Two New Drobo Storage Robots

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As you know I'm a fan of Drobo! I currently have two Drobos serving up my data here at home. (see my original review here) One is connected to my New Mac mini OS X Server and the other is connected to my iMac iTunes Server. I've been very happy with the products and the performance. However, Data Robotics isn't resting on their laurels. Today Drobo is announcing two new members of the Drobo family:

 

The NEW Drobo S

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This is the one that many of you have been waiting for. Although the current Drobo with its Firewire 800 connection is fast enough for my regular data storage needs, those of you who would like to use a Drobo for more intensive work such as digital video have been craving eSATA support. Well it's here! The NEW Drobo S offers USB 2, Firewire 800 AND eSATA connectivity. It also has a 5th drive bay which means it can support up to 10TB's of storage/protection (using the current 2TB drives that are out today). 

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The NEW Drobo Elite

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Data Robotics has also heard our cries for a more network friendly Drobo and therefore they've introduced the new Drobo Elite. The Drobo Elite offers the same features as the Drobo Pro but instead of having USB2 and Firewire 800 ports, it has 2 (yes 2) Gigabit Ethernet ports and a USB 2 port. Using the iSCSI protocol this monster can serve up files at blazing speeds on your network and has support for up to 8 Drives and 255 volumes! This would also make an awesome networked Time Machine backup for several Macs using the new Smart Volume feature.

 

Other new and noteworthy features

Self-Healing Technology: The New Drobo S has a feature that when the Drobo S sits idle, it will continuously examine the blocks/sectors on your drives for potential problems. This preemptive scrubbing will help ensure that your data is only written to the healthy areas of your drives. So in addition the drive failure protection you get this second level of protection against data corruption. If you've ever opened a JPG file and gotten the "end of file" reached error or only half the image displays, you'll know what I'm talking about here.

Another cool feature with Drobo S and Drobo Elite is that you now have the option to protect against TWO drive failures. While it's very rare that two drives would fail at the exact same time, it could happen. So now in the Drobo Dashboard you'll be able to (optionally) turn on protection for two drives. Of course this means that your available storage space will be reduced as Drobo will have to use more drive space for protection, but keep in mind that the Drobo S can be configured with 5 drives now instead of 4, so if you need this added protection AND the same amount of storage as before, just add another hard drive.

Smart Volumes on the Drobo Elite – This is one feature that I crave. Let's say that you want each person on your network to have their own volume for storage. You can create up to 255 Smart Volumes. Although you can specify a size, for example 1TB, that space is virtually allocated from the main pool without the need for physical partitioning. Since they are "data aware", deleted blocks can be returned to the common pool of storage. This would be great for setting up separate volumes for networked Time Machine backups of your various Macs. Since you can cap the Smart Volume size, Time Machine wouldn't continue to chew up all of your available space in the larger pool. 

 

Lastly, Why Drobo?

Terry, there are other RAID systems out there. There are cheaper RAID systems out there. Why do you like Drobo so much? Data protection is only but one reason I like Drobo so much. However, probably the biggest reason for me is the EASE of upgrading when needed. Because of the Drobo Beyond Raid technology, unlike other RAID systems on the market, when I want to/need to increase my storage space, I simply add or replace the existing drives with bigger ones and keep right on working. Everything else out there that I've seen/tried would require a complete backup, reformat and restore to increase storage. For me to restore the amount of data I have, it takes a full day. I just don't have that kind of time. Also Drobo let's me have different capacity hard drives in the unit. So when I do want to increase storage capacity I can do so one drive at a time instead of having to buy all new drives at the same time.

People ask me how do I produce so much content and get so much published? Well one of the ways I do what I do is by not having to go for days without access to my data because of a failure or because of an upgrade. As my digital collection of photos, music, movies, etc. will continue to grow, I wanted something that would let me grow my storage capacity as needed without any growing pains. This is why I choose Drobo AND a good backup strategy. Yes, I backup my Drobos too!

 

The Bottom Line

I'm looking to get my hands on these (especially the Drobo S) as soon as I can. Once I have them in house and put them through my tests, I'll report back with a full review. In the meantime head over to drobo.com to see the full set of specs and pricing. Drobo is directly compatible with Mac, Windows and Linux.

Speaking of pricing, I will note here that Drobo dropped the list price of their base unit (the same one that I use today), from $499 to $399. This means you should be able to pick one up easily for around $300 street price. That's a steal for what you get!

 

27 Replies to “Two New Drobo Storage Robots”

  1. Hey Terry,

    Very nice reviews. We just got a Drobo here at work. I wish I had one at home, oh well someday I will get to stop saying buy this, not that.

    Have a Happy Thanksgiving Week my friend!

    Mike

  2. Hi Terry,
    Have a question on backing up, do you just use the Drobo and an external drive for your back ups or do you have another system? I would love to condense all my external drives into one unit and not have to back up to three places anymore, the main drive, the back up drive and the removable drive for keeping in a fire rated safe.

    Thanks,
    Jeff

    1. Jeff, since my current data doesn’t exceed 1.5 or 2 TB’s, I use a single external drive (one for each Drobo) for nightly backups using SuperDuper! When my data exceeds the capacity of a single drive, then I would get secondary Drobos to backup the main ones. I’m just backup paranoid that way and it has saved my bacon on more than one occasion.

      1. For those with larger data backup needs on a budget, you can create another offsite backup just by swapping out a whole set of associated drives in a Drobo.

        For instance, I have backup needs of around 3.5TB. I have a Drobo that lives in a closet on a long FireWire tether connected to a Mac mini master that acts as Time Machine backup target for all my office computers. When a Time Machine backup of all the machines is complete, I can shut down the Drobo, remove all the drives, put them in an air tight bag and mark as a set (set A) for offsite archive. Next I put a fresh set (set B) of drives in the Drobo and turn it back on. Swap out set A with set B as frequently as needed to feel up to date. Then you have Time Machine backup, redundant failure backup with Drobo, and offsite backup of the backup, all using a single Drobo case.

  3. Hi Terry, love the review of the new Drobo units. We are actually a reseller of Drobo and you have more information here than we’ve received from them. Great stuff. I will be linking an article to you shortly, I want to make sure people who follow my site get access to this very well done review.

  4. I hope this means that the droboshare will get an update soon. I have been waiting to jump on that but it is terrible slow from what I have read. I currently have my drobo shared off of the aiport extreme and works very well to share my media over itunes.

    1. The only way Droboshare could be faster is a hardware change so that that it connects to the Drobo via Firewire 800 or the new S via eSATA. In its current form factor it will always be hampered by its USB connection to the Drobo. Let’s see what they do next.

  5. Nice boxes. I have an earlier Drobo myself and like it very much. However, there are other reasons for RAID than backup. I’d love to see the the write numbers on these Drobo boxes. I expect for those who need at least 100MB/s or much greater, RAID 0 and striping still rules that niche.

    1. Hi Yacko – Jim Sherhart from Data Robotics here. As you know performance is always dependent on the environment and workload, but we have consistently seen 70-90MB/s with the Drobo S using eSATA and 100-175MB/s with the DroboElite using iSCSI.

      Regards,

      Jim

  6. Installed DroboPro at my office four months ago on an Xserve. Have been backing up to it with TimeMachine ever since. Someone turned off AC to save $$$ over a hot weekend and that move fried two iMac drives. Full data recovery makes me a believer! TimeMachine is Great. DroboPro is Great. Next step is to backup of the DroboPro via fiber optics to an off site. (Fiber is already in place!)

  7. Terry, I read your blog daily and love it, i have been looking at the drobo system to get one for myself. How easy/hard is it to use it as a nas drive, and does it come with backup software? if not what backup software do you recomend for a pc?

    1. Thanks!
      The Drobo doesn’t come with backup software. I don’t use PCs enough to have a backup app recommendation. So I can’t help you there. As far as setting it up as a NAS you would either need to plug it into a Host computer or buy the external DroboShare unit. There is no networking built-in to the standard Drobo. If you went with the new Drobo Elite you would have networking built-in.

      1. Thank you Terry, you do a great job keep it up. By the way Architect by trade, Photographer by hobby and love, your Photos are very good i really enjoy your work

  8. @Rorey; Although I don’t use it anymore since switching to Mac :-), Acronis TrueImage is an excellent backup software / cloning software package. It made moving to larger hard drives when I was on a PC very easy. They now offer smart backup clones now I believe, which makes them faster.

  9. Drobo’s are garbage. As someone who is VERY familiar with multiple installations of Drobos in multiple companies and home offices, I wouldn’t use one to store anything I cared about. They fail. They fail often. They fail hard.

  10. Terry, if you aren’t using a RAID configuration – can you take any drive out of a Drobo and read it on another computer without a Drobo?

  11. Hi Terry what an excellent Blog!! I’ve been sat on the fence for a while now about using a Drobo I love the idea of “Beyond Raid” technology just am a bit disappointed with the connectivity issues. For example I’m currently using a Thecus N5200 with is great as I can use ISCSI, SMB and AFP to connect to it and it will even power down at certain times of the day, but upgrading the RAID is a nightmare as you have to change all the disks at once!!!
    I can see if I go down the Drobo route I would need an Elite with ISCSI connection from windows (still use media centre for main TV playback and for the kiddie to learn the OS he has to use at school) and a separate box using ISCSI (as the media centre on is not on all the time) to act as an interface for OS X and media sharing such as SONOS. Unless there are any other solutions that I’m missing?

  12. Hi Terry,
    Your blog is excellent. Thanks. If you publish your Drobo S test results, would you include some comments as to what card I might need to purchase and install on my Mac Pro to be able to connect to the Drobo S via eSATA?
    Thanks! And Happy Thanksgiving.
    Stan

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