Firewire for Software RAID

[Kenny Leung]

I beg to differ.

drobo is the only "RAID-like" enclosure you can get that is  
expandable. Use any other unit and you have to buy all the same size  
disk up front, and once the RAID set is built, you can never change  
it. The drobo allows you to start with two drives, work your way up  
to 4, and you don't have to worry about matching sizes. You just buy  
whatever is biggest and cheapest on the market. Once your 4 drives  
fill up, you buy yet another biggest and cheapest and swap it out for  
the smallest drive.

While $500 may sound pricey, it is cheaper than some other RAID  
enclosures, like LaCIE. Also, there are no rip-off drive sleds to buy  
other enclosures make you buy a drive sled for $50 to $250. The drobo  
takes bare drives.

The price was initially $700, but they got such a good response on  
their initial production run that they were able to cut the price  
down by $200, and they automatically sent me a refund in the mail. I  
didn't even have to ask! Take that, early iPhone buyers!

-Kenny


On Dec 18, 2007, at 8:57 AM, Brett Dikeman wrote:

> On Dec 14, 2007 8:26 PM, Kenny Leung <kenny_leung at pobox.com> wrote:
>> I have been using a drobo (www.drobo.com), and I think it's great.
>
> They're expensive ($500, with no drives, which puts them deep into NAS
> territory), slow as molasses, and don't offer anything above or beyond
> other units, except for a few LEDs in a cute-looking box.
>
> I saw a review recently where READ speed was about 10-15MB/sec no
> matter how many drives were installed.