Question 1

What size of external hard drive is supported? I am looking to use my Seagate Backup plus 4TB hard drive with it. Is it compatible. Most USB network storage adapters do not support more then 2 TB.

Accepted Answer

You can use a 4TB external hard drive in it's own enclosure or a 2TB in the transporter enclosure, however transporter only supports USB 2.0 which is pretty slow once you try moving big files around, which if you want a 4TB drive sounds possible. 
The idea of transporter is great but the slowness of uploads and downloads is appalling. I don't use mine for much these days and instead use Dropbox because it's speeds far outstrip transporters. I asked if they would be supporting USB 3.0 soon and the answer was no but they might think about it. Too bad

Question 2

Does this Drobo personal cloud have 4 terabytes of storage included for the purchase price?

Thanks,

Accepted Answer

No, this unit does not come with any built-in storage, but does allows you to connect an external usb storage device of any size.

Question 3

Can this device be used without an internet connection?  I would like to be able to use it within my home only, and I don't need/want to be able to connect to it from outside my network.

Accepted Answer

I don't think you need an internet connection to use this. but you need to have wifi.

Question 4

If I want to share access to my single HD from my house, and my office, do I need 1 transporter in both locations, or just one unit for the hard drive?

Accepted Answer

No, all you need is 1 transporter and share the folder with whoever you want to have access to it, whether it is 1 person or 100.

Question 5

It appears that this is simply a way to connect a USB drive to your network. Which, in fact, is a great idea. I would wish for more then just one USB connection, so I could connect at least 2 external USB drives.

I see a good thing in being able to share the files among multiple devices and operating systems.
Can this happen?

Accepted Answer

Yes it can. You can share between devices based upon access.

Question 6

Where do the files reside?  On the source computer or on the Drobo?  Or both?

Accepted Answer

The video suggests you connect your own storage to the unit....So you'd have to buy this, and storage such as a 2TB external HDD (which the description of the product seems to leave out).  What it looks like it is, is a portable server device that is associated with your devices via an account or a key value, which then allows you to access the files over a network.

So essentially, it saves you the step of having to move the external HDD from device to device to sync.  Its a novel idea, but I fail to see what makes it useful, and what makes it worth $100.

Questions & Answers