Drobo 4-Bay Hard Drive Array Enclosure
The Data Robotics Drobo 4-Bay Hard Drive Array Enclosure delivers an expandable solution for creative professions and small businesses in need of high performance backup storage. Built on BeyondRAID technology with single drive redundancy, the Drobo protects your data automatically, even in the event of multiple drive failures. Able to hold up to four hot-swappable drives, this system ensures you'll have a high-performance connection to virtually any system with available USB 2.0 and FireWire 800 connectivity. With its unique ability to mix and match drives of several different classifications, the Drobo allows you to instantly expand your capacity simply by adding or replacing a drive. With self-healing and drive redundancy technologies, the Drobo helps make sure your data is always safe and accessible.
- Drobo Dashboard 2.0.2 via Firmware Update
-
You'll be able to install the Drobo Dashboard 2.0.2 via simple firmware update. It offers a variety of features not included in the original Drobo Dashboard, including:
- View of all of your Drobos in one window
- Get capacity and status for each Drobo
- DroboCopy tasks run in the background
- Get e-mail alerts about your Drobo
- Drobo PC Backup
-
Purchasing unit entitles you to free download of Drobo PC Backup software. It allows you to:
- Back up your PC to your Drobo with ease
- Supports direct or network connections
- Supports backup over USB, FireWire, or eSATA
- BeyondRAID Technology
- Every Drobo product comes with the revolutionary BeyondRAID storage technology - the next generation of redundant disk protection. BeyondRAID not only keeps your data safe, but will also increase uptime and availability. BeyondRAID technology offers several improvements over traditional RAID-based storage systems, including the flexibility to replace failed disks and increase capacity, all without costly downtime.
- File and Operating System Agnostic
- Drobo and its underlying BeyondRAID technology currently support the Windows and Mac platforms, with file system support for NTFS, HFS+, and FAT32. Since Drobo is a block level system, it easily adapts to most any environment.
- Mixed Drive Capacity Utilization
- Grow storage to meet your data capacity needs with minimal effort. To add capacity, simply insert a new hard disk or replace the smallest disk with a larger one, even when all four disk bays are full. Unlike traditional RAID systems, the BeyondRAID technology enables IT managers to efficiently mix and match disk brands, capacities, and speeds. This allows for continuous expansion as disk capacities grow.
- Redundant Safety
- Drobo can ensure your data is safe even if a hard disk fails. You'll feel safer knowing that if disks do fail, Drobo automatically enters a state of self-healing wherein it relays out your data across the remaining healthy disks and sectors.
- Proportional Rebuild Times
-
The time it takes Drobo to rebuild data after a drive failure or removal is proportional to the amount of data stored in the pool - meaning the less capacity that is used, even on a 3TB disk, the shorter your rebuild times will be. This is superior to traditional RAID, which lacks proportional rebuild times, and is forced to relay out every drive block even if it does not contain user data.
Since Drobo is 'Data Aware', it tracks where data is on each disk, so it can differentiate between used and unused portions of disk. This expedites rebuild times and reduces your risk of losing data to an additional disk failure.
- Self-Healing
- When Drobo detects a 'bad' hard disk, it proactively advises you with a series of warnings ranging from a blinking red LED on its front panel, to pop-up alerts in Drobo Dashboard, to email alerts. What Drobo does next is exceptional. It enters a self-healing mode where it repairs around the bad sector or disk, and will work until it returns to the safest state possible. If Drobo has sufficient time and free capacity (indicated by all lights returning to a solid green state), it can even withstand additional hard disk failures - that's the power of self-healing.
- Storage Virtualization
-
BeyondRAID was designed from the ground up to allow the storage capacity of the array to expand and contract. BeyondRAID makes this a simple process by utilizing a technology called 'virtualization.' Virtualization provides a layer of abstraction between the data requested by the file system and the physical location of that data on the disk drives. A given piece of data can be located on any drive, and on any physical location on that drive.
Virtualization is what enables BeyondRAID to effortlessly change the data arrangement on the drives, for example, changing data stored as a mirror into data stored as parity stripe, without interrupting the user access to data. Virtualization completely decouples the physical space available in the array from the space reported to the operating system. This is how BeyondRAID is able to eliminate the need to manually expand/contract the file system as more space becomes available or is removed.
- Thin Provisioning
- Thin provisioning is a technical term that describes how the BeyondRAID technology communicates with your operating system. BeyondRAID communicates with your OS about how much disk space you have up to 16TB (this varies with older operating and file systems). Specifying a larger amount of storage than is physically available allows you to grow into the volume without having to reformat or migrate your data in order to add capacity. BeyondRAID automatically also reclaims space as you delete files.
- Self-Managing
- Drobo is highly automated storage. There are no complex configuration screens, DIP switches, confounding choices, web consoles or other complications that prevent so many other storage devices from working out of the box.
- Drive Reordering
- One long-standing requirement inherent in traditional RAID-based systems was that if for some reason you needed to remove the drives, you'd have to replace the drives in the exact same order. When you remove your disks from Drobo, you can put them back in any order you like.
| Interface / Transfer Rate (Max) | FireWire 800 Read: Up to 52MB/s FireWire 800 Write: Up to 34MB/s USB 2.0 Read: Up to 30MB/s USB 2.0 Write: Up to 24MB/s |
| Drive Capacity | Up to four 3.5" SATA I or SATA II hard drives Drives may be from any manufacturer Drives may be up to 3TB capacity, spindle speed, and/or cache |
| Acoustics | Normal Operation (negligible): 20.9 - 24.2 dB |
| Power | Idle System (standby, drives off): 5W Typical Idle System - Idle, Drive Spin Down Mode (1 drive): 12W Typical Busy System (4 drives): 40W |
| Utilities | Windows: NTFS Mac OS X: HFS+ Cross-Platform: FAT32 |
| Operating Systems Supported | Windows 7 (32/64) SP1 Windows Vista (32/64) SP1 Windows XP (32/64) SP3 Windows 2008 Server R2 (64) SP1 Windows 2003 Server R2 (32/64) SP1 Mac OS 10.5.8 or later (Intel Only) Mac OS Server 10.5.8 or later (Intel Only) |
| Certification | Emissions: FCC Part 15, Class B Safety: UL & cUL |
| Security | Kensington lock port (lock not included) |
| Power Requirements | AC 100 - 240 V |
| Dimensions (WxHxD) | 6.0 x 6.3 x 10.7" (15.2 x 16.0 x 27.2 cm) |
| Weight | 6.7 lb (3.1 kg) |
REVIEW SNAPSHOT®
by PowerReviews(based on 320 reviews)
Ratings Distribution
97%
of respondents would recommend this to a friend.
Pros
- Easy to install (279)
- Highly compatible (210)
- Reliable (204)
- Quiet (196)
- Fast (179)
Cons
- Slow (40)
- Unreliable (9)
- Difficult to install (6)
- No power switch (6)
- Pricey / poor value (6)
Best Uses
- High-end multimedia (107)
- Back-up (28)
- Photo storage (20)
- Additional storage (15)
- Storage (15)
- Reviewer Profile:
- Heavy duty user (171), Frequent user (122), Power user (16)
- Primary use:
- Personal (164), Business (147)
Most Liked Positive Review
Drobo shines but still needs refinement.
Things that are great about it.1) Very quiet when under 87% full.2) Very easy to set up, interface, and swap drives.3) Attractive (I actually think it looks cooler with the front...Read complete review
Things that are great about it.1) Very quiet when under 87% full.2) Very easy to set up, interface, and swap drives.3) Attractive (I actually think it looks cooler with the front cover removed), and the lights on the front are cool too.4) Peace of mind is wonderful. My data is secure, hallelujah!5) Firewire connection is super fast and stellar cool (under 87% full of course).6) This thing came in the box with a firewire cable... that was a very pleasant surprise. Most companies cheap out and make you buy a $40 cable separately to hook up your toys.7) It sleeps and wakes seamlessly with the OS X operating system... sweet!Things that definitely need attention from the developer.1) There is no power switch. When you manually put Drobo in standby mode you must unplug it and plug it in again to get it to interface with the computer. Either add a power switch, best option, or put a radio button on the drobo advance interface that allows reconnection to a Drobo in standby mode... what product doesn't have a power switch anyway?2) When the unit gets to around 87% full it is not easy to add additional data and does not function as expected. First, it deliberately slows down data transfer to a near standstill to encourage adding another drive (or replacing one with a larger drive). I was told by technical support that this was programmed into the unit. A firmware upgrade is supposed to "help" this, but it didn't seem to make much difference for me. Slowdown, by the way, meant it took me almost 5 minutes to load 800 mb onto my Drobo when it told me I still had approximately 190 gb available for "data storage". Second, Drobo sounds like a constant train wreck as it is transferring data around feverishly between hard drives. I began to get worried it would burn up my hard drives. Below approximately 87%, the Drobo is nice and quiet and runs smoothly.Keep in mind that this 87% is really 87% of 50% as the unit only gives you half of the size of the hard drives inserted due to the redundancy of the data backup.3) Warranty needs to be addressed. Nowadays, it seems like electronic equipment has a very short shelf life. It may be built to last a while, but why not offer a 5 year warranty, even if it has to be purchased separately? This way one can feel confident that not only is their data safe, but that the device they entrust to keep their data safe is worry free for a long time. 4) Power cord has a huge brick of a transformer attached. How about building it into the unit itself? No one likes those things.5) I know that these things can take up to four, 4 tb hard drives... but how about a model that can hold say eight hard drives? It is going to be years before we get to the 4 tb mark on individual hard drives.Overall this is a good second generation product and if you can avoid filling it beyond approximately 87%, you will be super happy with it. The good people at Data Robotics really need to address these limitations so that their Drobo can be everything it was promised to be. I have faith! This thing is really awesome if you can live with the limitations, and the good aspects of this product really do outweigh the bad. If I had known all this going in, I would have still purchased my Drobo.
VS
Most Liked Negative Review
Clever and good device
The concept and the device really deserves 5 stars. Its great, setup is easy, and the fact that you dont have to manage the data is a huge weight off your shoulders. Its ...Read complete review
The concept and the device really deserves 5 stars. Its great, setup is easy, and the fact that you dont have to manage the data is a huge weight off your shoulders. Its flexibility is also a huge plus. Im using it primarily right now as a time Machine backup drive for my Mac Pro. I installed 3 WD Caviar Black drives currently. The reason I didnt give it 5 stars is because the first unit I got formatted fine, setup easy and although the initial backup with Time machine took a few tries due to stalling and errors (Which may be due to the TM not the Drobo) it finally took and was running fine for 4 days. Suddenly I had a failed TM incremental backup, I shut down, rebooted the Drobo and the entire drive suddenly became "Read Only" instead of "Read/Write" I couldnt do anything with the current data on it, Disk utility could not unmount it, or repair, etc. Wound up having to do a hard reset of the entire Drobo and start all over. Again, this could have been due to the OS, but it occurred right after I did a firmware update for the Drobo and its dashboard software. None the less, I reset, reformatted, checked permissions, partition scheme and all that, and tried again, still failed initial backups. My only gripe is that I called Drobo tech support for help. They are very helpful and polite, but after trying all of the typical diagnostic procedures over the phone, the issue seemed to have extended beyond the scope of the general tach support they had. I was assigned a case number and was passed to tier 3 tech support which was indicated was the engineers and the "Big guns" Well its been almost 7 days as of this writing and I have not heard any response from them. I will give them the benefit of the doubt and say perhaps they are backed up or busy, but I am just a little let down because in the meantime, I am without my backup and have a expensive piece of equipment that is not operating properly. I opted to, at my own discretion contact B&H and exchange the unit for a new one, which they did without question and promptly, but it would have had been nice to have the manufacturer take the initiative and offer to shoot a new unit out for me and send them they questionable one back so that while tier 3 tech support finishes doing whatever they may be doing, at least a new customer of theirs would not be without the product they paid for. Thats it, my only real gripe. The new unit is working fine, set it all back up, no hitches. The fan is a bit noisy in this unit over the original one I received. But so far so good. I have only had the new unit up for 2 days so far.
As far as the unit itself, its nicely designed, it looks like a glossy black loaf of bread with blue lights. Its really easy to setup and use, if you can put a tape in a VCR (haha) or better yet, if you can put an 8 track tape into a player, you can put a drive in, then it takes over and does its thing. I notice the hard drives run a lot, and the fans kick on often, it seems like its doing "stuff" often, which is a good thing I presume, but it does make some noise, and if the sound of a number of hard drives wacking away in the muffled thumping sound bothers you, then dont expect to have this sitting right next to you on your desk. The indicator lights are really so simple and easy to understand.
I was very tempted to get one when the 1st gen came out, but the USB only interface held me back, no this new 2nd gen has firewire 800 support as well as the USB so it speed up the data transfer for large amounts over the firewire 800.
In closing, I would recommend this to someone looking for a redundant and flexible backup. Im not very well versed with all of the flavors of RAID. I just simply need a solid and easy to use backup in case I had a catastrophic failure with my data. I feel better knowing that the Drobo will hold my entire computers 3 internal drives data out on the drives I have in it now, as well as easily allow me to slide in larger or more drives if need be, as well as protect against any of those drives in itself from failing. SO short of fire, flood, or vandals- and for those theres always fire extinguishers, boats, and guns...(Or heaven for bid another wacky read only fiasco) the data should be safe.
In comparison to other similar devices configured with similar storage capacity, the Drobo takes the pie
REVIEWS
Reviewed by 320 customers
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Displaying reviews 1-20
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Pros
- Easy To Install
- Fast
- Highly Compatible
Cons
Best Uses
- Multimedia Storage
Comments about Drobo 4-Bay Hard Drive Array Enclosure:
I'd heard a lot about this product and decided to try it. I don't have a huge amount of data (compared to others) to store but most of it is irreplaceable. After having two back up drives die, I decided redundancy sounded really good. It was easy to put together and install the two drives I got with it. I was a little confused on the formatting/partitioning piece but the Drobo tech folks were right there to help. I wouldn't say it is noisy but it isn't exactly quiet either. You know when it is running but it isn't annoying. I didn't check reliable because I just got it a week ago and that will take time to tell.
- Primary use:
- Personal
Pros
- Easy To Install
- Fast
- Highly Compatible
- Quiet
- Reliable
Cons
Best Uses
Comments about Drobo 4-Bay Hard Drive Array Enclosure:
painless setup
- Primary use:
- Personal
Pros
- Easy To Install
- Fast
- Highly Compatible
- Reliable
Cons
- Can hear the cooling fan
Best Uses
- Reliable Storage
Comments about Drobo 4-Bay Hard Drive Array Enclosure:
This unit is being used with a MAC/ USB. It is effortless to set up and use. In fact, when purchased, one of the hard drives failed in the first few days and the status light turned red next to that drive and I pulled it and exchanged it and when I inserted the new one the drive automatically began to restore data to it. No control programs - no user involvement. WONDERFUL!!
- Primary use:
- Business
Pros
- Easy To Install
- Fast
- Highly Compatible
- Quiet
- Reliable
Cons
Best Uses
- High-End Multimedia
Comments about Drobo 4-Bay Hard Drive Array Enclosure:
I have this product for 10 days, and, this far, I can only say that it's great and meets my expectations.
Its very silent, sleek in design, and really easy to operate. The drobo software gave me no problems at all.
Im using it attached to a mac mini i5, 4,0 gigs ram memory, thru a firewire 800 cable.
It stores only media content (tv and music shows, cartoons and movies) making my mac mini act as a media server to the rest of the house computers.
Its fast and reliable enough to this purpose.
- Primary use:
- Personal
Pros
- Quiet
Cons
- Difficult To Install
- Slow
Best Uses
- High-End Multimedia
- Time machine backups
Comments about Drobo 4-Bay Hard Drive Array Enclosure:
I use the drobo as a Timemachine backup for my Macbook pro as well as storage for movies and photographs (Raw's and JPEGs). Drobo website provided an easy set up link for time machine set up.
I went with the drobo to avoid the complications of RAID and because the drobo claims to be pretty low maintenance, easily expandable and overall a pretty simple system. Most of this is true. I had a hard time getting it set up but it did eventually work out once everything was formatted and updated. Needed to update the firmware for a few things but in the end it worked.
I use 4 Seagate 1.5 TB drives which are slow (5900 rpm), but cheap since I got them on sale. This system gives me 4.7 TB of space which is enough for now. If I need to, I can upgrade to 2TB or 3TB drives in the future. I went with 4 drives instead of 2 because in the end I got more storage space. Play around with the drobo capacity calculator on their website to find out the best capacity arrangements.
Biggest downside: speed. It took 8 hours for time machine to back up 350GB of data. I haven't transferred my 800 movies yet or my TB of photos. Dreading that experience but I didn't buy the drobo (or slow HD's) for speed, I just need a reliable back up system to preserve data.
- Primary use:
- Personal
Pros
- Easy To Install
- Quiet
Cons
Best Uses
- Redundant media server
Comments about Drobo 4-Bay Hard Drive Array Enclosure:
Have had up and running for approx one week. No problems so far.
- Primary use:
- Personal
Pros
- Easy To Install
- Fast
- Highly Compatible
- Quiet
- Reliable
Cons
- None
Best Uses
- Backups
- Media
Comments about Drobo 4-Bay Hard Drive Array Enclosure:
This is the best backup solution around! Very easy and gives a great piece of mind.
- Primary use:
- Personal
Pros
- Easy To Install
- Fast
Cons
Best Uses
- High-End Multimedia
Comments about Drobo 4-Bay Hard Drive Array Enclosure:
It's super easy to setup and install the new drives. It is working plenty fast enough for my use with photo and video via the FW800 cable.
- Primary use:
- Personal
Pros
- Easy To Install
- Fast
- Highly Compatible
- Mac Friendly
- Reliable
Cons
Best Uses
- High-End Multimedia
- Photo storage
Comments about Drobo 4-Bay Hard Drive Array Enclosure:
Set up is easy and works great, make sure you have full size 3.5inch hard drives tho. Drobo does it all, storage file back up at the same time. With how hard drives like to crash around me and possibly you its a must have for any photographer.
- Primary use:
- Business
Pros
- Easy To Install
- Fast
- Highly Compatible
Cons
Best Uses
- Storage
Comments about Drobo 4-Bay Hard Drive Array Enclosure:
I have only had the enclosure a few days, but so far so good. The setup was very easy. Installed the software and plugged in a few drives. Very quick and painless. If only the price of drives would come back down. The setup looks a little more tricky to setup two volumes. I want to do this but have not yet. Also, using the drive with OSX Lion Time Machine has a very unusual work around which they say they are working on a better solution. So, we wait. But, everything else works great.
- Primary use:
- Business
Pros
- Easy To Install
- Fast
- Highly Compatible
- Quiet
- Reliable
Cons
Best Uses
- High-End Multimedia
Comments about Drobo 4-Bay Hard Drive Array Enclosure:
If you need a safe way to store your data like photos, doc or movies this is the way. Easy to install and use. Good delivery time.
- Primary use:
- Personal
Pros
- Drobo Support
- Easy To Install
- Quiet
- Reliable
- Supports Large HDs
Cons
- Not So Fast
Best Uses
- Backups
- Media Center HD
Comments about Drobo 4-Bay Hard Drive Array Enclosure:
This is my 3rd Drobo. I mainly use them for system and work backups as well as to store videos for my media center (using FW800). This particular one is for backing up my wife's photography drives.
What I like most about the Drobo is the Dashboard and setup. It's simple to setup and get running. Super easy to deal with a hard drive failure while still being able to access all your data.
Since you can mix and max HDD it's great for 'recycling' HDD from one Drobo to the next, when I buy bigger hard drives.
Only CON is this model isn't so fast. So I wouldn't recommend it as a primary drive to work off of but it's perfect for backing up and archiving your work. If you want faster I'd recommend one of the higher end models.
I'd highly recommend them
- Primary use:
- Business
Bottom Line Yes, I would recommend this to a friend
Images shared by futuristicvlad
My Stacked Drobos (new one on top)
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Pros
- Easy To Install
- Fast
- Highly Compatible
- Quiet
- Reliable
Cons
Best Uses
- Photography
Comments about Drobo 4-Bay Hard Drive Array Enclosure:
I needed a solution to store my photos, both raw and edited. They are starting to pile up. Decided on giving this unit a try. Loaded it with 4 Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200 drives. This unit was up and running in 10 minutes (It would have been sooner, but I upgraded the firmware and Dashboard software as well). It is connected via FireWire to my iMac. It really is a great solution!
- Primary use:
- Personal
Pros
- Easy To Install
- Fast
- Highly Compatible
- Quiet
- Reliable
Cons
Best Uses
Comments about Drobo 4-Bay Hard Drive Array Enclosure:
At [$] shipped this was a great deal. I fired it up and installed the software on my Mac running Snow Leopard and popped in (4) 1.5 TB drives and have been tossing files at it for a week now and getting all my images and video and other data transferred. So far so good.I put in 5400 rpm drives and I can barely hear the fan when it's running and can't hear the drives at all. After 15 minutes of inactivity it auto spins down the drives and sleeps them.I have been watching Drobo for almost 5? years and the time was right for me...glad I did it!
- Primary use:
- Business
Pros
- Easy To Install
- Fast
- Highly Compatible
- Quiet
- Reliable
Cons
Best Uses
- Onsite storage
Comments about Drobo 4-Bay Hard Drive Array Enclosure:
I'm using my Drobo 4-bay gen-2 for onsite storage and computer backup. I have 4 Western Digital Caviar Green 2 TD WD20EARS hard drives in it, giving me 5.44 TB of space. It run very quickly, very quiet and was easy to set up using the Drobo Dashboard version 2.0.3 software. It's not cheap but when you lose 1 TB of photos on a [$] external hard drive you start thinking the cheapest way may not be the best way.
- Primary use:
- Business
Pros
- Easy To Install
- Fast
- Highly Compatible
- Quiet
- Reliable
Cons
Best Uses
- Photo storage
Comments about Drobo 4-Bay Hard Drive Array Enclosure:
EASY to use, just populate it with a few drives and away you go.
- Primary use:
- Personal
Pros
- Highly Compatible
- Reliable
Cons
Best Uses
Comments about Drobo 4-Bay Hard Drive Array Enclosure:
This is my second Drobo. I have two different aspects of my work backing up onto the two Drobos. I had a mirror RAID module before for one half of the work but it tanked so I decided to get a second Drobo. The first has always worked flawlessly. I greatly appreciate that you can put in different size drives in it. That way as my need for storage has increased and I buy bigger drives (500 Gb used to do, then 1Tb's, lately I'm going for 2Tb drives) I can recycle older drives and fill in the gaps as I go along. Another great thing about the Drobo is support. I was having some trouble setting up my second Drobo and I got great, I mean really GREAT help and walk through from Drobo's customer service over the phone. I've never had better support from anyone.
One review I read before i bought the second Drobo stated that there's no on/off switch. I had the first Drobo for a year and I'd never even noticed that, so that's about as much of a problem that is. One gripe is the Drobo Dashboard. I have and old Mac G5 PPC and using the Dashboard, which I suspect is better for later, Intel Macs, really slows down my machine. So When setting up my Drobo I used it then dumped it and use Super Duper for the daily backups.
- Primary use:
- Business
Pros
- Easy To Install
- Quiet
Cons
Best Uses
- High-End Multimedia
Comments about Drobo 4-Bay Hard Drive Array Enclosure:
I got this RAID enclosure because it was recommended to me by several friends of mine. This is the second RAID that I own. My first is a SansDigital 8 bay e-sata that I connect to my main desktop. I wanted the Drobo since it seemed to be very easy to set up and more importantly, I could use any sata drive and watch my storage increase just by adding a drive. I am using the RAID strictly for my media server. I purchased Three 3 TB drives and couldn't wait to get them installed. When I finally connected everything up, the drobo wouldn't recognize the drives. I was pretty disappointed. After doing a little research, I found out that the larger drives were not compatible at the time. When I went to Drobo's website, all of their current RAID enclosures were compatible except for the one I purchased (the most popular one). Luckily, I only had to wait about a week to get the new firmware to make it work. When I followed the instructions on line (line per line) , I couldn't get the firmware to install. After several failed attempts, I called Drobo tech support and got the answer I needed. I needed a 2TB drive or lower to be installed into the drobo, update the firmware, then reinstall my 3tb drives!?! I'm happy now but I had to jump through a lot of hoops to get this way. My Advice - If your drobo has the older firmware, make sure you have the right drives before jumping in to this. You may have to spend extra cash on a small drive just to use the newer larger drives.
- Primary use:
- Personal
Pros
- Easy To Install
- Fast
- Highly Compatible
- Quiet
- Reliable
Cons
Best Uses
- High-End Multimedia
Comments about Drobo 4-Bay Hard Drive Array Enclosure:
Everything I ever heard of this product was outstanding, which drew me to the Drobo. It is so easy to set up and start using, The software it comes with, Drobo Dashboard, leaves a lot to be desired. It started out ok, but continues to not recognize my Drobo unit. The only way is to keep disconnecting the Drobo. I finally got tired of that. Contacted Tech support, emailed them the info they wanted off of the unit and stated they would be back in contact with me. Here it is 5 days later and no response. I even emailed the guy back and still no response. So I am at a loss on that one. I just use another program to backup to the Drobo and use the Finder if I need to access it. Maybe some day they will get back in contact with me. That's the reason for 4 stars instead of 5. I might have even gone with 3.5, but the unit itself is excellent.
- Primary use:
- Personal
Pros
- Easy To Install
- Fast
- Highly Compatible
- Quiet
Cons
- Cannot recover wo Drobo
Best Uses
Comments about Drobo 4-Bay Hard Drive Array Enclosure:
Mixed reviews on this thing mean buyer beware but it has done what it is meant to do. I think having a true backup in a safe off site location is also important but the ease of this makes sense and B & H has it for a good cost. The only trouble I have had is my desktop copy being incomplete due to denied access in two folders for seemingly no reason.
- Primary use:
- Business
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Replacement Drives
- Price: $114.95
This item is backordered by the manufacturer.
Host Adapters
- Price: $57.38
Surge Protection
- Price: $73.50
What's in the Box
- Resource CD (Drobo Dashboard Application / Help Files / Electronic Documentation)
- External Power Supply (AC 100 - 240 V, 50/60 Hz)
- FireWire 800 Cable - 72" (182.9 cm)
- USB Cable - 72" (182.9 cm)
- 1-Year Limited Warranty (US)
- 2-Year Limited Warranty (EU)
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