NOTE: Later in this issue is a discussion of the various ways of connecting hard drives. Plus, a rocker switch for power! (The Drobo could only be powered off by pulling the plug.)Īs I’ve explained in other reviews, USB is far too slow for any reasonable video editing, so I concentrated on looking at the FireWire and eSATA connections. Here’s how I loaded the drives into the unit, as displayed in the Drobo Dashboard. Each drive is held in place by a spring clip, no additional hardware, like screws, is necessary. The front cover is magnetically attached, which makes accessing the drives very easy. Be sure to ground yourself before handling a drive.) The drives are keyed, so you can’t install them improperly. (Remember, these drives are very sensitive to static electricity. Installing a drive is as easy as taking it out of its protective wrapper and sliding it into the Drobo. Notice that the drives were not all the same size! In this case, I was sent two 2-TB, and three 1-TB WD Black drives to use for the test. If you need reduced energy consumption with a variable spin rate, they suggestion WD Green. If you need performance, they recommend the WD Black series. The unit holds five drives (compared to four for the Drobo and eight for DroboPro and DroboElite).ĭrobo recommends using Western Digital drives. The Drobo S comes with drives uninstalled, so you can add your own drives, or buy them from Drobo. They make you feel like you aren’t buying a product, but adopting a friend. The installation instructions are clear and written with a friendly tone. The Drobo S arrives nicely packaged, wrapped in a black cloth bag for protection. The Drobo S fits between the Drobo and the DroboPro in the product line. Unlike any other RAID, to add more storage you simply swap out a smaller drive for a larger drive and Drobo automatically rebuilds everything. While there are a number of features that distinguish Drobo from other products, the key ones, for me, are that you can mix and match different sized drives in the same box with no performance penalty, and that the storage it contains is easily expandable so it grows as you do. Then, earlier this year, they shipped both the Drobo S and, at the high-end of their product line, the DroboElite. You can read my review of the DroboPro here. My big gripe was that the Drobo was too noisy and far too slow for any real-time work, though it would fit well into on-set capture of tapeless media.Ībout a year later, Data Robotics shipped the DroboPro, a much faster unit that connected via iSCSI and had a quieter fan. (They were shipping products before that, but since they connected via USB, they were way too slow for any editing application.) You can read that review here. I first really looked at Drobo in October, 2008, when I reviewed their initial FireWire unit. ![]() It arrived earlier this week and I’ve spent some time playing with it. Since they were already loaning us gear, I asked if they could also loan me their new Drobo S for me to review. (I’ll have a review of it next month, after NAB.) I thought this was a great idea, because this gave me a chance to test it under real-world, multi-user conditions. NOTE: For my policy on reviews and disclosure, click here.Īs I was talking with Data Robotics, who is one of our sponsors for our NAB coverage, about the gear I wanted to use in our booth for NAB, they offered to provide us a loaner unit of their new high-end product: DroboElite. ![]() [ This article was first published in the March, 2010, issue of
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