Do you have big storage needs for your home office or small business? Do you want your data to be protected against loss or corruption? Do you want to be able to add storage space at the pace you dictate? If your answer to any or all of these questions is yes, Data Robotics has the perfect product for you.
Billed as the "World's First Storage Robot," the DROBO is a NAS-like (Network Attached Storage) appliance that connects to your network or directly to your computer. It acts as a large external hard drive to store all kinds of data. The unit has room for four standard size PC hard drives inside and you can swap them out with the unit powered on. The unit itself manages all of the storage configuration. You simply pop in the drives you want, tell the DROBO how you want it to function, and it automatically arranges the storage inside to meet your usage requirements. It can be used with Linux, PC and Mac. It is a nifty little appliance that will save you the heartache of losing data or having to upgrade storage space at a huge cost.
Here is the overview from the website: http://www.drobo.com
Fully automated storage you don't have to manage.
As rich media (photos, video, movies, music) continues to devour your storage capacity, you need a solution that allows you to easily manage, protect, and scale storage for your PC or Mac. For you, we've created Drobo, the first fully-automated storage robot to take the pain out of keeping your important digital content safe.
Drobo guards everything on it.
Drobo combines up to four hard drives into a big pool of protected storage. Start with two, grow to four, then upsize smaller drives-get Terabytes of protection.
Drobo manages storage, so you don't have to.
Just connect Drobo to your Mac or PC. No RAID levels. No management or configuration. Drobo does everything for you. Get rid of multiple external drives. Avoid the complexity of RAID. Attach a Drobo storage robot to your system and let it manage your storage so you don't have to.
Drobo upgrades capacity on-the-fly.
Add drives to Drobo at any time. Mix 'n match capacities, brands or speeds. No downtime, data migration, or waiting to access new capacity. Drobo works the way you do.
Drobo lets you "pay as you grow"
Hard drives get bigger and cheaper all the time. Don't buy storage capacity until you need it. Buy capacity "just-in-time" possibly saving you hundreds of dollars.
DroboShare it on your network
Connect your Drobo to a DroboShare and share your data over Gigabit Ethernet (GigE). With DroboShare, everybody on your network can benefit from the storage capabilities of Drobo.
Avoid the hassles associated with managing multiple external hard drives or managing the complexities of RAID. Attach Drobo to your Mac or PC and let it manage your storage so you don't have to. Find out more from people just like you by visiting our Drobo Online Community.
DROBO - Fully automated storage you don't have to manage
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3 comments:
This is for anyone considering a Drobo:
STAY AWAY FROM DROBO!!! Unless you want to LOSE ALL OF YOUR DATA!!! I was loving Drobo at first. It looks slick and performs as advertised - until one attempts a firmware update. The first firmware update I applied resulted in my Drobo volume disappearing. The (Macintosh) Finder recognized the device, but claimed the disk was not formatted and asked if I wanted to Initialize, Ignore, or Eject. Not good.
I called Drobo and they walked me through a troubleshooting procedure that involved removing all drives and re-inserting them one by one. At first this didn't work. I tried it a few times, finally placing each drive in a different bay. Drobo ultimately recognized all drives and proceeded to repair itself. It took about three days.
Of course, I should have ditched the little black nightmare right then and there, but I foolishly believed all was well. Until the next firmware update...
Once again, Drobo lost my primary volume. This time, however, nothing saved it. It took Drobo about 12 days to "repair" itself. When all was said and done, the volume was gone, along with my entire media server library. I still have most of the CDs and DVDs that I ripped, but I've now lost hundreds of hours of time spent setting up my server. I've also lost a number of non-essential files that I chose to store on the Drobo. They're gone for good.
DO NOT BELIEVE THE HYPE!!! Drobo doesn't work. I've encountered a number of other Drobo users on various forums whose data has all suffered a similar fate. Bottom line, if you're a cheapskate and buy Drobo over a RAID solution, you'll get what you pay for: a serious headache and lost data!!! The few hundred bucks I saved on Drobo isn't worth the hundreds of hours of re-ripping ahead of me. And, then there's the data that I didn't have backed up. Gone for good.
Needless to say, I urge anyone looking for a storage solution to skip this nightmare box and go with a tried and true RAID solution. Or, at some point, you'll be very sorry!
Good to hear your side of the story. I haven't heard of any issues with the DROBO units, but people should always be aware that there may be issues with a product. Thanks for the heads up.
I have to agree with robw
Am experiencing similar problem...
Drobo volume disappearing. Windows explorer recognised the device, but claimed the disk was not formatted.
Currently have investigation going on with Drobo support this is the third day and no further forward with a resolution.
Drobo support have not been able to come up with a resolution so far...
My Drobo unit is currently powered off in the corner, and is about as useful as a chocolate teapot... I have spent in excess of £740.00 on the Drobo unit and the drives to put into it, that’s more than $1400.00 and after just one week of use...
All I have is a load of useless plastic full of ironmongery...
And so far no further forward with a resolution, thus far there is a potential data loss in excess of 230GB of data which I had previously stored on separate external USB drives and replicated between USB drives so if one drive failed I would have the data available.
I thought that the Drobo would be the answer to separate external drives... I moved that dat to the drobo unit now all I ended up with is a basket full of eggs which has fallen to the floor!!
Well, potentially the eggs are destroyed and of no use to anyone... Unless they can fix the problem.. I will let you know.
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