Data Robotics SuperSpeeds storage appliance
USB 3.0 joins eSata, Firewire 800
Data Robotics has added SuperSpeed USB 3.0 to its line up of expandable storage boxes, courtesy of a new model, the Drobo S.
Said unit has room for five 3.5in Sata hard drives, which are auto-partitioned in such a way as to allow you to keep adding fresh, larger-capacity disks on the fly and to protect your data from duff drives.
The big change is round the back, though: a B-style USB 3.0 port joins two Firewire 800 ports and an eSata connector. USB 3.0 is backwards compatible with USB 2.0, so the Drobo S will work with computers that haven't gone SuperSpeed yet.
The Drobo S is available at a starting price of £598 for a model sans drives. It's available now. ®
COMMENTS
Drobo S is not new as such, but this is an updated version
Drobo S model was around for some time now, this is just a new version, with the USB port updated to 3.0.
meh...
No NICs, (yea, I know, it;s not a NAS), overpriced additional storage options, limited software features (its a drive, not a NAS, i know), limited external expansion (only 1 ESATA, and that's for connecting to a PC, not connecting other drives), and if you have SATA, USB3 is practically pointless.
Yes, USB 3's theoretical speed is higher, but short of some lab tests, no one has shown it beating SATAII speeds. The BUS can handle faster, but a single device apparently can not, and that is without additional load on the bus and assuming you have a 4x slot to put a USB3 card in (or a rare but getting more popular non-intel chip set that includes support).
$599 for a 5 bay simple drive system (granted, with online capacity expansion), but no way to back itself up, no hosted storage without a PC running, and no servers... For $899 you can get an 8 bay qNAP that supports 4 more external drives, a dozen servers, a dozen more features, and is even VMWare and Citrix certified... For $699 you can get a 4 or 5 bay version of the same...
For such a nice little box, why don't they just take the next step, make it a NAS, and be done with it... My 4 bay qNap is connected to my PC on SATA and the network on Gigabit. I get nice high speed performance working with video and VMs, it backs up all my other PCs for me automatically, then also exports critical folders to a portable drive. It also works as a Time Machine vault, web server, media server, Remote access system, hosts 2 IP security cameras, and general file server for me so I can put my beefy desktop to sleep (and it can WAKE the desktop if i remote into the NAS), and when the wife is streaming video, it's not slowing down my games.... Why would I $100 more now than I paid 2 years ago for a device that offers less?
