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- morphie, on 10/10/2007, -4/+27$499 without storage. I'd almost rather buy a PS3 for that kind of money.
- budgetguitar, on 10/10/2007, -5/+16What makes this a robot? The slow data xfer rates don't make this very attractive either.
- indyGuy, on 10/10/2007, -3/+11And this is a robot how?
- Tool0317, on 10/10/2007, -1/+8I'll wait for gigabit ethernet. Or at least firewire.
- xorvious, on 10/27/2007, -0/+6Magnets that weak would not have any effect on the hard drives from that distance, the falloff rate over distance of a magnetic field is huge. Yes there is a scientific way to say that, anyone can feel free to break it out if they like. But the moral is you would have to stick the magnet to the drive, and probably for a long time as well, to have any data loss....
- swordedge, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6As I understand it, if you share your data directories, as you make changes to it, the Drobo automajically updates it. You don't update, it does it for you instantly.
- IphtashuFitz, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Take a look at the Thecus N5200 (http://www.thecus.com/products_over.php?cid=1&pid=8). It's got 5 drives so more RAID capacity, and its primary interface is gigabit ethernet. It runs a linux kernel and there are plenty of mods available for it like rsync daemon, ssh access, etc. It can also interface with UPS's and shut down automatically in event of a power failure, and will also e-mail you alerts like disk failures. I've got one that I'm VERY happy with.
- maxsunset, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Agreed. This needs to be networkable. BTW, I dont believe it's technically considered a RAID, even though it functions similarly. Personally, I'm holding out till Windows home server gets out there...
- bromac, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4I just want one that will open the pod bay doors when I ask it to.
- OBKenobi, on 10/10/2007, -6/+10What took them so long? I posted a story about Drobo months ago.
http://digg.com/gadgets/Drobo_The_World_s_First_RAID_Storage_Robot
Anyway, as I wrote back then, the USB 2.0 interface is an idiotic decision. What's the point of RAID if you cripple it with USB? Come on now people, get with the program. - xorvious, on 10/27/2007, -0/+4RTFA, the single drive was faster over the same USB 2.0 connection, so obviously its not the USB that is the limiting factor, but the raid processing. Its not about speed, its about data protection.
- swordedge, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4I wish I could afford one.
- takeo1775, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4I was kinda hoping it was a robot which would clean my room and do my bidding =[ //sad
- sdubois92, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5i'm waiting till it is FireWire
- rocketdog7, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto, drobo...drobo
- sovietninja, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3i expected more, misleading title. this is not a robot. I expected the robot to show up, plug itself in and carry your data around like those lil mouse robots from star wars. instead its just a overpriced hard drive enclosure
- XeRoX2k2, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2sweet! there's a slot for a Kensington lock on the back so you can lock the enclosure to your desk,so when someone pulls the front off and yanks your drives you still have your valuable enclosure securely attached to your desk
- maehem, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3What? No Ethernet or WiFi? WTF?
This is what you want: http://blogs.sun.com/PlasticPixel/entry/build_your_own_multi_terabyte - sacherjj, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2So when the main board of the drobo fails, how are you backed up? When you accidentally delete a file, how are you backed up? When someone breaks into your home and steals the interesting looking box of drives, how are you backed up?
My data is important to me. I run a Linux BackupPC server to actually backup my computers (some of which use redundant RAID already.) Then I periodically create a version of the backup state on another hard drive to put in the fire safe. Either your data isn't important, or you are naive. - rudy23, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2this stuff looks good but at $1000 its not even in the sam league. nor do us distributors seem to readily have it. the infrant radynas at $500 is a much more popular option
- MikeCerm, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Drobo is awesome. Probably the best $250 that you could ever spend. At $500, it's just not happening. For that price, I could get a pair of 750 GB hard drive, use RAID, and be done with it.
Now, if Drobo was NAS-capable, and could redundantly back up all 5 of the computers on my network, it would be a little more appealing. That's what Windows Home Server does, and more, and it's a lot cheaper (or will be when they start shipping it). - Terr01, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Agree. USB for primary storage? I mean, it says the creators emphasized that point...
Maybe they just meant "more central than pure backup" as opposed to "on par with your swap space and common files".
Though to quote the article:
"From a performance standpoint, this is probably not a problem—Drobo's unexciting USB 2.0 performance gives us scant reason to suspect that the system would perform any better if equipped with a faster interface. " - astrotrain, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Agreed... your at the mercy of the vendor... and as I found with other such vendors (ahem... iomega), that they will just drop support without notification, and if you have data on their devices your screwed. Well not really, they also bet on the 'drop support' that users will pay money for a extended contract to get their data off their now unsupported devices.
- Terr01, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1It's the missing T. It's not 'drobot' :P
(Not to be confused with Lobot, although wouldn't it be odd if he had to sync his head at night?) - sint4x, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1What a terrible idea. Get a proper motherboard and tower to support your drives. Apparently it costs less and is faster.
Or maybe I'm a retard and people actually like carrying big ass'd hard drive enclosures around. - repete, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1IF you are using this as your primary method of storage, DO NOT forget backup! I've been running a RAID5 array with a HighPoint RapidRAID 454 controllor, 7 x 250 GB drives and some looooong 80-wire ATA cables snaking out of an empty slot in the back of my server and in to an old hacked SCSI drive enclosure. So sure. With RAID5, you're safe against a single drive failure (And certainly one of the cute things with the Drobo is the ability to fail multiple drives). But you're not safe from a power disruption to multiple drives. The PSU in the enclosure had a hiccup (And later died) and the RAID controller failed two of the drives. Now the array is split in two and the data is not available (Hoping to get this sorted). So the moral of the story is, RAID is not a substitute for backup. Learn from my pain.
- sancho, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I'd buy a Drobo at $200. At $500, I start getting wary. What if the thing fails? Your data is gone unless you buy a new Drobo. That kind of vendor lock-in just won't do.
- bromac, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1You're using the Drobo to backup another data source. RAID just adds redundancy to the backup.
- smurf22, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2usb 2.0 is to slow, fire wire or ethernet is the way to go when it comes to external storage.
- centran, on 10/10/2007, -3/+4People are missing the point of intermixing different size and different manufacture drives without wasting space. This is hit or miss for me. I have a whole bunch of different sized drives. Is the 500 price point worth it? I could spend just as much buying the same drives and building a raid 5. However, with this thing you don't have to think about it or worry about trying to find a similar drive 3-4 years down the road when one of the drive "pops"
- 8ight, on 03/27/2008, -0/+1Wall-E?
- peterjhill, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2the video on the drobo website http://www.drobo.com/products_demo.aspx is great. I definitely want one. I have been considering a raid system for my house for all my movies, music, and photos. The drobo is the product I really want. I'll end up connecting it to my airport extreme to share it via wireless and wired.
I'd rather not pay extra for a built in NAS. I'd rather have eSATA or FW800. NAS will always be slow or expensive. Using the airport NAS provides convenience with something generic that I can connect nearly any USB drive to via a hub. I am looking at replacing three sata drive enclosures with 1 drobo.
if you don't understand why this is easier to use and in many ways better than raid for a simple home setup, watch the video.
YMMV - sacherjj, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1The problem is that this is SATA. All the mismatched drives I have are IDE. Most of my SATA are the same. The other down side is that the Drobo is LOUD. To loud to use as primary storage. It also doesn't work with ext3 very well. So it doesn't work for what I would primarily use it for, Linux BackupPC storage.
- DJMajickman, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I have a feeling that USB 2.0 was primarily chosen because almost all computers shipped out today no matter what OS have USB 2.0 on board. Where as only a limited number of them are shipping with firewire let alone firewire 800. Also for most home users that only have a single computer using network attached storage doesn't make since.
- dimanorcal, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1FireWire has about the same theoretical transfer rate limit as USB 2.0, and the speed of this unit is not limited by the interface, but by the parity calculations of the RAID chip/firmware.
- dimanorcal, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Take a look at the transfer rates of other multi-drive solutions on the market right now. Now look at their price and expandability - relative to the other similar products available right now, this is a great solution (I am not counting noisy, power-hungry rack-mountable units like a Snap appliance here).
- dimanorcal, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1What happens when your 750GB RAID-0 array with 750GB of wasted space runs out of room? Shut down your system, add the two drives, and create a separate, second array with even more proportionally-wasted space? Or would you temporarily move off all your data to a magical second location while you reconfigure this for RAID-5?
The point is this is an easy, flexible expandable solution. - dimanorcal, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Countdown until one of your WD's fails and you lose 2TB of pornography.
- swordedge, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1The point of the Drobo is that it automatically backs up for you. It does this on the fly. NO possibility of you forgetting as it already backed it up.
- UserSpace, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Despite all the negative comments ... for anyone interested, a friend of mine helped them beta test ... and you can save %=$50.00 if you buy from drobostore.com and use the code "DROBOMARKF" ... it expires 8/31
- stufff, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2I have a true 2TB external eSATA box from CFI ( http://www.cfienclosure.com ). The four 500GB WD drives in it cost approx $110 each. Got the enclosure + drives on ebay for about $600.
eSATA kicks a$$ when it comes to data transfer... will never go back to USB or Firewire.. heck even Firewire 800! - astrotrain, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1What ya gonna do with a $400 PS3... use it for an expensive doorstop?
- MRCOPIATECH, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Perfect devise for small businesses that need an easy to use back-up and storage solution that is upgradeable. Most commenter's are thinking of personal use, which for the wizards most of them are, there are many other options. If you have a small business that has 5-50 employees, there is a lot more to worry about that the name or look of a solution, that functionally makes storage and back-up more or less plug-n-play.
- manicallday, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1I'm not feeling the murdered out Hal 9000 look. It looks like it's just waiting to jack my data.
- Microdot, on 10/10/2007, -3/+3drobo is a massive failure. anyone that actually purchases this thing, should be shot. usb is slow and starting to show signs of age. when was the last time you moved a tb across usb? not fun was it?
if they want to succeed with this thing, it needs at bare minimum, one other means of connection. and preferably, that needs to be a network link to allow dlna media server. without that, or esata, scsi, fw800... anything... its just about useless. - rudy23, on 10/10/2007, -3/+2This thing needs to be a NAS with multimedia streaming for it to be even remotely interesting.
- tsilcox, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1eSata ftw.
- bobmugulie, on 10/10/2007, -5/+4"the front cover of the Drobo unit attaches magnetically"
something tells me that that isn't a good idea - CaptSnuffy, on 10/10/2007, -7/+2puddding i need
if i say please? - burnflare, on 10/10/2007, -9/+2I really love Drobo!
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