Drobo FS DRDS2A21 10/100/1000 Ethernet Port Network External Hard Drive

Pros: very flexible, the ability to put whatever mixture of sata hdds into the drobo fs is really nice.

Cons: two things Manageability and Access Speed:
1: first and foremost would be manageability, I didn't realize this when I bought the device but the only way to manage the device is through their poorly written software on windows or mac (they may have a Linux version by now but I am not sure). drobo said nothing of the sort on their site, just that you "can" use (not "have to" use), their "excellent" software to manage their devices, so no fault to newegg

some might say that being forced to using a piece of software to manage a device isn't that bad of a thing, but I disagree. In my case I was having problems with the drobo fs just dropping off the network, so I tried to troubleshoot it my switch is fine, shares to other computers are super snappy as per normal. I can pull up the shares on the drobo fine (with the occasional 20sec delay, which I would attribute to hdd sleeping). try to pull up the drobo software and it completely nuked itself. Ok fine, uninstall re-install, try again, it opens this time but won't see the drobo fs. huh, ok reboot the computer verify that the software is installed completely (aka no errors in the event logs), same thing. I then start poking around the drobo forums, and discover that there is a known problem where if you use a particular version of the software you can't access the drobo fs. ok uninstall install recommended version, nothing..... getting mildly frustrated at this point, so I contact support, a couple days later I hear back from them with the generic script; reboot, plug it in, uninstall reinstall dobo software, reinstall windows or osx,..... wait what (apparently their software has been know to blow apart both windows 7 and osx.....). Odd... I am getting a tad suspicious at this point, so I pull an additional backup of all my data (which takes a bit, due to it dumping itself). then after a couple weeks of going back and forth daily with the tech support person. I am able to get the software to see the drobo long enough on startup that it can upgrade the firmware, once that is done everything appears to be a-ok....... or at least back to its slow normal self.

2: Speed of Access, I had heard reports from various reviewers and drobo themselves that the drobo fs is a very fast nas. I heartily disagree, on a good day (with 3 wd 2tb black 7200rpm enterprise hdds) I get maybe usb 1.0 speeds, around 5-12 MB/s this is with a single computer isolated with the drobo on a hp procurve gigabit switch. I can get faster transfer rates over my wireless between computers (on a 3 year old wap54g). It doesn't matter whether it is small files, large files, small number of files, large number of files, gui copy+paste, or even command line. I have yet to be able to get decent transfer rates out of it....

Other Thoughts: in short if you just want a lot of very flexible storage without having to think, then the drobo fs is for you, but good luck if the software crashes or you need fast access to your data.

Pros: New Drobo FS has been setup and configured now. I wasn't 100% sure how good this product is, but now that I have experienced it 1st hand I would HIGHLY recommend this to ANYONE! I really like it, they obviously put some thought into this product and end result is great! Everything from plugging in and managing your hard drives to creating shares to managing permissions is all very simple. Even changing the raid configuration is simple and everything is able to be done online which is awesome. This is also compatible with OSX Lion, configuring a share for time machine backup took sub 1 minute to figure out and configure in about 3 clicks.

5x 1TB hard drives and now I have a total of 3.6TB of usable space to backup my imac and use as a file share. Total spent was just under 1000$, but for me getting a reliable disk backup makes this worth it.

Cons: None that I can think of, would be nice if it supported snapshots I guess :)

Other Thoughts: Overall great product and has good flexibility.

Pros: Flexible, adaptive storage. Easy setup, configuration, and maintenance. Relatively fast (see below for details). Beautiful dashboard UI. Supports arbitrary sizes and combinations of storage and offers two levels of protection. A five-bay offers a nice sweet spot of capacity, expandability, and cost.

Some reviews have criticized its performance, but mine is consistently outperforming several other NAS solutions I've tried (BlackArmor, Buffalo LinkStation, and shared and attached USB drives on file servers). I'm getting sustained writes of just under 30 MB/s (that's MiB/s, not Mbps) copying video files over GbE CAT6 and I'm using homogeneous standard desktop HDDs (i.e., not "performance" drives, and not "green" drives, and all five disks are the same exact model); your mileage will vary depending on the type of disks you're using and what else you have on your LAN. For best results, consider buying a cheapo GbE switch and two brand-new CAT6 cables.

Cons: Very expensive at retail, even on NewEgg. May be overkill for your needs.

Other Thoughts: Ultimately, whether a Drobo is worth it to you is going to depend on your needs. If you only want X TB of NAS, and don't care whether it's protected, then a Drobo is going to be a waste of money for you. If you want things mirrored, a Drobo is a waste. If you have a bunch of disks lying around ready to put into RAID5, then shop around--you can probably get an enclosure for cheaper. Then again, the management and configuration options may still make a Drobo worth it to you.

Pros: It is what it is. It's a great small NAS box that automatically handles defrag tasks of all its installed disks. It is very easy to set up and operate... and it installed and ran the first time on my WIN 7 Pro computers. I have five 3-TB drives installed and am currently still loading the files from multiple other smaller drives. It does load very slow... maximum is about 27-MB's per second. But the minimum on a series of very small text files can run as slow as about 6-kbps. So, it'll take me several days, at least, to load it. I have over 1-million small food recipe text files. About 920,000 music files and full ALBW albums... and many hundreds of app exe's and support files. In addition to about 150,000 multi-page WORD, EXCEL, PDF, POWERPOINT and PUBLISHER files. And almost 650,000 image files from BMP's to PNG's.

Cons: It is slow to load with files. That is no problem for me... as I use ViceVersa Pro for handling file backup chores. Set it and walk away.

Other Thoughts: It is a well-built unit and it is very quiet. It's is very simple to setup and operate. From time to time I'll have to run "chkdisk" on the DROBO from my computer. Because it does not have any form of onboard file system checker and repair app. DROBO is the most handsfree multi-drive NAS that I have ever had the pleasure to use.

Pros: Same as before:
Small size, 5 bays, 3tb drive support, completely automated raid 5 or 6 NAS for $500.
Also Drobo tech support said when the new firmware comes out it should support 4TB drives.

Cons: Slow...read first review & other thoughts below.

Other Thoughts: I contacted Drobo support...they were helpful!
We were able to get whs 2011 to see the Drobo on the network.
Now with the speed issue...1st since whs couldn't see the Drobo I was running my backups through a Windows 7 machine which made the data go through the nic card on that machine and I was getting about 22mbs. Drobo support said drobo should sustain 24-30mbs.
Now that the server communicates to Drobo only through the switch I get sustained transfers of 80mbs.
Now that the initial backup is on the Drobo the weekly backup of about and additional 24gigs takes about 2 hours for it to check all the old files and transfer the new ones.
Setup is: SERVER-Xeon E5-2670 2.6GHz 8-Core/16gb ram/areca ARC-1880 controller 4gb ram/10 WD1002FAEX drives in a raid6/dual gigbit nic cards
DROBO FS with 5 WD2002FAEX drives
All run through cat6 and a gigbit switch.

Pros: Small size, 5 bays, 3tb drive support, completely automated raid 5 or 6 NAS for $500.

Cons: Slow...VERY SLOW, whs2011 wont recognize it. It has been running for 20 hours and only copied 1tb of my data at this rate it will take 5 days and I'm running a giga network!
I will be contacting Drobo on these 2 issue's.

Other Thoughts: I bought this as a backup of my sever that could be stored off site. I was hoping to bring it in once a month and run a backup then take it home to have off site data storage but I think I may have been better of to build another sever in small form.

Pros: Storage-wise, does what is advertised, and tech support is available 24-7.

Speed is not as fast as other, simpler units, but I was looking for a nice, "hands-off" RAID solution ... which this is.

Cons: You can't access your data if anything goes wrong with reboot.

I installed the "Firefly media server" drobo app -- a pretty well-established 3rd party app -- a few weeks ago. Everything worked fine for several weeks -- until I changed the iTunes "Share Name".

When I restarted the server to apply the settings, it would not reboot. I called Drobo tech support and the operator said the only way to fix this was to "reset the Drobo" (i.e. reformat it) and put all my data back onto it.

Luckily, I still have most of my data backed up on my old drive. But you can imagine my horror at discovering how easy it is to "brick" a unit that is purportedly a top-tier "Data Security" product -- by installing an app they link to from their site!

HAPPY-ish ENDING: After popping out the drives and rebooting a few times, I did manage to get Drobo working again and I immediately disabled Firefly ... but this doesn't make me feel ANY better about Drobo's "Apps" feature. STAY AWAY FROM DROBO A

Other Thoughts: For a fairly premium-$$$$ "Data Security" product like this (I paid $1000 in all), it seems like the "Apps" they link to from their site should either be more carefully vetted, or should run in some kind of sandbox ... or at least they should offer an "emergency" way to get in and remove them from the installation. None of the people on tech support could help me take ANY SORT OF RECOVERY steps for the data that was sitting on my TWO PERFECTLY FUNCTIONING DRIVES, so in my book that was a big fail.

FWIW, Drobo's site *does* warn you -- albeit in very mild language -- that 3rd party apps aren't supported and you need to know what you're doing, etc. ... but I am one of those users who *does* know what they're doing, and this issue (changing the display name of my iTunes "share") was clearly a bug in the Firefly / Drobo combination that took down my entire data store.

Pros: Self managing NAS box. Software plug ins give the embedded Linux OS additional capabilities if you need them, but what you don't need isn't in your way.
All the functionality of a full blown server without the complicated setup and maintenance.
I tried the home server route with WHS2k11 but it was just too much setup to get through. Bare in mind that I have been building and troubleshooting systems and networks for over 20 years. WHS2k11 is a whole new level of complication.

Cons: None! Why don't you have one yet?

Other Thoughts: I have five 2TB drives in single disk redundancy showing 7.25TB of space after distributed parity and formatting overhead.
The unit is essentially a self managing JBOD NAS box with single or dual disk redundancy. That self managing function supports hot swapping of failed HDDs and automatic rebuilds.

Pros: Seems to work, will know better when hard drives come down in price and all bays are filled.

Cons: None, yet.

Other Thoughts: One egg off for Newegg because they slapped their shipping label over the product barcode and product serial number labels thus making the rebate terms impossible to fulfill. Drobo has been helpful and insists it shouldn't matter since I've let them know ahead of time. But only time will tell if Newegg has cost me the $100 with their negligence.

Pros: expandable, dead simple

Cons: could be faster over the network

Other Thoughts: For those of you wondering what the difference is between the two models available on newegg, from Drobo's facebook page:

Drobo: ... they are actually the same exact product. DRDS2A24 is just the SKU for our retail packaging which comes with a pretty box. If purchasing online, you should order DRDS2A21 (it's cheaper!)