Data Robotics Drobo S 5 Bay SATA2 Hard Drive Storage Array eSATA Firewire 800 & USB3.0 - Retail Pack

Comment:
This is my first Drobo and I am very satisfied with the product. It's a good alternative to 3 full EHD of 3tb. The setup was very easy.I never had any problem with it.I recommend this product to every one who's looking for a big secure array storage.Unfortunately, the usb3.0 is not that fast. I guess I should update  my usb3.0 driver. My speed is only 30-35mb/s and I had 100-130mb/s with EHD.I never had the chance to replace a broken HD but the light are self explanatory.Formatting 5 drives and installing the Drobo took me 10-15 mins.

Comment:
Bought one of these units back in August for my small office, its been running fine. I would recommend this.

Comment:
This device seems quite well designed and performs as expected with Windows Home Server 2011. Setup was a breeze once I took care of the following .....A word of warning! If you intend to use an eSATA connection, be aware that the computer's SATA interface *must* support Port Multiplier. Several inexpensive PCIe cards are available, and Drobo recommendations are on their support web site. StarTech makes one (PEXESATA2).If your SATA ports don't support Multiplier, you must use USB2/3 or FireWire.

Comment:
I only gave it 4 stars because when I installed the drives I had just removed from my Drobo FS Drobo Dashboard informed me that they could not be used in this device.Even formatting wouldn't help. I fortunately had an older, smaller SATA drive handy that I could install and that was accepted. After I formatted that one I was able to add my original 2TB WD10EARS drives and they were accepted and added to the volume without any problems.The drive is now attached to my Mac Mini OS X Leopard Server using a FW400-800 cable and is setup as both my backup drive as well as my archive storage.I did a transfer test with an 8GB iMovie project I had problems with on the Drobo FS I had before and it was significantly faster using the same Airport Extreme Base Station and Cat5E network cables.It took 12min via Ethernet and 22 min over wireless compared to 30 and 33 min respectively to the Drobo FS.I wish it would be possible to partition the RAID so it would be easier to limit the amount of space Time Machine could use up but since I have it attached to a server I am able to use the Server to limit the space.I went with the Drobo S rather than the Drobo because of the extra drive bay for expandability as well as the extra two interfaces. Especially the USB 3.0 since that will eventually come to Macs as well. This will allow me to connect the drive to any of my computer should the need ever arise.