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| Data Robotics DR04DD10 Drobo 4-Bays USB 2.0 and FireWire 800 Fully Automated SATA Robotic Storage Array | 
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| Brand: Data Robotics
Category: CE
List Price: $499.00 (€394.21)
Buy New: $436.07 (€344.50)
You Save: $62.93 (€49.71) (13%)
Buy New/Used from $399.95 (€315.96)
Avg. Customer Rating:  (36 reviews)
Sales Rank: 248
Media: Electronics
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Special Features: nv:Enclosure Type^3.5"|Compatible Drives^3.5" Hard Drives|Drive Interface^SATA|Enclosure Interface^USB 2.0|Enclosure Interface^IEE1394a Firewire 400|Enclosure Interface^IEE1394b Firewire 800|USB 2.0 Transfer Rate^480 Mbps|Firewire IEE1394a Transfer Rate^400 Mbps|Firewire IEE1394b Transfer Rate^800 Mbps
Shipping Weight (lbs): 12
Dimensions (in): 10.7 x 6.3 x 6.3
MPN: DR04DD10
Model: DR04DD10
UPC: 094922903457
EAN: 0094922903457
ASIN: B001CZ9ZEE
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | FireWire 800 (FireWire 400 compatible) | | • | Enhanced USB 2.0 performance | | • | Redundant data protection | | • | Hot expandable up to 16TB | | • | Mix n match drive capacities |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
As rich media (photos, video, movies, music) continues to devour your storage capacity, you need a solution that allows you to easily manage, protect, and scale storage for your PC or Mac. For you, we've created Drobo, the first fully automated storage robot to take the pain out of keeping your important digital content safe. This Data Robotics DR04DD10 Drobo enclosure accepts up to 4 internal storage SATA hard-drives (drives are not included) that you set up as an array for both primary and backup storage. Add Drobo, get 4 drives and download at will. Unit Dimensions - Width 6.3 Inch x Depth 10.7 Inch x Height 6.3 Inch Storage Controller Type - Serial ATA (SATA) Includes Power adapter Voltage Required 100-240V AC, 50/60 Hz Data Robotics - 1 Year Limited Warranty Hard Drive Type used - Internal Drobo utilizes a revolutionary storage technology that makes it simple for anyone to use, yet is powerful enough for business. Once you experience the power of Drobo, the idea of keeping multiple external drives or a RAID 5 array will seem as antiquated as that 28.8Kbps modem in the back of your closet Windows, Mac, Linux - Drobo works with all three major operating system platforms and their native file systems Drobo allows you to purchase as much or as little storage as you like up front. Since you can expand at any time, Drobo is the right solution for your budget
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| Customer Reviews: Read 31 more reviews...
Good solution for the price December 31, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Even with Firewire800 performance is not comparable to an enterprise level RAID solution however for the price it's a decent solution for small business. The fact that it's easily expandable is nice; you don't need to be technical to use or install the Drobo.
Unfortunately as of Dec 31, 2008 the Drobo DOES NOT SUPPORT DRIVES LARGER THAN 1TB so despite the marketing claims it's maximum capacity is currently 3TB of usable storage (4 x 1TB - 1TB parity = 3TB usable). This is the configuration I use.
If you're looking to run ultra-fast network backups disk-to-disk over a network, well, Drobo is not for you even with Firewire800 it's painfully slow compared to our fileserver which internally supports two 1.5TB SATA drives. Backing up to a Drobo can take 3-4x longer than backing up to an internal drive because of the bus speed.
Still it's usable as a data drive and a great solution for small business where performance is not an issue.
Drobo's main selling point is quick and easy expandability; however in today's market 1.5TB drives are approaching the $100-120 pricepoint; and Drobo still isn't compatible with anything larger than 1TB. Hopefully a future firmware update will correct the problem. In the meantime, it's significantly cheaper to drop in a few 1.5TB SATA drives in RAID5 configuration into a workstation than spend nearly a thousand dollars on a Drobo and populating it with four drives.
My only other complaint is that the Droboshare networking feature is a seperate product. Come on! For $400 it should be included FREE!!
 Do Not Buy a Drobo! Save your money! December 31, 2008
0 out of 4 found this review helpful
Do not buy a Drobo it costs too much for what it actually does! Drobo is great in concept as a device that reliably stores your important data and doubles as fast raid storage but it does none of that. I purchased this product as my main backup and raid storage for my MacBookPro and to replace 4 USB external drives that was starting to get unruly to manage. I purchased the Drobo and installed 4x1TB drives. I now I regret I purchased a Drobo so please consider alternatives.
First, I was under the impression I would get 3 TB's of storage but instead got only 2 TB's of storage instead. Apparently Drobo is not exactly plug and play, I have to do something to have Drobo allow me to access the extra TB. I gave up and right now I'm too scared to try to gain access to rest of my storage because Drobo is very finicky.
Second, Drobo goes dead and freezes every now and then. Which makes me question how reliably and securely Drobo is keeping my data. When I call Drobo support all they tell me to do is power off and reboot. Their suggestion works but tell me how comfortable you feel if your main storage is flashing red lights and appears dead?
Finally, Drobo is very very slow. I'm getting transfer rates of about 10 megs/sec over usb or firewire. If I want to transfer large amounts of data I do it before I go to sleep and hope it is done by morning. I am speculating that the raid calculation is slowing things down.
Thus, I am again using my old USB drives to back up the Drobo because I am concerned about Drobo's reliability. If I knew what I know now, I would have just gotten an external drive enclosure that takes 2 drives and allows my mac to use the 2 drives as one large drive instead of getting a Drobo. This would have been cheaper and probably more reliable then my current situation.
Also Drobo is loud so keep it under your desk.
 Great Product - But becareful about Firmeware Updates December 29, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
First off, I have the 1st Generation Drobo for over a year now and it is working perfectly.
I am a professional program developer, so I use the Drobo as my primary data warehouse facility because it is safe and works as advertized. The data I store on my Drobo is very critical for my work.
I am recommending this device to a friend who is a professional cinematographer. I went on Amazon to see what problems other users had with the Drobo and surprise to see such a low consumer rating for the Drobo.
After reading all the negative rating on Amazon, I have come to the conclusion that people like to gamble with their data by apply unproven Firmware updates. If you read all the negative user reviews, you will find out that everyone loved their Drobo until they applied a bad Firmware update. Wow, how blindly dumb can you be. No one is perfect, and never update any firmware without reading if it works or not, or even if you need it. Especially on a critical hardware device that keeps precious data.
As a general rule, I never apply firmware updates until I have a problem with the device. If you are interested in apply firmware updates for the Drobo, wait at least 2-3 weeks and check reviews sites to see if there are any problems with the firmware update you want to apply. Also check if you need the firmware update before applying it. Don't risk it if you don't really need the new firmware update.
The other dumb thing I read is that people don't trust their Drobo after a bad firmware update. Hopefully they realized that they were dumb enough to be beta testers for the first round of firmware updates that didn't work.
For the people who love their Drobo, keep in mind the old adage "If it an't broke, don't fix it!"
Working perfectly, a total delight December 27, 2008
I wasn't sure what we were in for when my husband said we had to have a Drobo, but now that we've had it for a couple of months, I love it. I'll let my husband write a technical review, here's a non-techie's perspective:
Drobo is a hard disk that's not in your computer, but connected to the network. Ours is in our office, which is an unused room since we all got laptops. My daughter and I use Macs, while my husband uses two PCs. We all share files using Drobo.
This has been really convenient. We can now all share one photo library and one music library. We created some big photo projects for Christmas, and easily transferred them between computers using the Drobo (they were too large for email). My husband has started downloading movies straight to Drobo, then playing them on our big TV in the family room.
We originally filled the Drobo with two smaller hard disks. As we ran out of room, we bought a large disk and added it. Now I understand their promise that Drobo never runs out of room, and never looses data. Maybe we were behind the times, but we really like having this network disk.
I'm giving it five stars because it just works, unlike some of the other gadgets my husband has bought.
Happy at first, then complete data loss, but got things recovered. Seems to be working now December 22, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Having had a couple of external USB/IDE drives go down on me over the last couple of years, losing everything, I wanted something more fault-tolerant. This was it. I bought the USB2+Firewire800 version ( not realising that firewire 800 sockets were of course incompatible with my machines firewire-400 ones, unlike USB1/2 - my bad ), but even on USB2 connection it's fast enough for me. Ok, I wouldn't try playing one movie while copying another one back to the device over USB2 and expect perfect performance, but on any single task it's fine. The unit is extremely quiet, making much less noise than the laptop I've got it plugged into. I fitted 3x 1TB Western Digital 'GreenPower' drives into mine, which are also quiet, and they never get hot ( unlike my previous external IDE/USB drive enclosures ). I've yet to see a rebuild time though, since it's taking me a while to even fill the thing, and I've been feeding data DVDs into it for a month, starting a new one each morning before going off to work, then doing another few in the evening.
The only thing I'd *really* like to see on the unit is an external hard-lock switch that'd make the thing read-only, then I could take it round to someone else's house to let them get at some data without worrying about whether their machine has a virus that could write something to it.
BUT..... 6 weeks after buying the unit I came to use it, pressed F5 to refresh the explorer pane on a subdir within it, then it showed empty. The whole drive had lost every file except the top root level dirs. Their dashboard tool showed 458GB used, but a "DIR *.* /s" showed every file was missing ( over 26,000 files gone ). I had to wait until the next day before their support line was open, but in the end I got talked through a firmware update ( first time I tried it wouldn't apply, said the device was in use and couldn't be written to ). Turns out the culprit is the 1.2.4 firmware. UPGRADE IMMEDIATELY IF YOU'RE STILL USING 1.2.4. Once I'd upgraded to 1.3.0 all my files came back and the drive CHKDSK'd ok. So, I haven't lost anything and it's all fine, but the fact that they could even release a (admittedly short lived ) firmware version like that is scary. I've gone from having total faith in this unit to now treating it as just another version of burning seperate backup disks. It's currently working flawlessly, but that experience severely killed my confidence, hence 3 stars instead of 5. I guess if I bought it new right now and it came with the 1.3.0 firmware I'd think it was perfect, but experience has soured it a little. Overall I'm still glad I have it though, but the QA there needs closer supervision IMO.
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