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| Customer Reviews: | | Average Customer Review:
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 An excellent gadget Aug 17, 2008
A great idea for keeping you precious data safe. A redundant type of real time backup system combined with real external HD for direct access.
Very satisfied with purchase
Drobo is a Great Storage Device Aug 12, 2008
I put in 4 TB of storage and this works great over USB 2.0. I was using it with a DroboShare but the transfer speeds were way too slow. Over USB they are adequate for 99% of my use. This is a great product and has been working great for me.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Nicely conceived solidly executed . . . Jul 28, 2008
The Drobo storage array is really very well done in providing hot-swapable, redundant drive space that recovers well from a single disk failure and lets you keep working. CAD and graphic designers with big libraries will find this useful. A Drobo is a great place to put your Solidworks PDM works drawing vault.
The Drobo is quite literally plug-and-play. For those who want to know more specifically which little hole to put their USB and power cables into there is a video which contains everything that you need to know and little that you don't.
Fit and finish is up to the highest standards in the industry. Latches are magnetic and self align. Corners are agreeably radiused catching neither cables nor the fingers that dust them. From this standpoint the execution is top notch.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Deliciously simple, as advertised Jul 14, 2008
The Drobo acts exactly as advertised. It's ridiculously simple, smarter-than-raid storage. I have it hooked up to a Mac Mini and use it for Time Machine backups over the network and for streaming video content to my Xbox 360 using Rivet. I also have a TV hooked up to the Mac Mini and use Front Row to watch video directly off the Drobo.
The only thing that has been disappointing is that when any of my other machines on the network are backing up using Time Machine, Quicktime stutters horribly when playing video off the Drobo. This isn't even HD video... we're talking very low quality. This isn't the Drobo's fault since I can play the same videos just fine in VLC by raising the playback buffer from 500ms to 3000ms. Unfortunately, there is no way to change this setting in Quicktime as far as I know, so Front Row on the Mac Mini is useless. The Xbox 360's default buffering is perfect, though, and video never stutters on it. It's silly that the Xbox 360 can play videos over the network served up by the Mac Mini better than the Mac Mini can play the videos directly.
In conclusion, the Drobo is a wonderful product and I hope when one of my hard drives fail, it continues to work as advertised.
5 of 9 found the following review helpful:
 WASTE of MONEY & TIME Jul 05, 2008
Good luck with the Drobo!
I read great reviews about it. After using the Drobo for a week, I was sorry that I wasted my $500.
Here is what happened:
1. When I got the Drobo, I downloaded the latest firmware first. Then I formatted my first hard drive. After the first time format, I thought it was ready to use. The Drobo dashboard actually asked me to format my drive again in order to use my Drobo. 2nd time format, it worked. Ok, I can live with it but gave me a shaky feeling about it
2. I start backing up all my computers with the USB2. The transfer over 100GB of data using the USB2 took me at least 6 hours to complete the process (leaving it overnight). I am not a tech guy but I know my Seagate or Western Digital external hard drives using USB2 transfer faster than the Drobo. I had the Drobo for my backup on 2 PC and 2 Mac and all gave me the same result. So I can't blame myself not having the USB2 setting it correct.
3. After I did my backup and wanted to clean up some folders in the Drobo (tried both USB2 and Droboshare to delete), the Drobo would not let me DELETE 80% of them (keep giving me an error message). So I reboot my Drobo and try again. Same result over my one week try!
4. I have the Drobo in my walk-in closest since my home network wirings are all there. But I can hear the fan (like an airplane engine) from my bedroom. Not much a problem if you can hide it somewhere else.
The Drobo's selling point is for tech dummies like me who does not know/want to deal with other NASready storage so there is no configuration needed for the Drobo besides formatting the first hard drive. In my case, I may have a better HOPE getting a NASready. At least there is a chance to get my network drive work properly than the Drobo.
Conclusion, WASTE OF MONEY AND TIME with the Drobo. I should have stayed with a simply solution like Seagate or Western Digital Book as my network drive and back it up with another external hard drive (an USB2 connection that works better and faster than the Drobo USB2).
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