I needs me a Drobo

12 Jun, 2008 Stuff I Like

You may or may not have heard of this little devil but I finally went and checked it out today. What a great piece of hardware! Drobo is according to the website “The world’s first storage robot”. It’s external storage that acts like a RAID but it is not a RAID device, so then how is it like a RAID you ask? the answer is that it provides data redundancy in case of hard drive failure. What sets it apart is that it does not require the same sized hard drives so you can mix and match any size SATA drives you have ( a minimum of 2 ) it also allows you to add another drive at any time ( maximum of 4 ) without any downtime. That means that you can upgrade the size of your Drobo volume whenever you need more space. If by some chance you have all four drive bays in the Drobo filled you can swap out the smallest drive for a larger one and carry on your merry way without skipping a beat ( you don’t even have to power down the Drobo unit ) all of these great features are what makes it a robot. Here is a video that shows a demo of Drobo in action.