Data Robotics this morning announced the availability of the second generation Drobo. The new Drobo is faster itself and adds FireWire 800/400 connectivity as well as USB 2.0! When connected via FireWire the unit is said to be twice as fast as the older version. This new version will make it better for Digital Video applications and faster storage. The new Drobo Dashboard software that gives some performance boost to owners of the older Drobos will soon be available for download.
It appears the the Drobo Share add on (gives the Drobo network connectivity) has not yet been upgraded to FireWire but I will assume that will be coming in the future.
We picked up a Drobo evaluation unit sometime this spring and have been impressed with it. In a nutshell the Drobo is an external enclosure that allows you to add up to 4 Sata or Sata II hard drives of any capacity to the unit. It then takes all of the space and allocates backup areas. This allows for your data to be spanned across all of the drives and also provides some redundant data protection. If a drive fails, simply pop it out replace it with one of equal or greater capacity and your data will be saved. Running out of space on the Drobo? Pop out the smallest drive and replace it with a bigger one and away you go. The current model supports up to 16 TB of drives.
While supplies last Data Robotics is selling the older Drobo’s for 349.00 and the new Drobo 2 at the regular price of 499.00.
For anyone that needs a secure data storage and backup, we highly recommend the Drobo and now with the release of Drobo 2.0 we are moving the Drobo higher up our list of recommended Data Storage products.
We will be ordering a new Drobo 2 unit shortly and will be testing it and have it available for demonstrations and evaluations.
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