Connected Data has announced the third generation version of its 4-bay Drobo storage array. A completely new architecture along with USB 3.0 connectivity help make it “three times faster than the previous generation.” Speed is always a welcome upgrade, but the real crowd-pleaser in this announcement is that its MSRP has been chopped to $349, and previous generation Drobo owners are eligible for a $50 customer loyalty discount.
Current Drobo owners will find it easy to migrate their data to the new system because it’s also built on BeyondRAID technology:
The foundation that allows first and second generation Drobo customers to seamlessly upgrade to a new Drobo by simply removing the disk pack from their current Drobo, and moving it to their new one.
It also offers Apple users an easy way to limit the amount of space available to Time Machine. This prevents OS X from storing extremely old backups because it thinks it has access to the entire drive.
If you are in the market for some serious storage we recommend checking out Synology as we have had nothing but wonderful experiences with them.
The third generation Drobo is now available for preorder with an anticipated ship date of late April.
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In my experience back in 2010, this company makes the most awful storage solutions with the worst customer support. Went through 2 of these and 10 drives in a couple of months. Been running a Lacie RAID since.
They’ve gotten a lot better since then. Four years is a long time in technology.
Compared to a 5D, losing 1 bay is no big deal, but losing Thunderbolt is.
I’d be curious to see the performance numbers. Their older models were atrocious and even though they’re DAS units, they couldn’t even keep up with competitors NAS models.