Protecting ones data from catastrophe should be everyones concern. As Kris can attest, losing all your data can be frustrating, frightening and time consuming when trying to restore it. In the past I have tried to use RAID enabled systems, but always found upgrading them to be problematic.
Data Robotics have come out with a wonderful storage solution that not only provides oodles of storage space, but also, redundantly backs this data up across multiple drives. The best part of this system is there is it requires minimal user intervention.
Their product is the Drobo, the worlds first storage robot, which is a one stop solution for redundant data protection. The Drobo is an external storage device with four user accessible hard drive slots that use 3.5 SATA hard drives. The maximum capacity of the Drobo is only dependent on current hard drive size limits. Setup is beyond simple and fairly idiot proof.
There are some drawbacks to the Drobo, but for the most part, this is a tremendous product and one that most people should not be without. Lets get started.
Data Robotics Drobo Storage Robot Review
Reviewed by: Tomas Ratas
Tech Specs,Features or the Basic Info:
Data Robotics Drobo Storage Robot
Fully automated storage you don’t have to manage.
As rich media (photos, video, movies, and music) continues to devour your storage capacity, you need a solution that allows you to easily manage, protect, and scale storage for your PC or Mac. For you, we’ve created Drobo, the first fully-automated storage robot to take the pain out of keeping your important digital content safe.
Drobo guards everything on it.
-Drobo combines up to four hard drives into a big pool of protected storage. Start with two; grow to four, then upsize smaller drives-get Terabytes of protection.
Drobo manages storage, so you don’t have to.
-Just connect Drobo to your Mac or PC. No RAID levels. No management or configuration. Drobo does everything for you. Get rid of multiple external drives. Avoid the complexity of RAID. Attach a Drobo storage robot to your system and let it manage your storage so you don’t have to.
Drobo upgrades capacity on-the-fly.
-Add drives to Drobo at any time. Mix ‘n match capacities, brands or speeds. No downtime, data migration, or waiting to access new capacity. Drobo works the way you do.
Drobo lets you "pay as you grow"
-Hard drives get bigger and cheaper all the time. Don’t buy storage capacity until you need it. Buy capacity "just-in-time" possibly saving you hundreds of dollars.
Avoid the hassles associated with managing multiple external hard drives or managing the complexities of RAID. Attach Drobo to your Mac or PC and let it manage your storage so you don’t have to.
Features:
Secure
Non-Stop Data Protection
-Automatically protects your data with no setup or configuration. If the status lights are green, your data is safe.
Data Aware
-Knows where your data is stored on the disks so Drobo knows the most effective way to protect your data and repair itself in case of a disk failure or data corruption.
Automated
Simple LED Management
-Drobo communications are as simple as a traffic light. All lights green, your data is safe. Yellow light, Drobo is 85% full, add or replace a drive. Red light, your data is not safe, add or replace a drive immediately.
Autonomous Storage Management
-Your data is always accessible. Even when you add or replace hard drives, Drobo manages the re-configuration and data protection in the background, so your data is always available to you.
Flexible
Mix n’ Match Drive Capacities
-Unlike rigid, inflexible RAID solutions, Drobo recognizes the capacities available from a group of varied disk drives. Using an intelligent mixture of industry standard practices to protect your data, Drobo can offer significantly more storage capacity than standard RAID solutions. Just how you would expect storage to work, add more drives or replace smaller drives with larger ones, and get more space.
Expandable
Pay as You Grow
-It’s so easy to add drives to Drobo, you can start with the fewest drives / minimum capacity you need to meet your storage requirements today and just add or replace drives to increase capacity later. This feature lets you take advantage of regular disk drive capacity improvements and pricing declines.
Continuous Upgrades
-No need to buy an entirely new system when Drobo is full. As long as disk drive capacities continue to increase beyond the capacities you have purchased, you can upgrade Drobo simply by replacing your smallest drives with larger ones.
Drobo Product Specifications:
Four Bay Disk Interface:
-3.5" SATA I or SATA II hard disk drives
-Full or half-height, no carriers required
-Choose the drive manufacturer, capacity (mixed capacities ok), and spindle speed or cache that fits your current storage needs
Capacity:
-Continuously upgradeable with larger and faster drives.
Host Interface:
-High Speed USB 2.0
Max Sustained Transfer Rate:
-Up to read 22MB/s write 20MB/s
Drobo’s Size:
(Width x Height x Length)
inches 6.3 x 6.3 x 10.7
mm 152.4 x 160.02 x 271.78
Power:
-Idle system (standby, drives off) = 5 watts
-Typical idle system – idle, drive spin down mode
(one drive) = 12 watts
-Typical busy system (four drives) = 40 watts
Input:
-100-240V AC, 50/60 Hz
Box Content:
–Drobo storage robot
-External power supply with U.S. 110V AC power cord
-6′ USB 2.0 cable
-User Guide and Quick Start Instructions
-Drobo Resource CD includes:
-Drobo Dashboard Software
-Help files
-How-to Videos
-Electronic Documentation
Operating System Support:
-Windows 2000 (Professional, Server, Advanced Server)
-Windows 2003 Server
-Windows XP (Home, Professional, Media Center Edition)
-Windows Vista (Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Ultimate)
-Apple OS-X 10.4 and later
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File System Support:
-NTFS
-HFS+
-FAT32
Certification: Emissions:
-FCC Part 15 Class B and Safety: UL, cUL
System Management:
-Automatic (No software required)
-Optional Drobo Dashboard Software Included
Security:
-Kensington lock port (lock not included)
Warranty:
-1 Year Limited Warranty
A Better Look at Things
:
The Drobo comes from Data Robotics in a standard looking cardboard box. Upon opening, one is greeted with another smaller cardboard box emblazed with Welcome to the World of
Beneath this box, the Drobo is found enveloped a cloth pouch protected by two large pieces of foam packing.
The smaller cardboard box contains the USB connector cable, a quick start card, the instruction booklet, an installation disk and the power cable.
The Drobo is a small rectangular jet black box about the size of a two slice toaster. Its measurements are 6.3 x 6.3 x 10.7.
The hard drive slots are hidden behind a magnetic black semi-translucent face plate. Through this black face plate, a series of rectangular and circular LEDs can be visualized.
At the rear of the Drobo, one finds a circular area for the fan, and a small recess area where the power jack, and USB 2.0 port are found. There is also a Kensington lock port to help keep your Drobo from being stolen.
One of the first things I felt Data Robotics missed the boat on was the lack of alternative connectors such as eSATA and Firewire, as well as the ability to function as a NAS (Network Attached Storage).
The Drobo is mostly made of metal with the front plate and rear fan and connector area made of plastic. The blue and green LEDs on the front are prominently lit when things are functioning properly.
While the Drobo appears to be a RAID device, it is infinitely more elegant. The Drobo uses technologies with such monikers as DataAware Storage, Data Virtualization Engine and Adaptive Data Mapping.
By spreading the data across multiple drives and having the ability to remap the location of this data, the Drobo works as a superb data storage and protection device.
Installation, Testing and Comparison
The Drobo setup is fairly idiot proof. To install the first of four possible SATA hard drives, just remove the magnetic faceplate. There are four slots for the hard drives and next to each one is a release switch located on the left hand side. Just slide your hard drive in like a cartridge and the Drobo should start to do its magic.
The Drobo acts like a single external storage device, so once the power cord is connected to an outlet and the USB cord is plugged into your PC or Mac, the Drobo should be recognized as an external drive. You can format the Drobo using either the FAT32 or NTFS formats for the PC and the Apple HFS+ file system for the Mac. Using the FAT32 system allows you to use the Drobo with Macs, Windows boxes and Linux machines.
The Drobo comes with a Drobo Resource CD which installs the Drobo Dashboard onto either your PC or your Mac. Sorry Linux users, you are left out in the cold on this feature.
The main Drobo Dashboard screen gives a graphical representation of your storage capacity and how this storage is used. For my installation I have three 320 GB drives and one 300 GB drive for a total of 1.1 TB. Since the Drobo uses a small portion of each drive for redundancy, my actual storage capacity is 871.4 GB.
Data Robotics provides an online Capacity Calculator called the Drobolator (http://www.drobo.com/drobolator/) for helping figure out what your actual storage capacity will be. This is definitely a great help.
Under the advanced controls option, there is a data window which shows the health status of each drive and the status of your data protection. The tools window gives access to the commands to manage the Drobo including placing the Drobo in Standby and Formatting it. This window also allows one to check for software updates and tells which version of the Dashboard and OS, the Drobo is running.
The Drobo is cool when running and pretty silent. There are times when the fan does run at full speed. This makes the Drobo relatively loud in a quiet environment.
Data Transfer speeds averaged 12-15MBps during my tests with large file transfers. Definitely not the speediest USB storage device, but it is built more for protection than quickness. However, I was able to stream video off it across my network. There were no hiccups or latency when watching a movie on my Xbox360 streaming from the Drobo connected to my Power Mac.
Drive installation and optimization was quick when building the array, however, if you have to swap out a smaller drive for a bigger one, then according to one of my friends, this process takes several hours to rebuild the array.
The status of the Drobo can be quickly determined by the four side lights next to each hard drive. Green means a healthy system, Solid Yellow means the current drive needs to be upsized soon, blinking Green and Red means not to remove any drives, Solid Red means you are over 95% capacity and need to upsize your drive, Blinking Red means replace the drive immediately.
The bottom array of LEDs has blue lights for storage space used by the entire Drobo the more blue lights that are lit up; the closer you are to being totally filled up. The power lights are either Green for power/ready, Orange for Standby mode or Red for over heating.
Summary:
Now, I love the Drobo. I think it is a fantastic device. It does exactly what it advertises in terms of storage and data protection. However, it is not a NAS capable device, meaning to get it networked, you either have to have reside off a networked PC ( like I have done) or attach it to a router with a USB port such as an Airport Extreme.
Drobo is remedying this problem with the release of the Drobo Share which is an add on device that sits beneath the Drobo and provides a LAN port.
Second, it is really expensive. This is before you even install a hard drive. I received mine as a gift, so I cant complain about the price, but if Data Robotics wants this device to gain a large market share, then they will need to look at some form of price adjustments.
DragonSteelMods gives the Data Robotics Drobo a 4.5 out of 5 score.
Pros:
-Redundant Protected Storage
-Easily upgradeable storage up to 2 TB
-Cool Appearance
Cons:
-Expensive
-No built in NAS function
Discuss, Questions for the Author HERE
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