Customer Reviews

Drobo Fully Automated SATA Robotic Storage Array 4 Bay USB 2.0

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

I've been heavily using my Drobo over the past month, using it to host multiple databases. Ownership and operation of Drobo has been, in a word, anti-climactic.

But don't confuse "anti-climactic" with "disappointing"! Drobo works exactly as advertised and is ridiculously easy to install and use. There's no great sense of accomplishment when Drobo comes online, and even intentionally "failing" drives by removing them gets old after a few demonstrations. The thing just works, and hides all the technical magic behind clean black housing.

The front faceplate is attached via magnets. It's easy to pull off, yet plenty secure when attached. I think it's a great design decision over a hinged faceplate, as I can tuck the Drobo into narrower spaces or leave the faceplate off entirely. While most of the faceplate is opaque, there are transparent areas so the drive status lights can be seen. As an added safety feature, the faceplate will not attach properly if any of the gray drive catches are open (an indication that a drive is not properly inserted).

The back of Drobo is equally clean. Evident are the large air holes for the internal fan, and the two connectors: USB and power. No power switch or buttons anywhere; Drobo is a literal interpretation of a "black box." There is also a slot for connecting a laptop-style anti-theft cable (so you can lock Drobo to nearby furniture), and a hole for the reset button.

Drobo's fan is audible, but easily drowned out amidst normal office noise. I've since tucked Drobo inside a cabinet and I don't expect to hear it even when I'm the only person in the office. I also recommend using "silent" drives, otherwise the clicking of the read/write heads could be distracting.

There is some friction when inserting a drive, but nothing unusual. The main source of friction is the gray catch on the left side, which snaps into place once a drive is fully inserted. The drives do not pop out easily, even when the gray catch is pushed aside. Perhaps I don't know the secret yet, but it took some fumbling every time I attempted to remove a drive. While Drobo can utilize any 3.5 inch SATA hard drive, I opted to use a pair of their recommended drives.

Drobo connected easily via USB to my limited-account Win2K computer, installing as a generic USB Mass Storage Device. While it attached correctly, I could not use Drobo because my limited user account prohibits formatting any drives. Were it already formatted for NTFS (or I had Administrator rights for my work PC), it would have worked like a charm. I had no problems attaching or formatting with my home Windows XP or Windows Vista PC's (where I have full privileges).

Drobo connected just as easily to my nearby eMac running OS X 10.4.9. It took OS X about 10 minutes to format the drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) (aka HFS+). It appeared on the desktop as a generic USB drive icon, which I was able to easily change thanks to a supplied Drobo icon from the Drobo website.

The format step brings up my biggest concern for Drobo: portability between Windows and OS X. Drobo officially supports NTFS and HFS+, but not any version of FAT. This makes sense from a technical standpoint but can be an issue for those expecting to use Drobo across both operating systems. FAT, while common and compatible with nearly every current operating system, has limitations that can be frustrating to the unwitting user. These limits include file-size restrictions and the inability to format/use FAT partitions above a relatively low size. Neither NTFS nor HFS+ suffer these restrictions (yet), but Windows cannot easily read/write HFS+ drives, and ditto for OS X and NTFS. FAT can be used, but compatibility will be sketchy due to different versions of FAT and limitations/bugs in the operating system's implementation. In short, format as NTFS for Windows and HFS+ for OS X. I have not tested Drobo with *nix, but it should work with any modern build.

The USB interface should be plenty fast for most people, and it's wonderfully prevalent across the computing spectrum. FireWire, while technically faster, is primarily an Apple thing. FireWire is available for PC, but it's usually included as an afterthought on most motherboards. An eSATA connection would be ideal option for future versions of Drobo: SATA is designed for hard drive connections, motherboard and drive manufacturers have agreed upon the standard, and it is easy to boot from an eSATA device. I'd love to use Drobo as my boot drive, saving me from the headache associated with losing my OS partition. But USB is everywhere these days, so I understand their decision.

Drobo initially installs itself as a 2TB drive, regardless of actual drive capacity. 2TB (2000GB) is plenty huge, and actual capacity will probably be less than that. Case in point, I have two 250GB drives installed in Drobo, nowhere near the 2TB that Drobo reports to the operating system. This gives users plenty of elbow room to add new drives without having to alter any partition settings. I haven't tested what happens when Drobo hits the limit of the physical drives - will it report an "out of space" error, or will the data disappear into the æther? I may test this, but I doubt it will be worth my time. If the easy-to-read indicator lights warn me that Drobo is running out of drive space, I'll just add a bigger drive. If Drobo finds itself with more then 2TB of physical drive space, it will add another partition (aka "drive") to the operating system.

For those who have watched the Drobo promotional video, it takes longer than shown for Drobo to return to a safe state. I haven't really timed it, but definitely longer than the few seconds that is implied in the video. I have intentionally failed each drive by separately removing them from Drobo, and the data was still fully accessible. It's a slick system, and it works exactly as advertised. Even when I didn't make any data changes between removing and reinserting a drive, Drobo still took a while to incorporate the "new" drive. I suspect it's a safety feature to always wipe an inserted drive to ensure that there's no conflicting data between the drives.

$500 is a lot for an empty external drive bay. I understand that there's smart hardware and software contained within that housing, but I strongly hope there is another price drop down to $200 or $250 in the near future. As it stands, $500 will only appeal to a particular audience. At $200 or $250, I'd buy a Drobo for each PC in a heartbeat.

I want to emphasize that Drobo works exactly as advertised; that it is an effortless plug & play solution. My data is being backed up as changes happen, crashed drives can be replaced without any computing knowledge, and I never have to turn off Drobo or otherwise lose access to my data. Even better, I can increase Drobo's storage space by inserting additional drives. The fact that this can be done while Drobo is in use is tremendous.

A lot of smart engineering went into Drobo, and not just in their not-a-RAID algorithm. The metal enclosure is sturdy and sleek. The drive bays are exactly the right size for a 3.5 SATA hard drive. The nearly-opaque faceplate is easy to attach/remove, and does a great job at muffling drive chatter. The indicator lights are effective and intuitive. Drobo includes a small battery so it can quickly finish writing your data during a power outage. The optional software (Drobo Dashboard) is clean, communicates messages in plain English ("I cannot currently protect your data against a single hard drive failure."), and plays well with your OS. (And the Drobo Dashboard software is an optional install - Drobo works plenty well without it!)

Drobo's real worth will become apparent when one of the drives crashes. Instead of being hosed by data loss or requiring a tech-head to swap drives, Drobo keeps chugging along as if nothing happened while average Joe pulls out the dead drive and replaces it with a random SATA drive from the local computer store.

I have added and extensive update at my web site. Please read it here: (...)

Thank you
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I have totally rewritten this review so ignore the past comments.

I was a supporter of this product for a long time, owning both a Fire Wire and the USB one. However too many screwed boots, lost directories and terribly long rebuilds lasting days on end means I am a fan no more.

It looks and works great, until it doesn't. When that happens you realise that redundancy in hard drives is pointless when the unit itself is flawed and can fail to boot or not recognize its partition table. There are no tools to help you. No disk utilities will help you. When it fails you are screwed :-(

I am replacing it with a proper server with mirrored hard drives. It will cost more but I will sleep much easier at night.

If you buy one, use it for BACKUPS only. Do not use as your only data repository unless you want to wake up one day and wish you were dead.

My units? One will go and sit connected to my media centre where it will look "cool" (containing music and movies stored elsewhere) and the other one might become a back up drive, but never again as the main data repository.

PROS:
The Drobo is a great device; it's easy to use because it does everything for you, which means no RAID configuration! You don't even have to have the same brand/speed/capacity hard drives! Just add some SATA hard drives, and it'll configure them for you.

CONS:
It only has a USB 2.0 connection. This is a major problem for me as I need to back up several hundred high-res pictures as well as HD videos from when I photograph a wedding. Having eSATA would have been a major improvement. It would have been nice if you could use it as a standalone NAS device, but it lacks Ethernet too.

Other thought:
If Data Robotics were to add eSATA and Gigibit Ethernet connections, this device would rule the external storage market.

If you want a super easy way to have large storage capacity, or just want to elimate risk of disk failure, this is the device for you. Forget about RAID - this is perfect. Just add disks and you get more capacity. No need to worry about complex formatting, etc. Only downside is that the fan could be more quiet.

Can't wait for the NAS version. I'll pick up one of those as well.

I am a home user and I have used multiple prosumer RAID solutions (LaCie etc). I have had a frightening number of hard drive failures. Fortunately I keep 2 backups of everything (one on-site, one off-site) and so I have never had a catastrophic data loss. Anyway, I have become a Drobo devotee for life. I bought the Drobo, installed 2 hitachi 1 TB drives and I was up and running in less than 10 minutes. The drive is plenty fast for me and it has performed exactly as advertised. No problems, no headaches. I had a question for tech support and I was tickled to find that tech support is available 24/7. The guy I spoke with was easy-going, patient, helpful and spoke english fluently! My only piece of advice is that if you are going to buy 1TB drives, buy WD instead of Hitachi. The Hitachi drives draw more current both while in use and at rest and as a result, they run hotter than any other drive I've used.

I want to add another enthusiastic "thumbs up" for Drobo. This product is as fine an example of elegant design and operation as I have seen.

Setup is amazingly simple:
1. Remove the magnetic front cover, and insert at least two 3.5" SATA HDDs into the slots.
2. Connect it to your computer with the included USB cable.
3. Plug in the power cable.
4. Format the drives using the Drobo-supplied software.
5. Drobo now appears to your computer as a single volume of attached storage ready for use.

Ten lights across the bottom of the front panel indicate how much of the available capacity has been used. Four lights on the right side of the front panel show (via green, yellow and red) the current condition of each disk. You can replace existing disks with larger ones at virtually any time; Drobo detects the change and incorporates the additional capacity.

I've done software development and consulting for 15 years now. I've built numerous RAID solutions (0,1,5,6,1+0). And I'm very happy with my Drobo.

Is it perfect? NO. Could I build something better? YES. But this is not a device for people who want to concern themselves with assembling "safer" storage on their own. This device is here to alleviate the need for the leg work. Some people complain that it "dumbs things down." Or that they could build something better. People are missing the point, every other solution gives something up and/or costs more. Want to be able to use asymmetrical drives, and recognize their varying capacities? You have basically two other choices even close to this segment the ReadyNAS NV+ for $1,000 or the LimeTechnology unRAID which you have to either build yourself, or again buy a more expensive box for. Perhaps you can come up with something better for less, but what is your time worth? Nothing? Then go ahead, re-invent the wheel. I know I couldn't afford to build something better for the money.

For me the Drobo has worked mostly as promised. I started with a single 500GB drive, which I thought would give me 500GB of unprotected storage, nothing was immediately available and I didn't try too hard, instead adding another 500GB drive. Then I added a third, and finally a fourth. I then swapped the first for a 1TB drive, awhile later after the Drobo restored protection I swapped the second for a 750GB, once again the Drobo went to work protecting my data and immediately giving me access to more space. A couple weeks later I swapped the third drive for a 1TB drive that turned out to be defective shortly after the Drobo went into rebuild mode.

This is where the Drobo loses a star, and my primary disappointment with the device, and it's not the device as much as it is the support. The Drobo didn't recognize that the new drive in bay 3 failed, and then seemed to get locked up (likely a result of the drive itself locking). This was bad, but not the worst part, support just suggested I wait 52 hours for the rebuild (that wasn't happening) and then "we'll go from there." No one would give me an answer as to whether the data was protected against the new drive failing. Finally after 70+ hours waiting, I yanked the new and dead drive, and tossed in the old 500GB drive. The Drobo, after a reboot, came back online allowing me back into all of my data while simultaneously going into protection mode. The Drobo has operated normally since. While I can't fault the Drobo for the bad drive, it should have handled it better, it is true that most industrial RAID systems can handle a bus locked drive, even a hot swap gracefully.

I have read the criticisms from non-owners, who simply "don't get it," and a few owners who surprisingly don't seem to either. It is not a replacement for backups, it is not a true RAID solution, it is a Data Robot that serves to protect your data as best it can given the limitations placed on it.

In terms of performance, for me the 12-15MB/s performance is more then adequate, this is a *STORAGE* Robot, not a fiber-channel RAID solution to support your video editing. It streams my HD movies just fine, over the USB into the mac mini and out the DVI or gigabit without trouble..

I'm ordering a second Drobo in the near future, what else am I going to do with those "little" 500GB drives?

I purchased a Drobo initially for just backing up my media: videos, photos, music. After using it for a while, I found that it actually performs well enough to use as primary storage. I have a Mac, and store all my iPhoto, iMovie, and iTunes media on it. It was expensive, but the option of having to back up hundreds of gigabytes of data was overwhelming. I find it is relatively quiet (much quieter than I thought), and very easy to use. It just works. I love the expandability, though you have to be careful how you expand otherwise you get unusable reserved space. Use the Drobolator on their web site to check.

The only downside I found was that it takes a while to optimize once you copy large chunks of data. For example, I copied 200G of video to it and iMovie took a while to come up. However, after that first time the performance was great.

I would recommend this to anyone who wants a simple and reliable way to store large chunks of data. There are plenty of cheaper and faster solutions out there, but this removed so many headaches it was well worth it.

UPDATE: After a week of back and forth with support after my Drobo died, they finally told me that in their firmware release notes (NOT their FAQ, mind you), they have listed using Disk Utility to resize partitions as a "known issue" that causes total data loss. So, while their FAQ states Disk Utility is compatible, an obscure release notes document states it can actually cause total data loss, which it did in my case. I've never been so angry at the total incompetence of a company who is in the business of preventing total data loss. I would recommend not getting the Drobo after this mess. What a disaster.

UPDATE: 2.5 months in and my Drobo is completely dead, refusing to mount and showing full capactiy (i.e. empty). That makes it the most unreliable storage medium I've ever owned. Disk Rescue has failed to recover a single file due to the proprietary nature of the way the Drobo stores its data. The response from their support team has been less than enthusiastic. I wish I could reduce my rating to 0 stars.

The Drobo acts exactly as advertised. It's ridiculously simple, smarter-than-raid storage. I have it hooked up to a Mac Mini and use it for Time Machine backups over the network and for streaming video content to my Xbox 360 using Rivet. I also have a TV hooked up to the Mac Mini and use Front Row to watch video directly off the Drobo.

The only thing that has been disappointing is that when any of my other machines on the network are backing up using Time Machine, Quicktime stutters horribly when playing video off the Drobo. This isn't even HD video... we're talking very low quality. This isn't the Drobo's fault since I can play the same videos just fine in VLC by raising the playback buffer from 500ms to 3000ms. Unfortunately, there is no way to change this setting in Quicktime as far as I know, so Front Row on the Mac Mini is useless. The Xbox 360's default buffering is perfect, though, and video never stutters on it. It's silly that the Xbox 360 can play videos over the network served up by the Mac Mini better than the Mac Mini can play the videos directly.

In conclusion, the Drobo is a wonderful product and I hope when one of my hard drives fail, it continues to work as advertised.

As my storage needs have increased, so has my anxiety level. More and more irreplaceable information (like photos, videos, documents, and music) has been populating my computer, and backing up has become essential. However, backing up to a single drive is foolish; it's as likely to fail as the one inside your computer. Likewise, backing up to DVD is time-consuming and gets pretty expensive too.

Enter the Drobo. It has finally made secure, high capacity storage virtually idiot-proof. I had been using a ReadyNAS drive array for backup and storage, but grew tired of the network configuration that was always needing updating. Don't get me wrong, for a central access server storage, the ReadyNAS is great, but for a single PC or Mac nothing can approach the simplicity of the Drobo.

Drobo comes in a beautifully simple package, and is itself very simple- just a black box with a removable faceplate and plugs on the back. You take your drive (note: 2 or more are needed for redundant data protection and are strongly, strongly recommended) and slide it into the box and that's that. No brackets, just the bare drive. You then plug in the Drobo and connect the USB cable to your computer, and then can insert the CD if you're so inclined (but software isn't necessary).

The Drobo uses an intelligent data protection scheme that goes from full redundancy with 2 drive to parity redundancy for 3 or 4 drives. What this means is your first two drives will give you only half of the total capacity avilable (e.g. 2 500Gb drive yields 500Gb of space), but the 3rd will give you 2/3 and the fourth will give you 3/4. In this manner, it becomes more cost effective to use more smaller drives than less bigger drives.

My drobo has a new 1 Tb WD drive, and 2 500 Gb drives I had laying around. In my opinion, the ability to cram in whatever drives you may have laying around and combine them into something useful is a terrific feature.

Is $500 a lot to pay for an empty drive bay? Yes, yes it is. However, if you have ever had the frustration/anguish of a hard drive crash AND a seperate backup drive crash like I have, $500 is not too much to pay for data security. The USB 2.0 has reasonable data transfer rates, and the Drobo is whisper-quiet enough to keep near your computer. If you find yourself worrying about your data, then the Drobo should be a clear choice.