Gents, greetings.
As a video pro since the 80's, I'm always being asked about my mass storage methods. I've settled on the Drive Robots from Drobo, as have quite a few of my pro associates.
I have a couple of Drobo Pros, that have 8 drive slots apiece.
The original Drobo demo that sold me, and many others, showed an original Drobo playing media from the drive to a computer screen. The demo person turned around - and pulled the drive with the flashing light. The other drives immediately went from green to orange, indicating that they were adjusting for the drive loss - but the clip on the screen just continued on playing, nary a stutter.
It's actually happened to me since then - a drive gave up in the middle of an edit. I popped in another blank one when I had the time to go get one, after the session was over. The data shuttled around and the drive had mended itself in a couple of hours. The drive was a 4TB drive. What would have been a major catastrophe became something of an inconvenience.
So I started with 4x2TBs, then kept on adding 2TBs until it was full - that took me around nine months, by which time I could afford to swap out two of the original 2TBs with 3TBs, which I did.
Now, maybe three years later, I have 8x4TBs in both Drobo Pros - that's 64TB, not too bad for a backup system. And the prices for the 6TBs are going to start to fall pretty soon... : )
No I don't work for them, no I'm not paid to endorse anything, nor are any of my associates.
Just wanted to share what was, and is, for me, a good thing.