Who hasn't heard of the amazing Drobo?  It's billed to be a robotic data storage device.  Is that just another fancy way of calling it a NAS RAID?  Nope.  In fact, it's not a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device at all!

The original Drobo was a USB 2.0 device that allows for 4 hard drives to be used in one array.  The difference between the Drobo and your typical external RAID box is that Drobo allows you to place drives of varying sizes, and it will figure out a way to make your data redundant in the box.  This mean you can throw in all the old hard drives you've collected, and then replace the smallest hard drive with a larger one on a whim!  While it's at it, if any of the drives fail, you can replace it without loosing access to your data!

When I heard this, I thought it was interesting.  Unfortunately, it only connects to your PC's USB 2.0 port, and nothing else.  Also, many people critizized the slow performance.  Fast forward today, and a new immproved Drobo was released with Firewire 800 support!  Everyone hoped that performance increased, and according to Mac users who have a Firewire port, it did!  For Windows users, Firewire did not increase performance because of driver issues.

Either way, there is still no ethernet port for real NAS lovin'.  Instead, Drobo sells their "DroboShare", which is an external add-on that connects the Drobo via USB 2.0 then connects to your network.  The Drobo's performance, then, is similar to it's USB 2.0 direct connect cousin.

Still, I decided to check it out, as I need to expand on my storage situation.  I found it for $450 at J&R with a $50 rebate.  Turns out, they send a Visa Gift Card, which is like a credit card with a $50 limit.  Weird...

So it ended up costing me $400, which is $50 more than what Drobo is trying to sell their original USB 2.0 only Drobo enclosure.

In the Box
When I first got the Drobo in the mail, I found a plain brown box with a large "Drobo" logo on the side.  Upon opening it, the entire inside of the box was painted black.  Amazingly, it was packaged with care, just like an Apple product.  A glossy surface (which turns out to be a box) appears first, proclaiming to be "the world's first storage robot".  Taking this box out, you see the Drobo itself, wrapped in a black foam-like bag.

The Drobo itself is shiney and black.  It is wrapped in plastic so it won't be scratched during shipping.  I left the plastic on so I don't scratch it myself.  It doesn't look too ugly on, but maybe one day when the newness of it all is gone, I'll take them off.

The front door is held on tight by magnets.  Upon removing the front door, you'll see a card with a simple message: "Read Me!"  Behind that card is a reminder to grab the latest software upgrade, register yourself, and a warning that hard drives can get hot.

The power supply is a brick-style part that is pretty significant in size.

Installation
Installing is easy, actually.  You just load it up with however many drives you can first.  I started with two 1.5 TB Seagate 7200.11 SATA drives, slid them in until it snaps in place (does not matter which slots you use), powered it up, and waited.

I didn't have to wait long as the lights coorisponding to the hard drives light up orange, blinked a bit, then turn solid green.  Plugging the USB cable to my Windows Vista Media Center instantly allowed Windows to recognize the device as a Trusted Storage Device, rather than the standard Mass Storage Device.  It's basically ready for you to go into Disk Management and format your drive and assign it a drive letter.

You can also install the included software, which will give you more control of the Drobo.

Drobo Dashboard
The software is "Drobo Dashboard", which is what it sounds.  It's basically a small applet that shows you the drive's status, as well as the ability to put it to sleep.

Drobo Dashboard is easy to understand as well.  A pie chart gives you an overview of used vs free space.  A small bar below lets you know where your total hard drive space is being used.  You also get a visual of your hard drive's position in the drive bays and their overall health.  A simple "Your data is protected" or "Your data is at risk" tells you right away if you should be concerned.

That's all, really!  The Drobo Dashboard doesn't take much resources and did not noticably slow my system down.  It automatically starts with Windows and shows up as a small icon in the system tray next to the clock.

Performance
While many complain about the performance, I thought it was right in line with my expectations.  There is some overhead you have to consider, since the Drobo has to process the data coming in to figure out how to deal with them to make sure they are writen in a way so that they are redundant.

My test performed with the internal hard drive to the Drobo yield anywhere between 20-25 MB/sec.  Read speeds is similar as well.  Reading and writing via the network (Drobo shared via Windows) performed similarly as well.

I must say that I'm impressed.  I thought I may have to go Firewire for decent performance.  I do not have a Firewire card on my PC, so I was not able to evaluate the Firewire performance.  However, reading online, it seems that most Windows users are only seeing a few MB/s faster than USB 2.0.  This is due to an issue with the Firewire drivers built into Windows.  Mac users have reported around 40 MB/sec, which is a significant speed increase!

Upgrading Storage
I had the fortunate opportunity to come across a 500 GB SATA drive, to which I promptly put into my Drobo.  Just like before, the coorisponding light blinks orange for a bit, then quickly green.  In the Drobo Dashboard, it was instantly recognized and said it was ready to go!

Just remember that any existing data on the hard drives you put into Drobo will be gone!  This is because Drobo uses it's own format to store date.

Disaster
To simulate a disaster, I pulled out one of my largest drive, the 1.5 TB Seagate.  Drobo Dashboard informs me that my data was at risk, and the lights turned orange.  After putting the drive back in, the lights were flashing, indicating that it is rebuilding the data.  It took a while (about 2 hours or so) for the lights to turn back to solid green.

Another disaster senario involves a power outage.  I've tested this before, by pulling the power cord while the Drobo was not in sleep mode (though no activity).  When I plugged it back in, it was as if I turned it off gracefully using the Dashboard applet.  This senario actually happened - about a week ago, our power went out.  Thankfully, the drive is still fine when power was restored.


Problems
The only issue I see (more of an annoyance) is that when the PC does not boot with the Drobo already on, any shares you may have on that drive would disappear.  I would have to re-share the drive or folders.  This may be a limitation of Windows Vista, however.  Either way, it is very annoying since I wouldn't know until I try to access it via a remote PC, and find out I have to walk all the way to the Media Center PC to reshare everything.

It may be not be a bad thing for some, but if you disconnect the USB from the PC, or if you turn off your PC (thereby disconnecting the USB), the Drobo goes into sleep mode.  Waking from sleep mode takes a while.  It's not agonizingly slow, but it is long enough to make you cringe.  I estimate it takes about 30 seconds for the Drobo to be fully awake and ready.

The Upshot
There really isn't anything on the market like this.  I hear the Netgear ReadNAS series is similar, but then again, I could be hearing wrong.  Most external RAID enclosures cost almost as much as this Drobo, and does not have the flexibility Drobo offers.  The fact that you can upgrade drives as you go along and not worry about matching hard drives is unique and convienient.  It is also very cost effective.

If you have a lot of data to keep, and it seems to grow over time, then the Drobo is for you.  If high speed performance is what you're after, the Drobo isn't there yet.

Recommended: Yes