Drobo changes the way you think about storage

Michael Gartenberg | June 05, 2007, 07:28 AM

Storage is kind of boring but also necessary. I have a more than a few hard drives here. Every so often, I buy an external drive in some large capacity for the time for backup and primary storage and the next is scattering of information across multiple devices, some of it redundant and some of it not. I could in theory build some sort of RAID array but there's a certain kind of cost and hassle associated with that as well.

For the past few weeks, I've been using a new device that totally changed the way I think of external storage that finally does works the way I want and lets me leverage low cost and high capacity drives in their sweet spot. It's called a Drobo and while some have called it a RAID array, it's really much more than that.

At the core, Drobo has four bays for external hard drives of any capacity and a USB interface. You just add the drives in and the device just shows up as a 2 TB storage bucket. If you're capacity is actually less than that, Drobo will let you know when you need to swap out a smaller drive with a larger one. Get above 2TB of storage and Drobo just starts another 2tb bucket. Best part? There's nothing to manage. Add a drive, remove a drive, everything happens transparently (I had no problem using the Drobo under both OS X and NTFS drive formats). It just works and lets you leverage the use of cheap hard drives in their sweet spot capacities. While this won't solve the problem of backup or the need for offsite storage, it does fill a big gap in terms of what's out there at a time when consumers are creating de facto media hubs out of their PCs.

In short, it's the best solution for managing external storage needs I have used. It's not the cheapest solution on the market but it's simple, reliable and fast and i did i mention simple? In an age of increased media collections, growth of megapixel images and the like, there's never been a greater need for this type of device.