The Drobo Goes Turbo
They say time is money. They also say time is of the essence. When it comes to data transfer, it can also be painfully slow. To rectify this problem, the kind folks at Data Robotics have complimented the existing USB 2.0 port on their popular 'storage robot' - a.k.a. the Drobo - with FireWire-800 connectivity, which depending on the tilt of Jupiter and whether the Mets are trouncing the Yankees, should roughly double the data transfer speeds over the previous model.
Measuring a mere 6.1 x 10.5 x 6.1", the Drobo allows up to four 3.5" SATA I or SATA II hard disk drives (full or half-height) from any manufacturer, and in any combination of capacities, spindle speed, or cache.
 The importance of reliable storage backup should be a no-brainer for anyone dealing with digital files, be they documents or images. If you've ever had a hard-drive crash on you I need not go further. In the best scenario, you have to pay a small fortune to have somebody rescue your data. In the worst scenarios, you're totally skunked. Like a trapeze artist who plays to crowds without a safety net, if something goes wrong it ain't pretty.
What makes the Drobo particularly cool is how it manages and protects the data within its confines. Without need of additional management software or RAID levels, the Drobo is preprogrammed to automatically format new drives, repair damaged or corrupt disks, as well as automatically expand and/or consolidate data as you add or remove individual drives without need of reconfiguring the system.
As for storage capacities Data Robotics lists the following specs…
- Four 250GB Drives – approx 1.0TB (696GB of usable protected space)
- Four 500GB Drives – approx 2.0TB (1.4TB of usable protected space)
- Four 750GB Drives – approx 3.0TB (2.0TB of usable protected space)
- Four 1.0 TB Drives – approx 4.0TB (2.7TB of usable protected space)
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| A rear view of the Drobo |
One of the nice things about the Drobo is the ability to use drives of mixed capacity, something which the rigid RAID 5 file structure does not allow. While this may sound like an opportunity to bring those older drives you're using as doorstops into modern use, you should be aware that the Drobo delivers the most efficient use of space when using four drives of uniform capacity. Case in point: Four 500GB drives will give you 1.4TB, but a mix of two 500GB, one 750GB, and one 1TB drive only nets 1.6TB of usable space – the additional 750GB of physical capacity only nets a 200GB increase in usable capacity. If you are looking to use existing drives with the Drobo, make sure you run your planned configuration through the company's Drobolator, the web site allows you to populate a virtual Drobo with drives, showing how much space is available in different configurations.
The Drobo makes good use of color LEDs for identifying the current status of each drive. Green lights signify all is A-OK, Yellow lets you know you're running low on storage space, Red lets you know the drive is full, and a Flashing Red light means "buckle your seatbelt neighbor 'cause we're goin' down".
The good folks at Drobo have also made an open SDK (Software Developer's Kit) available to the public. This SDK allows anyone to create their own applications for the use with the Drobo. Several applications are already available, including a Linux version of the Drobo Dashboard software. If you are interested in writing software for the device, or would simply like more information, check out the Drobo Developer Community web site.
If you share data with others within a local Mac, Windows, or Linux* driven LAN network, the DroboShare is well worth investigating as a companion device. Usable with up to two Drobo units, the DroboShare enables automated network file management, safeguards your data, while allowing for up to 8TB of data storage, and up to 32TB as larger disk drives become available.
* Currently in Beta.
For a list of all products highlighted in this article, click here
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