Drobo, the Smart Robot PC Storage Solution
By Alexander Grundner |
April 9th, 2007
Comments (3)
Simply put, Drobo is the most impressive multi-drive storage solution for PCs I’ve seen to date. Drobo is geared to the consumer market, but differentiates itself from the competition by providing an intelligent drive management application (aka Drobo Robot). Some of the notable features include: the ability to auto-repair corrupted data, the ability to detect when a drive is about to fail, the ability to let users add storage drives (of any size) or pull out dead drives while working with files, RAID-like redundancy, and drive status + capacity notifications via front-panel alert lights. Currently, Drobo only supports being formated in Windows NTFS or Mac HFS+ file systems; however, the company is constantly rolling out software updates to improve the product. Be sure to checkout Drobo’s video demo to see it work in its full glory.
Message to Drobo:
Guys, consider adding Ethernet or Wi-Fi support so it can be turned into a network storage drive. Also, add Ext3 drive formatting for Linux users and maybe drop the price by $200 (MSRP $699).
UPDATE (5/2/07): Data Robotics Drops Drobo’s Price by $200
April 26th, 2007 at 4:49 am
Anyone that’s interested, you can save $100 off a drobo at the drobo store by using the coupon code REFDANA
It’s valid til may 31.
May 5th, 2007 at 4:15 am
UPDATE - Drobo listened, MSRP is now $499, and coupon code REFDANA now gets you $25 off til may 31.
June 17th, 2007 at 6:00 am
REFDANA gets $25 off through at least september!