Another year, another Drobo. Well, this time around it’s not really that new, but it’s still noteworthy. You probably remember the NAS-focused Drobo FS and the giant 8-drive DroboPro, right? Well, sometimes when two storage solutions love each other very much… you get the idea.
The DroboPro FS is basically a larger capacity Drobo FS. It’s a little more orientated towards serious business backup, though: it has a second gigabit Ethernet port, which you can use just as backup in case the first connection goes down, or you can use it as the connection to… an off-site backup using DroboSync.
DroboSync basically causes your Drobo to be backed up to another off-site Drobo in case of fire, flood, or theft. As long as the second Drobo has as much space as the first, it’ll maintain a byte-for-byte copy and update as often as you like, and will only transfer shared bits — so if you change the metadata on a four-gigabyte movie file, it’ll only modify the metadata portion. It’s a bit like DropBox. They claim it’s super easy to set up, and I believe them since “easy to set up” has kind of been the modus operandi for Drobo since the beginning.
Aside from that, it’s the same old Drobo. This one in particular, however, isn’t intended for off-site backups of your anime collection. No, this is for the big boys. The basic naked model costs $1999, and they’ll load it up with drives if you like — add $700 for 8TB, $1300 for 16TB. Check your favorite distributor for Drobo stuff. B&H sells them, among others. More info at Drobo.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
New DroboPro FS Is An 8-Drive NAS For Your Serious Backup Needs
Monday, July 19, 2010
Seagate’s GoFlex Home is a ever-so-slightly more convenient NAS
You probably remember the GoFlex system, a recent Seagate innovation that adds some versatility to their drives at the cost of you having to buy adapters from them in order to achieve said versatility. Well, the family has a new member in the GoFlex Home, which is a GoFlex-type NAS.It plugs into your router and provides the usual NAS services: streaming media to compatible devices, automatic wireless backup, and so on. But what makes it a GoFlex? Glad you asked. While you’ll buy the Home with a 1TB or 2TB drive included, you can swap out the one you bought with a larger GoFlex drive or add storage to the USB slot on the back, there.
I’m not sure I see the utility here. If you’re planning on buying one of these and then, say, upgrading it in a year, why not just spend the money now on a Drobo or another multi-drive NAS? Simplicity is one answer, of course, and the GoFlex Home seems to be pretty much plug-and-play, but 2TB for the whole family is going to fill up pretty fast and you’re going to wish you had three or four drive slots to put naked HDDs in.
Anyway, the 1TB will run you $160, and the 2TB will go for $230. It seems like a bit much to me, considering the variety of NAS systems out there. GoFlex is a good idea for power users, but for the home NAS market, it doesn’t seem to bring much to the party.
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