General Features

Protection From Drive Failure

The Drobo 5C protects your data from a single or dual hard drive failures. In the case of a drive failure, Drobo will immediately rebuild data using the remaining available space. In the background, Drobo performs "data scrubbing and self-healing," which means it validates your data and repairs any inconsistencies.

Power Protecting Your Critical Data

Drobo doesn't just protect against drive failures, but also from potential data loss after a power outage. The Drobo 5C includes advanced battery backup technology that helps protects data in memory or cache. During a sudden power loss, Drobo protects in-progress operations by saving them to an internal SSD. The operations are resumed and written to the disks once power is restored. This helps ensure important information is safe and sound. The battery recharges itself and is designed to last for the life of your Drobo.

Economical Capacity Expansion

The Drobo 5C supports volume sizes up to 64TB and allows for expansion into this size. You can grow in to this, and provide only the capacity you need today. When more storage space is needed, simply add another drive, or replace a drive with a larger one. Drobo allows you to mix and match hard drives of virtually any size or brand. This empowers you to buy suitable drives when you need more space, instead of paying today for capacity you will not need until the future.

Second Volume for Backups or Full Disk Encryption

The Drobo 5C allows for a second, fixed volume size and limits the amount of storage space you specify for the second volume. The rest of the capacity is available for storing other files.

Two Ways to Use a Second Volume:
1. Apple's Time Machine: Specify the maximum size Time Machine can use for its versioned backups. This solves the problem of Time Machine slowly consuming all space on a drive.
2. Encrypted Hard Drive: Some information requires additional protection. A second volume can create an encrypted disk using Windows and OS X / macOS tools. Sensitive data is protected with a password. Access to sensitive data is password protected.

Simple Setup - No Tools Needed

With the Drobo 5C, 3.5" hard drives slide right into the drive bays. No metal drive carriers or assembly screws are necessary, unless 2.5" drives are being used. The Drobo chassis is constructed of metal and the magnetic front cover is easy to install or remove.

As Easy as Reading a Traffic Light

Lights on the front show alerts of what's happening, making monitoring your Drobo 5C as easy as reading a traffic light. Green, yellow, or red lights show the drive status, and each blue LED light along the bottom represents 10% utilization, showing how much capacity is consumed. Unsure of what the lights mean? Simply take off the magnetic cover and all the information can be found on the back:

"Actions Required" Indicators
- Green: No action needed, system is healthy
- Solid Yellow: Add or upsize a drive here soon, the Drobo is over 85% full
- Blinking Green and Yellow: Don't remove any drives, operate normally. Drobo is optimizing the data layout. You can still perform read and write operations during optimization
- Solid Red: Add or upsize a drive here now
- Blinking Red: Replace this drive immediately, as it has failed. Depending on the capacity of your Drobo 5C, your data could be at risk until you replace this drive