| View Larger Image | Data Robotics Drobo 4-Bay USB 2.0/FireWire 800 SATA Storage Array DR04DD10 | Electronicsby Data Robotics
| List Price: | $449.99 | | Price: | $349.95 | | You Save: | $100.04 (22%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Publisher: | Data Robotics | | Format: | CD | | Platform: | Windows | | Model: | DR04DD10 | | Operating System: | Windows | | Warranty: | 1 year warranty |
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FEATURES | - FireWire 800 (FireWire 400 compatible)
- Enhanced USB 2.0 performance
- Redundant data protection
- Hot expandable up to 16TB
- Mix n match drive capacities
- nv:Enclosure Type^3.5"|Compatible Drives^3.5" Hard Drives|Drive Interface^SATA|Enclosure Interface^USB 2.0|Enclosure Interface^IEE1394a Firewire 400|Enclosure Interface^IEE1394b Firewire 800|USB 2.0 Transfer Rate^480 Mbps|Firewire IEE1394a Transfer Rate^400 Mbps|Firewire IEE1394b Transfer Rate^800 Mbps
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
The safe, expandable Drobo storage solution protects your data against a hard drive crash, yet can expand dynamically at any time in just seconds. With nothing to configure or manage, Drobo is now the ideal solution for primary storage as well as backup. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.5 based on 140 reviews)
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Not what you're looking for... by chag  2 Stars
November 25, 2009
This product sounds very useful, and would be awesome in theory, but the actual unit falls way short. Mine often randomly locks up, causing my machine to freeze until I unplug it and also prevents it from booting. It also "loses" hard drives and will freak out. The support forums are SATURATED with issues such as these, but you cant access them until you actually purchase once. That should have been a huge give away. For the ITPros: I'm pretty sure that the drives dropping out are due to either lack of amperage or a short disconnect time and "green" drives.
For simplicity: GREAT.
For reliability: FAIL.
For "it just works": FAIL.
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Slow rebuilds, Slow when nearing full by Bob F. (Hudson Valley, NY)  4 Stars
November 24, 2009
While I have three of these units, both a USB and two FW800 versions, I give it only 4 stars (and if I could 3.5) because of some issues.
PRO: Very easy to use, small footprint, does give you RAID style protected data in case of single HD failure. Nice enclosure design. Pretty cheap for a RAID system.
CON: When getting full, data rates slow down considerably. When upgrading to higher capacity drives, it can take literally days (2-3) for it to rebuild which during that time, if another HD fails, your data is hosed. A bit loud on the fan noise.
I do a lot of HD video and use this to use as a BU file storage. Every now and then I have to work off the drive and if it is less than 3/4 full, the FW ones will handle it ok (not great, but ok). Once over that 3/4 full, it crawls and is not usable for NLE work.
Like most people, digital data backup overload is an everyday problem. I can produce a 100 gigs of new footage/files a day so handling this is a holy grail many of us search for without having to go a total IT way. The Drobo, is a step in that direction, but we need something better. In order to be safe, you have to have 2 of these backing up each other and one needs to be physically stored elsewhere. I wish we had high capacity optical disks (Blue ray is just not big enough and subject to becoming obsolete.) Maybe the holographic technology will come through...or really fast cloud computing backups, but for now, it's just a drag.
Still I recommend the Drobo for general backup...just make sure you have at least 2 copies of your files in different places, and three copies is really the safest (or 4 or 5 :-).
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Ehh, it's OK but it could be much better. by R. Hesse (San Francisco, CA United States)  3 Stars
November 16, 2009
Most people already know about the Drobo, so instead of harping on the positives, I'll go over my issues with the Drobo.
1) No IEEE 1394, but has two Firewire 800 ports. Huh? This is a big FU to PC users as almost every motherboard has a IEEE 1394 (Fireire 400) connection, but almost none have FW 800. I'll pass on USB thanks.
2) Unit spins down hard drives way too quickly. Seems like I'm always waiting for them to spin up. You can't disable this either. You have to buy the "Pro" model to do that (which was released after I bought mine). Insane that this is a "feature." Microsoft wouldn't even go that far.
3) Slow. I get 20-30 MB/sec over USB2. It's just slow, no way around it.
4) Randomly drops/disconnects under Windows 7. It also "boots up" too slowly under Windows 7. My apps like Media Center are up and running before the Drobo has even finished spinning up the drives.
5) Can't resize partitions. This is the worst. When you first setup the Drobo, you have to create logical partitions to go with your new unit. The default here is 2TB. That was fine for me since I was using 4 500 GB drives. What's lame is that it won't let you resize them to be larger once your disk storage grows. Sure, you can use that new storage if you use up all 2TB, but you'd have to create a new volume. This is absolutely ridiculous and there's no good reason for this other than their laziness. I've never seen a RAID appliance that wouldn't let you resize volumes.
In summary, this thing is OK, but considering how expensive it is, could be much better.
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Nice looking product but it isn't reliable by App  1 Stars
November 14, 2009
First unit sent back because one of the bays didn't work.
Second unit started failing after I put the fourth drive in - random disconnects from host machine after a few hours of use.
CHKDSK revealed large scale corruption not just once but several times.
It declared THREE disks as dead - that's an astronomical failure rate compared to all the other disks I have in PCs.
The last disk it declared dead was during a rebuild after I switched a disk - since the rebuild was going to take 48 hours (for one 320GB disk!!!) there's a pretty huge window for another failure.
Replacing it with a JBOD disk array - I'll trust Windows to manage my drives rather than Drobo.
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Amazing by Marcus Neto (daphne, alabama)  5 Stars
November 12, 2009
For over a year I put off buying a Drobo because of the cost. But then I started looking around at all of the hard drives I was storing up. It was getting a bit ridiculous. I could have easily paid for the Drobo with what I had spent. Plus I knew the cost of the information on the hard drives and how important it is and decided to make the leap. I am sooo glad I did. This little black box is amazing. Everyting about it has been great from the packaging (nice touch) to the ease of installation and the speed. My only regret is that I did not make the leap sooner. Don't put it off. Click the add to cart button now and make your life easier...
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