Drobo - Whose Minding the Storage

April 11, 2007 at 05:14 AM in Robotics

"Drobo - the world's first storage robot!" Hmm. The gadget blogs are all lit up today over Drobo, and at first glance Drobo looks really nice. However after closer inspection I've discovered a few things about Drobo that are troublesome:

1) Drobo's specs say he requires Windows or OS X to work. This means no direct connect to your network (ala "Terastation") or technically even your PS3.

2) Drobo costs $699 with NO STORAGE. You can get a 1.0 TB Terastation with 1 terabyte of storage for less money.

3) Drobo isn't really a robot that I can tell. After watching the demo video it appears you have to add/remove drives yourself. Nothing robotic here.

4) Drobo isn't RAID - it's "voodoo magic." From the support site:

The patent-pending technology within Drobo is not RAID and was developed specifically to perform data management and configuration tasks automatically so that you don't have to. Drobo does utilize advanced storage concepts such as virtualization, but it is not a derivative of RAID.

5) It's "Who's" or "Who is" minding the storage, not "whose."

I have to admit the front loading drive slots are nice, however I think I'd trust the demo video more if it were a little less edited.

http://www.drobo.com/