11 Comments

Drobo – Fully automated storage solution

April 8, 2007 by in Cool,Gadgets with 11 Comments

products_right_photo.jpgCurrently on the fence as I look through external mass storage solutions, the choices have become even more difficult with the latest offering from Data Robotics. The latest offering, known as the Drobo, is a fully automated storage solution. Drobo works with 4 hardrives of your choosing and is fully compatible with both Windows and OS X.

Drobo is the world’s first storage robot, providing fully automated, infinitely expandable storage that safeguards against drive failure and data corruption. Fully automatic protection: Drobo is self-healing; when a hard drive fails, it reconfigures data to ensure it is once again protected – all without any human intervention. Infinitely expandable capacity: Drobo is self-improving; just add a new drive, or upsize a smaller one, and you’ll instantly increase overall protected capacity without needing to do anything else. Effortless storage management: Drobo is self-aware, knowing where your data is and how to heal or improve itself in the event of trouble – Drobo takes the pain out of managing large amounts of data. System requirements: Apple Macintosh OS-X 10.4 or greater, Microsoft Windows 2000, 2003, XP or Vista.

The external managed enclosure will run you $700 and can be ordered directly from Data Robotics via their online store. Still not sold based on what the text promises? Watch the sample video demonstration.


  • Brian Waldo

    That is wicked awesome! They should incorporate this technology into laptop computers using two drives. I’d buy that!

  • Chris

    So it’s a four drive enclosure that manages RAID for you? Not bad, but not as revolutionary as they’re making it out to be. Not sure about the “robotic” aspect. I’m sure there are comparable enclosures with 90% less hype.

  • http://is.derekpunsalan.com Derek

    Quick. Someone find me something comparable so I don’t have to drop $700 on one ;)

  • Brian Waldo

    I know this comment doesn’t belong here, but does anyone know when the Wii contest winners will be announced! My anxiety is killing me!

  • http://www.jasonblogs.com Jason Schramm

    I must get me one of these.

  • Howard

    Its using RAID 6 with automatic rebuild. Looks pretty cool for lazy people like me. For RAID 6 you can loose 2 drives without getting interrupted… ack… 700 bucks…

  • http://www.jasonblogs.com Jason Schramm

    And they use RAID mirroring when capacity is less than 50% of the total drives. After that they mix in the use of parities. So they combine a few methods, constantly optimize the drives, avoid corrupted areas (because sectors can go bad before the drive dies), etc.

  • C.M.Sevilla

    I don’t know if i’d buy that if i had 700 dollars to spare. I use a Mercury Elite-AL Pro 800 FW drive to save all my data.

    http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/hard-drives/EliteAL/StripedRAID

    You can use it under RAID 0, which is the default, but you can change that if you want to mirror drives or such. The case itself only costs you around 100 or so dollars and you can take it up to 1.5 TBs. While it doesn’t have the ease of adding and removing drives, I find it to meet my needs since I don’t really need to replace the drives often. Aside from this, you can use standard IDE drives with it and it has FW 800/400 which makes transfers really fast. I also use it to edit videos and photos as both my storage and my scratch space, where FW800 speed really comes in handy.

    Looking at it budget-wise, I think the Mercury Elite is the way to go since for 700 dollars, you can buy the case and 2x 750GB drives. However, if you really need the functionality of 4 drives that can be stored and removed, the use of different sized drives, or have 700 dollars to spare, this might be the way to go.

    Everyone has different uses for their storage, so i guess it’s best looked at on a case-by-case basis.

    - C.M.Sevilla

  • Cynic821

    why must my eyes be assaulted by fat people everywhere i go. like we are supposed to ignore the disease of obesity?

  • danaldonova

    If you really wanna try this out, here’s a discount code that will get you $100 off at the drobo store: REFDANA

    (good thru may 31)

  • http://e-gadfly.stumbleupon.com/ eric gadfly

    Now you can get the Drobo for much less.

    Data Robotics, the manufacturer of the Drobo, has announced that the cube’s price is being cut from $699 to $499. And, in an unusual move, the company is offering a rebate to anyone who already bought a Drobo above $499.

    Details of these developments are available at drobospace.com

    http://www.drobospace.com/blog/5/10382/Drobo-Price-Reduced-to–499–Gives-Difference-Back-to-Previous-Buyers/

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