Comments on: Drobo – Fully automated storage solution

By: eric gadfly

eric gadfly — Thu, 03 May 2007 19:23:17 +0000

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/

By: danaldonova

danaldonova — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 12:54:05 +0000

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)

By: Cynic821

Cynic821 — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 16:49:32 +0000

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

By: C.M.Sevilla

C.M.Sevilla — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 07:00:56 +0000

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

By: Jason Schramm

Jason Schramm — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 16:23:54 +0000

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.

By: Howard

Howard — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 16:23:38 +0000

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…

By: Jason Schramm

Jason Schramm — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 16:21:53 +0000

I must get me one of these.

By: Brian Waldo

Brian Waldo — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 16:01:42 +0000

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!

By: Derek

Derek — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 15:47:29 +0000

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

By: Chris

Chris — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 15:46:45 +0000

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.