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You can connect using eSATA, Firewire, or USB 3.0 (in a nice touch, all three cables are included). On the Drobo S, you create volumes that appear as drive letters on the locally attached PC. I connected the Drobo FS to a gigabit switch in my office. Then you create shares and assign access rights to those shares. On the Drobo FS, you use the Dashboard to create user accounts, starting with an Administrator account.
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To set up the Drobo initially and to perform subsequent management tasks, you use a lightweight software utility called the Drobo Dashboard. Adding a new drive in the now-empty slot, by contrast, made the new storage available immediately. I didn’t lose any data, but I wasn’t able to access the rest of the volume until I physically pulled the faulty drive out of the Drobo and restarted. That gave me a real-world opportunity to test Drobo’s resiliency. The process of rearranging data can take several hours, depending on drive sizes, but I never lost network access to data files while the lights were flashing.Īnd as if to prove the “Drives will fail” mantra, during the course of testing I had one drive fail completely. The Drobo is specifically designed for hot swapping, so you don’t need to power down to add or remove a drive. A green light next to a drive means the drive is working properly, red indicates a problem, and flashing green and yellow lights indicate that the Drobo software is busy configuring the storage pool and duplicating data (for protection) after you add or remove a drive.
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The only user interface on the box itself is a light to the right of each installed drive and a row of lights along the bottom.
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As I added and swapped drives, the Drobo just kept running. I initially set up each Drobo with a pair of drives, added drives until all five bays were full, and then started pulling out smaller drives and swapping in larger ones. To remove a drive, push the release lever to the left that disconnects the SATA connectors and pushes the drive out of the slot far enough for you to get a grip on it. To add a SATA drive, slide it firmly into the bay (no drive caddies required) until it snaps into place. With the cover out of the way, you can see all drive bays-five in this case. To add or remove drives, pull off the front cover, which is attached with magnets. Conclusion: it is ridiculously easy to expand the storage pool in a Drobo. Over the past few months, I’ve tried a mix of new, high-capacity drives and older, smaller models pulled from the spares shelf in my office.
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Overall capacity is limited by today’s maximum drive sizes, but you can upgrade over time, as hard drive makers roll out new generations of larger drives. As CEO Buiocchi explained it to me: “Think of it as a hard drive that never breaks and never gets full." Based on my testing, that description is mostly accurate.
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As a server, it can also host apps that handle some of the tasks that people use a Windows Home Server for. Connect it to a wired network using the Gigabit Ethernet on the back, and then subdivide its pooled storage into shares, with access rights for each share assigned to user accounts on the device. The Drobo FS ($699) is one of four products in the current Drobo Storage for Professionals product lineup. The noise level on each of the two units was well within acceptable limits, even when I stuffed each one with five drives of varying sizes and put them to work. Neither unit was whisper-quiet, but they’re nearly so. The elegant design is the same as I remember, as is the jet black finish. The two products look nearly identical, except for the connectors on the back (more about that in a bit). The folks at Drobo were kind enough to send me one of their current Drobo FS units for review, and I purchased a Drobo S using my own funds. Can Drobo’s technology replace Windows Home Server completely? Or is there room in the home (and home office) for both products? A lot has changed in the past four years, and when I heard the news about Drive Extender I decided to take a fresh look at Drobo’s offerings.
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