Drobo FS: Serious, Simple, Sleek
We’ve taken a look at plenty of hard drives and backup solutions, including plenty of USB drives and a few decent NAS devices. Generally, these are aimed at pro users, or at least folks with a whole lot to store- most likely video or high resolution images, as mere audio and text and other files are unlikely to require massive space. And while your average internal hard drives tops out at about 2TB, some people need several times that space, often shared amongst several machines. That’s where a network attached storage device comes in handy, and today’s model, the Drobo FS, takes top honors.
There aren’t a lot of ports on an FS- power, a single gigabit Ethernet jack, and thats about it. Also, the unit arrives empty, and you can either purchase drives from them or use any SATA ones that you have around. Up to five drives can be installed at once, though you will lose about 1/5th of your storage capacity to a RAID-like backup, meaning that if one of your drives fails, you won’t lose any data (you can choose more redundancy and lose more space should you wish). We simulated this, and were able to confirm- the system notifies you of the issue, you pop out the bad drive, swap in a new one, and wait a while as the Drobo reconfigures itself. This can take a while, but is automatic. One upside to their proprietary system is that you can mix and match drive brands and even sizes with no issues (something impossible with normal RAID). On the other hand, you can’t use Drobo-formatted drives with other systems.
Generally, it just works- no real configuration is necessary. Installing the software is a breeze, on Windows and Mac at least, and network shares are automatically setup. There isn’t USB support, either for external devices, storage expansion, or data transfer, nor is there wireless. The FS just stores data, a lot of it, and does so with aplomb. We hasten to add that it does have other abilities- you can install apps of a sort- but we wouldn’t recommend buying a Drobo for it’s other capabilities. We liked the alert emails that you can setup, and we loved the design- small, sleek, black and nicely shiny. The apps though, in selection and setup, left something to be desired. Setting up an FTP server, say, isn’t too hard… just enable apps, download the archive, drop it into a specific folder, and it will install… when you reboot the NAS. We heard about using the FS as a BitTorrent machine, a definite selling point, but it took quite a bit of work to get running. Although it’s running great now, you need to get onto the Drobo forums, find the right thread, and find a third-party link to download the package. Alas, you can’t even register for the forums without a valid Drobo serial number!
At $600 or more, without drives, this device is at the high-end of the market, and lacks some of the features found in other models. But it brings unparalleled flexibility, reliability, and undeniable sexiness to the world of storage appliances.
