Data Robotics today announced the availability of Drobo Share, an add on to existing Drobo units. Drobo Share allows 2 Drobo Devices to be connected to a network, turning the DAS (Desktop Attached Storage) device into a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device.
In the first 6 months of it’s release the Drobo has received high praise for it’s simplicity in setting up and maintaining a raid storage system. It is expandable, currently up to 2 Terabytes (soon up to 16 TB) simply by adding hard drives. Unlike other storage systems the Drobo can be set up and expanded with drives of different sizes. As well the Drobo features warning lights that indicate if a drive is going bad. When the indicator comes on, simply swap out the bad drive and Drobo will begin rebuilding the array. Drobo can be formatted with several file systems, NTFS, HFS, FAT32 or Linux to ensure compatibility with virtually any computer.
The biggest knock or disadvantage we had with the product is that it was a DAS device, meaning it had to be attached to one system. Today that has changed.
The Drobo Share is a small box that sits under the Drobo device. It comes with a y power adaptor and shares the power brick with the Drobo’s. There is also 2 USB ports to connect 2 Drobos to, (for a total of 32 TB) of storage, and a 10/100/1000 network port for attaching to a network. The Drobo Share and software will also automatically map drives for the users computer. This makes the Drobo a very powerful option.
In addition, the Drobo can easily be converted back to a DAS device for use with applications requiring higher bandwidth than a network will allow (Video Editing etc).
Drobo sells from Sysguy Consulting without drives for 525.00, and the Drobo Share Module will sell for approximately 199.00
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