Crave

The new DroboPro storage device from Data Robotics.

(Credit: Data Robotics)

I reviewed the Drobo awhile ago and was very impressed with Data Robotics' proprietary BeyondRAID technology used in the device.

Basically, it lets you mix hard drives of any capacity together into a volume that's well-balanced between the largest possible amount of storage and maximum data redundancy. While the Drobo's performance didn't meet our expectations, its technology offers a lot of potential.

Data Robotics on Tuesday expanded that potential into an all new product for the business environment, the DroboPro.

This is the company's first foray into the business sector, and it calls the DroboPro the "business class storage array that manages itself."

Data Robotics' DroboPro storage solution--photos

Much like the Drobo, the DroboPro also allows for mixing hard drives of different capacities, and you can hot-swap any of them without having to restart or interrupt the data access. This translates into no-downtime expansion of the storage volume. Moreover, unlike the Drobo, the DroboPro now includes protection against multiple concurrent drive failures.

While the Drobo is a pure external direct attach storage (DAS) device with USB 2.0 and FireWire 800 connections, the DroboPro also includes the iSCSI interface (via a Gigabit Ethernet connection). This makes the DroboPro one of a few hybrid devices that support both network attached storage and DAS. As you need to buy the DroboShare to make the Drobo work with a network, personally, I think the addition of the network port is the most welcome feature of the DroboPro.

We're trying to be more timely with our episode releases, but we'll see if it hold up.

This week I geek out on The Dark Knight and the Watchmen trailer. Seriously though, I want to have each of these thing's babies and I am not ashamed in saying that.

Also, Dong tries to make talking about the second-generation Drobo interesting. You can check to see if he succeeds (I help him).

Check out previous episodes here.

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The new Drobo has the same physical design and functionality as the original Drobo that came out a year ago but is faster, cooler, and more quiet.

(Credit: Drobo Robotics)

One year after the first release of the first Drobo that won our Editors' Choice award, and a few days after the release of the beta SDK, Drobo Robotics today announced its second revision of the product.

For those of you who don't know, Drobo is the world's first, and for now still the only, solution for external storage that automatically and intelligently takes care of your data with minimal input from you. All you have to do is install the hard drives, which is as easy as inserting a CD into the CD-ROM drive. The Drobo protects your data with Drobo Robotics' proprietary technology that guarantees the integrity of your data, as long as no more than one hard drive needs to be replaced at a time. It can also predict when you should replace a hard drive before the drive actually fails.

Out of the box, the new Drobo has the same shape and design as the first-generation Drobo featuring four drive bays--each can take an SATA hard drive of any capacity from any vendor; a storage gauge that tells how much storage space has been used; and an array of big, bright LED lights that tell the status of each hard drive. However, on the inside, the new Drobo has some major improvements.

The Drobo FireWire Edition comes with two FireWire ports in addition to the USB 2.0 port.

(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET Networks)

First and foremost, in addition to the USB 2.0 connection, it now also comes with FireWire connections. For this reason, the new Drobo's unofficial name is "Drobo FireWire Edition." The device works with both FireWire 400 and FireWire 800; however, it comes with only the FireWire 800 cable. If you want to use it with a FireWire 400, you will need a separate cable that links the Drobo's FireWire 800 port to the computer's FireWire 400 port. The addition of these ports make the device even more Mac-friendly and work much better with bandwidth intensive applications such as Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, and Logic Studio.

Secondly, the Drobo FireWire Edition comes with a processor that allows faster throughput speed, especially when using the FireWire 800 connection. The faster processor also makes it less time-consuming when the drive needs to rebuild one of its hard drives in case of hard drive failure.

Lastly, the new Drobo has a better ventilation system that helps it work cooler and quietly. Nonetheless, I tried out the product and its fan does produce relatively noticeable noise to those who stand nearby.

Other than that, the Drobo FireWire Edition functions exactly the same as the original Drobo and, still, it's not cheap. With no hard drive included, the new Drobo is priced at the same as that of the original a year ago. It also comes in 2TB (2x1TB drives) and 4TB (4x1TB drives) versions that cost $899 and $1,299 respectively. Make sure you check back at CNET.com for the in-depth review before making a purchase. In the meantime, the original USB 2.0-only Drobo, will still be available for a limited time at the discounted price of $349, with no hard drive included.

Drobo, the world's first storage robot.

(Credit: Drobo Robotics)

In an effort to keep up (and possibly even surpass) other feature-rich NAS devices, such as the Synology DS107+ or the HP MV2120, Drobo Robotics today released to the Drobo Developer Community (DDC) the beta SDK for its ever popular Drobo products including Drobo, the external hard drive, and DroboShare, the network storage add-on.

The 18MB SDK includes a special firmware version for DroboShare that provides support for installing third-party applications and a sample application, which is an open-source UPnP Media Server. This means once installed, the DroboShare will allow UPnP-enabled devices, like Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, to access and play multimedia content stored on the Drobo external hard drive. Going forward, the SDK will support more standards and types of applications including: iTunes Music Server, Rsync, FTP, Web, Squeeze Center, and so on.

In addition to supporting DroboShare, the SDK comes with extras for the Drobo external hard drive. Immediately available with this release are a Linux version Drobo Dashboard and a utility that allows Windows to show Drobo's actual storage size. Going forward, you will be able to even create certain manipulations to the Drobo's hardware, such as changing the usage of the Drobo's LED lights.

You can register to be a member of DDC and download the beta SDK right now and start further robotizing the Drobo your own way.

I'm giving up Drobo and DroboShare--cold turkey.

(Credit: Matt Elliott/CNET Networks)

I'm hooked on network attached storage and need a fix. You see, I've been testing out DroboShare this week, and I quickly grew accustomed to having a simple, always connected backup device and a stash of mixed media freely available on my home network. As I boxed up my Drobo and DroboShare loaners this morning to send back to Data Robotics, I began debating whether I could justify dropping $700 for a networked storage device, which would also involve me purchasing at least two high-capacity hard drives.

My current backup situation is not what you would call elegant. I have a pile of external hard drives that I occasionally dig out of a desk drawer and connect to my PC or laptop. I use one drive to back up my iTunes library, another to back up my digital photos, and another where I keep backups of home videos. I then have a larger Western Digital drive where I keep backup copies up everything. It may take a while to get there, but it does qualify as redundant storage.

My current backup system isn't pretty but it works.

(Credit: Matt Elliott/CNET Networks)

For $500 (plus the cost of two, three, or four hard drives), Drobo gives me redundant storage without having to think about it. For another $200, the DroboShare companion piece lets me put my Drobo volume on my network. And I really like being able to access my entire music library and digital photos from any PC in the house.

The Drobo and DroboShare duo is certainly superior in every way to my current system, but do its benefits add up to $700? I'm not so sure. Drobo's automated and flexible RAID-like technology is tempting, and its storage expansion is as simple as popping in a new hard drive. DroboShare's ridiculously simple setup and maintenance puts other NAS products to shame. And the product design is excellent, even down to the packaging. No other NAS product comes close to matching Drobo's offerings, which is why Data Robotics can set the price where it sees fit. If Drobo itself included an Ethernet jack and, perhaps, threw in a 500GB hard drive to get me started, I could probably come up with around $400 and feel good about purchasing it.

Any Drobo users out there? If so, are you also using DroboShare? Can you help me find a justification for dropping $700 on the pair? Any other would-be Drobo users sitting on the fence? Are you waiting for a price drop or features to get added before taking the plunge, or did you go with another NAS product? I welcome you to comment below.

The Drobo storage device has always intrigued me as a backup server that is smarter and more flexible than the RAID box you would typically cobble together with an old PC. But without network ability it seemed like half a product: powerful storage logic shackled to lame connectivity. That's largely been fixed with the launch of DroboShare, a companion piece for the Drobo server that allows it to be network-attached.

The DroboShare mounted under a Drobo storage device

(Credit: Data Robotics Inc.)

DroboShare is a pricey add-on at $199, but it has gigabit Ethernet and is compatible with NTFS, HFS+, EXT3, and FAT32 file architectures, the last a nice addition we lamented the absence of in our original review. Support for a maximum 8TB capacity can be accomplished today by using two separate Drobo units loaded with four 1TB drives each and connecting both to a single DroboShare.

DroboShare is almost there. For the price, it should have pre-n Wi-Fi built in, as well. I mean come on, this is basically a gigabit NIC, USB 2.0 chip and a little firmware to translate four drive formats. That ain't $200. And it should have a more elegant way to connect to the Drobo than a USB jumper cable. But like Apple, Sonos, and B&O, the Drobo folks are trying to harvest a cult, not a value-aware consumer.

If you are sophisticated enough to appreciate the qualities of Drobo architecture you should also crave networked storage, so I imagine DroboShare will be a hit. For now, my home-built RAID boxes are working very well.