Which Drobo is Right for You?

The Drobo “5” Series has been designed for media creators and data storage professionals who are looking for fast, expandable, and flexible data storage and protection for large media collections and performance-demanding applications. However, since different users have different needs, which member of the Drobo “5” family is right for you—the 5D, 5Dt, or 5N?

The Drobo 5D is equipped with five tool-less and carrier-less 3.5" drive bays that support 3.5" and 2.5" SATA III 6 Gb/s and SATA II 3 Gb/s hard drives with a 2.5-3.5" converter dock, and SSDs. The 5D offers connectivity options using dual Thunderbolt ports, providing bi-directional transfer speeds of 10 Gb/s, as well as one 5 Gb/s USB 3.0 port. While one Thunderbolt port is used to interface with your host system, the other can be used to daisy-chain up to six Thunderbolt devices, including a display. There is also an mSATA drive bay that, when equipped with a separately sold mSATA SSD, fuels Drobo’s Accelerator Cache, which caches frequently accessed data, helping to deliver it even faster.

For those seeking faster data-transfer rates than the 5D can provide, look no further than the 5Dt. While very similar to the 5D, the 5Dt, or Turbo Edition, has been upgraded with Thunderbolt 2 connectivity, allowing bi-directional transfer speeds of up to 20 Gb/s. While the 5Dt retains the USB 3.0 port and five 3.5" SATA III drive bays, it includes an mSATA SSD within the Accelerator Bay, thus enabling Drobo’s Accelerator Cache. The 5Dt’s Thunderbolt 2 ports also support the daisy-chaining of up to six Thunderbolt 2 devices, including support for a display, with the display support for Mac OS X having been upgraded to 4K.

Drobo’s offerings in the “5” series are rounded out with the 5N, which uses its Gigabit Ethernet port to share storage and access data over a network. Once it is plugged into a switch, wireless router, or even your computer, its ready to use and requires no additional configuration. Aside from its Gigabit Ethernet port, the 5N does not contain any other connectivity interfaces, but retains most of the design built into the 5D and 5Dt, such as five 3.5" SATA III drive bays and Drobo’s Accelerator Cache, although the 5N does not include the mSATA SSD and does not allow daisy-chaining.

The Drobo 5D, 5Dt, and 5N operate using BeyondRAID technology, which helps to protect your data using single or dual-drive redundancy and requires no user interaction, even in the event of multiple drive failures. If a drive needs to be replaced due to failure or storage expansion, this can be done on the fly by either adding a drive to an empty bay, or removing a smaller drive and replacing it with a larger one. When combined with its integrated Dashboard, which is used to manage all your Drobo devices, Drobo provides several options for office, home, and production environments.

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