MX21524
Drobo
4 Bay Storage Array, USB 2.0 & FW800
From 8 Customer Reviews
MX21524
$329.99
Instant Savings
($30.00)
Sale Ends: 5/31/2012 9:00:00 PM
Only$299.99
- SKU: MX21524
- ILC: 094922903457
- Part #: DR04DD10
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Limit 2 per customer
Availability:
Calgary Region
- Calgary NE: 3
- Calgary NW: Out of Stock
- Calgary SE: 4
Online Store: 3
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MX21524
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
With 8 Customer Reviews
1
- 1
Drobo is a good solution, albeit not speedy
8/13/2010 7:20:35 AMCal from Calgary writes:
- Strengths:
- Cost
Flexibilty in ability to use different drives of different sizes
Size
Simplicity of operation
Redundancy of drives and hot swap capability for replacement of any one given drive at a time - Weaknesses:
- Materials - the main body is fine, as its metal, but the front cover is a soft black translucent plastic. It got scratched up when I brought mine in for service, and because I'm a little anal about aesthetics, that bothers me.
Speed - I'm running it with the addition of the DrobShare (so it becomes an ethernet networked device), with both XP and Vista. I find it pretty sluggish.
Noise - I don't really notice anything significant most of the time, but occasionally it winds up the turbines - Summary:
- Good little soution for the money. The only real problem I've ever experienced was with the use of drives. I purchased four new 1.5 TB Seagate drives that were spec'd by the Drobo folks as a supported drive type. They changed their mind a week later, and to prove it, I had to bring the whole device and drives in to Memory Express. Although they did scratch up the face plate during the evaluation, to their credit, they took back the Seagate drives and swapped them for Western Digital at no cost
Drobo, just works
1/29/2010 3:39:56 PMShaun from Edmonton writes:
- Strengths:
- Easy to set-up
Quick and easy to expand - Weaknesses:
- No network connection (extra cost)
- Summary:
- Overall the Drobo is a great product, it does what it says, quick and dead simple. If you have ever configured RAID5 from the ground up, this will add years to your life. Firewire 800 works great under Linux, though your are "officially" limited to 2 TB LUN's under Linux I don't find it a big deal, additional LUN is created when your overall capacity moves past the 2199 GB mark, just need to reboot the Drobo unit to activate it.
Data Robotics Drobo 4 Bay Storage Array
1/11/2010 11:11:17 PMTom from Edmonton writes:
- Strengths:
- - easy to use (mostly)
- fairly quiet
- Drobo apps are great (NFS, FTP, uPNP, ssh, BackMyFruitUp, etc)
- redundancy if a drive fails
- mix and match different sized hard drives
- one HFS+ 16TB partition!
- customer support (tech guys) replaced power supply and USB cable to fix initial flakiness in 2-3 business days - Weaknesses:
- - somewhat slow transfers (low power Arm CPU)
- customer support is useless (until you get through to tech guys)
- expensive ethernet add on
- email notifications require connected computer (even with DroboShare)
- XP NTFS limited to 2TB/partition
- Linux ext2 limited to 2TB/partition
- no power button (but unplug USB to put into standby)
- rigid Samba config - e.g. no read-only setting (unless you create a custom Drobo app) - Summary:
- I bought one of these devices a year ago to replace a file server that crashed as well as storage space spread across multiple computers. I didn't want to go through the hassle of RAID and LVM. I just wanted something that worked out of the box and would grow with my storage needs over time. The Drobo has delivered on that with a few kinks that had to be worked out in the first month of use.
Data Robotics Drobo 4 Bay Storage Array
8/18/2009 6:06:19 PMJohnny from Calgary writes:
- Strengths:
- Easy to use.
Started with 2 1.5TB Seagates and added 2 more without a problem.
It's nice to have all your files in one place - Weaknesses:
- Don't move the unit while it's powered on. Tilted the unit to view the Firewire 800 connector and Ka-Bam!!! Lost all my data, had to reformat. (My fault, but if the hard drives were more secure this would not have happened)
No Power switch, you need to unplug it if you want to kill the power
USB transfer speed at 32MB/sec (52MB/sec on other USB HDs)
Using Firewire 400 added No transfer gain, still at 32MB/sec
Terrible Vista boot cycle, expect 5 minutes with 6GB of disk
Transfer and Standby LED's are hidden when front plate is attached. - Summary:
- Useful only for safe storage.
I had 7 external USB HD's, it's convenient for all my files to be in one place.
There should be WARNING sticker to tell you not to move it while power is on.
So-So Attached Storage Device
7/9/2009 12:12:02 PMPaul Watson from Calgary writes:
- Strengths:
- Protects your data automatically and easily expandable with SATA hard drives of any size, drive sizes do not have to match.
Features both USB 2.0 and FireWire 800 interfaces.
Has a faster processor than the original Drobo. - Weaknesses:
- I've noticed Subpar throughput on Windows XP. Recovery in the event of device failure is extremely difficult due to its proprietary file format, the Drobo's hard drives can't be read by any other machine.
There is no Ethernet or eSATA - Ethernet can be added but costs $200+
FireWire 800 doesn't work well with 64-bit Windows Vista
There is no bundled backup software
The unit takes a long time to start
Short one-year warranty
Overall price for what you get is relatively expensive. - Summary:
- Not worth the money...there are much better solutions on the market.
Almost ready for prime time - almost ..
5/4/2009 6:17:27 PMAnnoyamouse from Calgary writes:
- Strengths:
- - software works in Vista x64
- no noise from the supposedly noisy fan I keep reading about. It could be because I've only had it for just a few days.
- setup was incredibly easy, with various format options available
- no need to match drives as usual array configurations require
- data redundancy is a must for your important data - Weaknesses:
- - I'm sure there's a way to wake the Drobo from standby without unplugging the power connector and replugging it back in.
- takes a while to rebuild data from either removing a drive or adding on, depending on how much data is of course. If it takes about 40 minutes for 28 GB of data to be spread across two 1.5 TB drives, I can't imagine 4 drives ...
- price, but if you do some research, you can get it for a good deal
- space is rather snug inside between the drive bays. If there was perhaps 1/4" gaps between the 4 bays for drive ventilation, it'd be closer to perfect. In the meantime, be sure to blow out the fan in the back as part of your computer dusting duties. - Summary:
- - If you insist on getting one for protecting your data, but am aware about the technical issues other people have had, I highly recommend the IPR just in case.
Does what it says!
2/4/2009 10:29:09 AMGeoff from Calgary writes:
- Strengths:
- No hustle installation
Very easy to use
Multiple options for disk format - Weaknesses:
- No on/off switch
No data encryption
Much slower than ordinary external USB or Firewire drives - Summary:
- This drive does what it says. It protects data against sudden disk failure in a much better way than conventional Raid setup. The catch is drive speed which is far slower than external USB or Firewire drives. The only problem with this drive is its potential use. I cannot use it as the main storage for my multimedia files because it takes about 20 seconds to retrieve an 8 Mbyte image file. This drastically reduces productivity. I also cannot use it as a back up drive for my files because it will be rather waste of investment to have triple copies of the same files, one on my computer and two in Drobo. The only possible use of this drive is as a retirement home for old files, pictures, archives, etc., that will stay there happily ever after.
Works good
9/9/2008 9:02:15 AMBen from Calgary writes:
- Strengths:
- - HDDs do not have to match.
- Just pop the HDD in and drobo will do everything else.
- Rendundancy for HDD failures. - Weaknesses:
- - Too easy, not much to play with. (Some might like this, I don't)
- Kinda noisy when it gets warm.
- When in standby, it takes about 30 secs to wake/spin up.
- No LAN connection (costs extra, see DroboShare) - Summary:
- Really good for storing large amoiunts of media. I have had mine for about a year now and it just works. If you are like me though, you like to play with all your stuff, but there is not really much to play with here. It's basically a large HDD enclusure,
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