Drobo - The First Storage Robot from Data Robotics

As a viewer of DL.tv podcast I becamed a fan of Patrick Norton and his reviews. One of them was of Drobo, The first storage robot from Data Robotics.

As an owner of a Computer Company in Portugal this product called my attention and I started to check for more reviews... Everyone said wonders about it so I arranged to be the local reseller in Portugal.

When I got my first Drobo, expectations where high! The package was great, a little bit like Apple's packing, with lots of cool details! You can check some of the details in the photo gallery at the end of this hub.

The product itself is superb! It doesn't need any configuration at all, it's so easy to set up and work with, and it protects your data in a magnificient way!

That's why Drobo is considered a storage robot—it does all the work of managing an enterprise-grade your storage system for you. No Software or Drivers are Needed!
Drobo's magic comes from the software that's built into the hardware called BeyondRAID—that you'll never need to configure. Drobo does absolutely everything for you from expanding capacity when you add a drive, to self-healing around drive failures and data errors. If you're the geeky type, Drobo has an optional software utility, Drobo Dashboard, that shows you what Drobo is up to and adds advanced functionality if you desire it.

But it isn't perfect, as most products aren't. The two biggest problems for Drobo v1 and Drobo v2 (this one with Firewire 800) is it's connection to Droboshare... This is an USB connection which, as you can imagine, creates a bottleneck... If you have Firewire at 800Mbps and Droboshare with ethernet at 10/100/1000Mbps, why should the connection between the two be made at USB 2.0 (400Mbps)? This is the most downturn...

Another problem is DroboApps. Drobo has great apps written for it, but they only work if you have droboshare, and that's a shame.... I'll make a review of DroboShare soon, just keep checking my hubs!

I will also make one on DroboApps so you can get to know them!

You can find all the Drobo local resellers on the webpage of Data Robotics, in www.drobo.com. Or you can check twitter for special discounts.

If you're in Portugal, you can find it at www.jrpinto.com

If you're looking for Drobo bargains, checkout these Ebay auctions below.