Better than RAID: Check out the new Drobo Drive Expansion

[Lord Vader]

This is cool. I read about it in yesterday's Chicago Sun-Times.

http://www.suntimes.com/technology/ihnatko/793971,CST-FIN-Andy14.article

[djlong]

Not bad. I get much the same functionality in Windows Home Server, but I dedicated a machine to that. For someone who wants that functionality as an "add-on" to their system, this looks good.

...ok, I really like the red-light/green-light bit in the front to tell you a hard drive is going bad :)

[AlbertZeroK]

For $500, you could buy a second computer! I mean NAS has it's place, and I've got a couple 500G nas drives for backup here, but not at that price!

I love how they say RAID has to be erased to be rebuilt, completely false for a good raid controller!

[Draconis]

Defiantly a nice piece of engineering, here is another overkill storage solution. Hate to tell you this AlbertZeroK, $500 is nothing compared to this $2k + drool inducer. Blasted budget!

http://www.fusionio.com/products.html

[AlbertZeroK]

Defiantly a nice piece of engineering, here is another overkill storage solution. Hate to tell you this AlbertZeroK, $500 is nothing compared to this $2k + drool inducer. Blasted budget!

http://www.fusionio.com/products.html

That's a RAM/FLASH based solution, it is not even remotely comparable to a RAID array. It is also a horrid solution as FLASH memory will die over time after alot of read/writes.

I'm sure this device has a slower access speed than a P3 running w98 - or better yet, load win2k and if you need more storage, you can mount new drives into an existing file system tree.

I'm just saying for $500, there are better solutions out there.

[funhouse69]

I agree that something like the Drobo has its place for someone that doesn't want to deal with RAID or things like that. For me I've got 2 different systems on my network that I built. Both are running 3Ware RAID Controllers one 8 Port and the other 16 Ports and have a total of about 10TB of storage that is very expandable, reliable **knock on wood** it is also shared & accessible throughout my whole network and even while I'm at work.

Again I know that is not for everyone but the 8 Port 3 Ware Controller is less money than the Drobo itself and either way you need to buy / add drives. You do however need a computer to put the drives in if you go my route so I understand we are comparing apples and oranges.

I do like the fact that you can purchase it without drives but think it should be a lot lower price to make it more attractive. It is a double edge sword I know but a lower cost would certainly mean more units sold.

[Lord Vader]

So here's my question: would these things work as eSATA drives for an HR20-700, for example? That would be way cool.

[funhouse69]

So here's my question: would these things work as eSATA drives for an HR20-700, for example? That would be way cool.

Right now this is a USB Only device but maybe in the future and yes that would be way cool and something I might consider for my HR-20 if it actually expands the way they say it does.