Drobo’s support to come through for me. Why? For absolutely no good reason if I am honest other than my experience with other companies support organisations. Something that I may come to regret! Anyway by deleting and recreating the volume I had removed the problem so there wasn’t anything to troubleshoot, although that said I feel that I have proved something to myself, I am just not sure quite what yet! However, the Drobo support engineer did quite honestly state that they have had a few customers with similar problems that seemed to be down to insufficient power from the power supply when used with the splitter and the DroboShare. What more the engineer asked for my mailing address so they could send me another power supply.
Now to me, this is the first sign of good customer support! There has been none of the “you must be doing something wrong”, there has been none of the “do you know what you are doing?”, in fact thus far every email has been polite and to the point with useful steps to try and a general willingness to get to the root of the problem, even given the fact that I obviously have the patience of a rattle snake being poked with a sharp stick 
What’s more the Drobo engineer even conceded that if we couldn’t get to the root of the problem, they would probably need to swap out the unit.
The best bit is that a no point has the sordid detail of money been mentioned! All of this together makes me want to work with them until I can understand the root cause of the problem, opposed to just swapping the device out and being left doubting the product.
So far I am happy! Now don’t misunderstand me I am not happy that the problem happened in the first place, but we are dealing with mechanical devices here and they do break. Hell that’s what I brought a device that amongst other things sells itself on it fault tolerant capabilities. What I am happy about is so far the response has been, bar the no weekend coverage, in line with what I would honestly expect from a professional organisation.
However I am not sold yet so will be copying my data back to the Drobo only after soak testing it until the new power supply turns up. Even then I will be backing it up several times a day before trusting it 100% with my data, and before purchasing another unit.
That’s what my Drive Way looks like.
Posted by Mark Dalton in Personal on January 17th, 2010
The second week of the year back at work started out a little better than the first. To start with I had a train ticket so didn”t need to go through the Monday morning hell of queuing up, and the trains were also running fairly smoothly with delays of only a few minutes here and there. All went well until it snowed again on Tuesday night and I couldn”t get the car out on Wednesday morning. This was a major pain in the butt as I had ordered something online, which I”ll come on to, that was due to be delivered on the Wednesday that I needed urgently but also because I hadn”t been shopping. Luckily I have access to all the work systems from home so could get on and after a several attempts on Wednesday afternoon I managed to get the car freed up. Thursday I was able to slip and slide my way to the train station and make it into the office. Thursday and Friday were busy but uneventful thankfully and I managed to successfully retrieve my package. Friday night it rained and for the first time since Christmas I was able to see my drive way. Saturday I was able to escape and get some shopping done before meeting up with some friends for a couple of beers (read hungover this morning).
So today is a house day! The chores done I can get on with catching up with the paperwork, first task my 2009 Tax Filing, oh the joy. That done and with the next major task being the ironing, which is Sunday evening in front of the TV job, I decided to get on with sorting out a couple of issues that had popped up during the week.
Now when working at home I often fire up iTunes as I find working in complete silence a little weird. Now since buying a Drobo and DroboShare I have been playing around with using it for both file storage and as a backup device. Now to cut a long story short I had copied my iTunes library over to it and all seemed to be going well. Well, Tuesday evening while catching up with email on opening iTunes I was told met with a default iTunes library screen. After a little messing around I found that iTunes kept telling me the Library file was damaged and it had created a new one. It wasn”t until I looked at the Drobo I found one of the drives was showing as failed. Now I didn’t have any spare ones so as quick as a flash I ordered two spares. Now what puzzled me was that the Drobo is supposed to handle a failed drive without any data issues. Mmmm interesting.
As I couldn’t get into the office on Wednesday and had selected the office as the delivery location for the drives I had to wait until Thursday to pick them up and until Thursday night to replace the failed drive. Imagine what I said when I plugged in a new drive and it went through the motions only to also show up as failed. So I dropped a line to Drobo Support. They came back to me on Friday suggesting I follow the following article, which I did as well as some other basic trouble shooting tips.
These tips basically involved testing to see if the fault followed the disk or if the slot was the issue, so they had me remove the failed drive and swap the other drives around to see if the fault followed the drive. Now this was interesting in as much as SLOT 1 was showing the failed drive but if I move the drive from SLOT 2 to SLOT 1 all three drives showed as good. However if I either inserted the failed drive from SLOT 1 or a new drive into SLOT two, the drive in SLOT 1 (which was the one I had moved from SLOT 2) showed as failed.
I tried moving drives around and inserting new drives in the vacant SLOT but what every I tried the drive in SLOT 1 showed as failed when all four bays were populated. So I emailed Drobo Support with the results Friday evening. Now it would appear that Drobo don’t do weekend support as I haven’t had anything more from them, but I needed to play a little more. So today I (having a full backup of all the data) reset the Drobo with the original four drives and recreated the volumes and formatted all the drives. Thus far all four are showing online and good so I am none the wiser as to what the issue is / was, but am loathed to trust it at this point. I will be testing it out a little more but look forward to Drobo’’s next response, especially as I was on the verge of ordering another one to use with my Mac Mini Media centre.
Back to Business.
Posted by Mark Dalton in Personal on September 13th, 2009
So after being Duty Manager last weekend I started the week looking forward to a short (4 day) week. Monday and Tuesday were uneventful and pretty quite but Wednesday was just crazy. Meeting after meeting, the phone didn’t stop, and email was coming in from all sides. Thursday thankfully things calmed down and gave me the chance to catch up before heading into the weekend.
Friday I woke early and hit the ground running. I have felt a lot better this week and was determined to start catching up on all those things that I had been neglecting. I had ordered a Drobo & DroboShare Thursday from Amazon and had ordered it early enough to secure next day delivery. Now I have been looking at these for a while, but up until now they have been far to expensive, but Amazon had them both as a package for a very reasonable price. Unfortunately I was then pulled into a meeting and completely forgot to order any hard drives when I returned. Doh!
So Friday morning I was resigned to the fact that I was going to be stuck in all day waiting for the delivery so set about house chores. I was relieved when just after 09:00 I heard the sound of the City Link delivery truck pull up and gratefully accepted my parcel. Within about 15 minutes I had it setup and it was then I remembered I hadn’t ordered any Hard Drives. So I hit the web and after a little searching settled on 4x 1TB 3.5″ Hard Drives from Scan at a quite reasonable price, and once again next day delivery.
After finishing the household chores I headed to Morrisions and set about restocking the cupboards and filling the car up with fuel. I was surprised while making a rather tricky biscuit decision by a text message from scan advising that my Hard Drives had been dispatched. Shopping completed and car fuelled I set about refuelling myself with a couple of nice salad rolls and considered my plans for the rest of the day. I decided that the next priority was a hair cut but instead of driving into town I elected to walk in. The idea being walking in meant I could have a couple of pints. Once in town I meet up with Laurence and Phil and then a little later Dave Birkett. Laurence and Phil had other plans so left Dave and I in Lloyds bar. Needless to say a few more beers were consumed however this time it was me that ended up a little worse for wear.
Saturday I woke up feeling a lot better than I probably deserved to feel but at 07:30 still with a zeal to get things done. I set about finishing off some of the house chores left over from Friday. About 09:30 the City Link truck was back outside and 5 minutes later I had my new Hard Drives laid out on the desk, and about 30 minutes after later I had them all installed and formatted in the Drobo. I then spent about an hour trying to figure out why the Drobo wasn’t auto mounting before finally finding a knowledge base article on the Data Robotics web site saying there was a known issue with Snow Leopard and the Drobo Share that prevented the volume mounting automatically. Thankfully they provided a work around and I was up and running in a couple of minutes. I spent the rest of the day catching up with stuff, mainly paperwork.
Today I was up and about at 08:30 and after a quick shower set about the last few jobs of the weekend before heading round to Mum & Dad’s for Sunday lunch with them, Katrina, and the children. After the last week the sunshine let us down and after an hour or so we were starting to feel cold so headed inside. It was good to see everyone again, especially as William starts school tomorrow, and I am feeling more like myself every day. It was great fun as always and the kids surprise me every time I see them. Little Eleanor is such a little beauty and so cute when she laughs. Well, its back to work tomorrow but I have had a good weekend so it will be what it will be.
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