Drobo

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Drobo

Manufacturer	Data Robotics, Inc
Type	USB 2.0 Direct Attached Storage
Connectivity	USB 2.0
Dimensions	6 x 6.3 x 10.7" (15.2 x 16 x 27.2 cm)
Weight	6.7 lb (3.1 kg)

Drobo is a data storage peripheral, developed by Data Robotics, Inc., which interfaces up to four 3.5" SATA hard drives with a computer via High-Speed USB 2.0 (no FireWire or eSATA). It is primarily designed to allow installation and removal of storage devices without requiring manual data migration, and also for increasing storage capacity of the unit without downtime. The Drobo has US and European resellers and has been reviewed by the computer press.^[1]

1 Features
2 Criticism
3 External links
4 References

[edit] Features

Data protection for all drives, as Drobo controls any access to the data
Recognizes and utilizes newly added storage devices on the fly
The SATA drives do not need to be matched in terms of capacity, speed, or manufacturer.
Appears as one unified drive to the host operating system, although it will always show as 2TB of space, regardless of the size or number of drives installed, without installation of the management software on the host.
Supported file systems: HFS Plus, NTFS, and FAT32

[edit] Criticism

The Drobo was criticized for lacking an integrated Ethernet port, preventing it from being used as a self-contained Network-attached storage (NAS) appliance. Instead, it could only be connected to a computer, router or dedicated NAS appliance via a USB cable, relying on that device's network connection for access. Later, Data Robotics released a new product - the DroboShare - which connected to the Drobo, turning it into a full-fledged NAS appliance.

Due in part to the bandwidth limitations of USB, transfer speeds are lower than they could be if the Drobo had IEEE 1394 or eSATA.