Data Robotics Drobo Review

About a month ago, I bought a Drobo to expand my hard disk storage. Normally you would buy an additional hard disk to add storage. Problem with that is that those drives will eventually fill up with all sorts of important information.
Every time you add or replace disk you need to move data around, which takes a lot of time.

The Drobo is an external enclosure which holds up to 4 SATA disk drives. The enclosure can be connected via FireWire800 or USB2.0, and is seen by the OS as a removable drive.

Your data stored on the drobo is secured when you use 2 or more drives. 1 disk drive is used for redundancy. So if one drive fails your data is still there.

The biggest advantage of the Drobo is that the device can 'serve' up to 16TB of disk space. I used the Drobo Dashboard (free application that comes with the device) to format my 3 1TB drives as 16TB. This way I can add or replace drives (without any downtime, since the Drobo takes care of the 'behind the scens' stuff) up to a total of 16TB of available data.

The Drobo Dashboard application shows the real available storage, and when you start to come close to filling that up with data, the Drobo will start to warn you to start adding or replace drives.

Another advantage is that you don't need identical drives as with most RAID solutions. The Drobo uses the biggest drive for redundancy, and all the others are available for storage. So replacing just 1 of the 4 * 1TB drives for a larger one doesn't give you much additional space. So remember that when you run to the store to get a 2TB drive :)

A maximum of 16TB accessible / usage storage would mean that the device can hold up to 4 * 5.3TB drives (3 drives serving the actual 16TB, while one provides the redundancy). Since the biggest SATA drives at the moment are 1.5 or 2 TB you can use the Drobo for the next couple of years. Just add or swap the relatively cheap drives to expand your storage.

Disk drives you take out of the Drobo can you use for offline/offsite storage by using e.g. a SATA dock or external drive enclosures (or buy an additional Drobo (Pro) for those :) )

B.t.w., using a Drobo doesn't save you from fires etc. You still need an offsite backup scheme/solution for that.

And now for some personal experiences;

• The Drobo installation is a piece of cake. Insert the disks, connect the Drobo to the computer and format the thing with the Dashboard application (if you want it ready for those 16TB).
• I use the Drobo for my Lightroom photo catalog, VMWare virtual machines, and iTunes music collection. Lightroom feels a bit slower, but nothing to loose sleep over.
• When using the Drobo in a room where the temperatures exceed 24 degrees Celsius, the fan tends to kick in a lot. Which is basically the only noise you will ever hear from the device. It's extremely quiet the rest of the time.
• eSATA would be faster, but my iMac doesn't have such an interface. Guess the 3rd gen Drobo might be having such an interface as well, because that would really improve the usability in environments where you need to push and pull lots of data.

As far as other products are concerned; a colleague of mine also needed backup storage. I mentioned that I was about to get a Drobo, but he thought the price of the Drobo was a bit high. So he bought an C-brand eSATA enclosure with two 1.5 or 2TB drives (for mirroring purposes).

At first the drives were to big (logically that is). After that, the enclosure didn't like Western Digital drives (obviously, that still happens). Anyway, last time I heared he was still struggling with his backup solution.

Yes, the Drobo may seem a bit pricey, but it's worth every penny (in my opinion).