New SSD-Equipped Drobo Mini Boosts Speed of Drobo's Portable Storage Lineup

[MacRumors]

Connected Data today launched an updated version of its Drobo Mini that includes Solid State Disk (SSD) drives (Via ZDNet). The new model offers an 80 percent performance improvement over a similar Drobo Mini equipped only with hard disk drives.

The new Drobo Mini with SSDs is a portable storage solution designed for photographers, videographers and other on-the-go media professionals who require fast drive performance they can fit in their bag.

"The core benefits that any user receives when using a Drobo are still tremendous value. Being able to start with the capacity you need today and growing over time; simplicity to deploy, use and manage is key - no need to be a storage expert," writes Joe Disher, senior director of product marketing for Connected Data. "Adding the SSDs to our portable Drobo provides tremendous performance as well as the reliability and redundancy needed for filmmakers that don't have time to have lost data."

Internally, the Mini includes four 2.5-inch drive bays with an optional mSATA Accelerator bay. You can buy the Mini pre-equipped with SSDs or supply your own drives for a custom configuration. The Mini features both Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 ports that support read speeds of 300MB/sec and write speeds of 225MB/sec.

The Drobo Mini with SSD is available today in 1TB, 2TB and 4TB capacities. Prices start at $1,199 for the 1TB model and climb to $1,799 for the 2TB and $2,999 for the 4TB option. A $449 option with no drives is also available.

Article Link: New SSD-Equipped Drobo Mini Boosts Speed of Drobo's Portable Storage Lineup

 

[stiligFox]

I've always wanted to get one of these as it fits exactly what I'm looking for in a multiple disk solution, but the price is pretty high -- and the first Drobo mini has had some terrible things said about it reliability wise.

Plus it looks really cool!

 

[MrXiro]

Not sure why I'd get one of these over a Seagate TB sled and a 1tb SSD for a total of 1/2 the price... and I can hot swap the SSDs. Is it faster?

 

[Orlandoech]

Not sure why I'd get one of these over a Seagate TB sled and a 1tb SSD for a total of 1/2 the price... and I can hot swap the SSDs. Is it faster?

Drobo has always been way over priced. Nothing new here. Synology > Drobo

 

[Parasprite]

The new model offers an 80 percent performance improvement

That sounds pretty good actually, I wonder if they changed over to USB 3 or Thu—

over a similar Drobo Mini equipped only with hard disk drives.

Oh.

Right... the whole point of the article.

 

[unplugme71]

Drobo has always been way over priced. Nothing new here. Synology > Drobo

I've been using Drobo for 6 years now.

The old Drobo 5N was slow. Swapped out to the DroboPro and never had an issue.

Now I'm looking for a multi-host solution, and the Drobo B800i is just too expensive. It also uses USB instead of Ethernet for management. That puts me into the B1200 if I want the perfect setup ($3749). And when you need at least 3 of them + disks, it really adds up quick.

I might look into Synology.

My house is wired red (primary) and blue (secondary). Yellow is management. Green is backup. Everything is N+1.

 

[barkmonster]

Drobo prices and specs are a joke.

You could get a USB 3.0 2.5" enclosure that performs over 400Mb/s read/write and add any number of 1Tb SATA 6Gb/s SSDs to it for far less than their prices.

Starting with a minimum of a 1Tb SSD and 400Mb/s rated USB 3.0 enclosure FAR CHEAPER and better performing options are either:

£298 for a 1Tb Samsung 840 EVO

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00E3W16OU/ref=cm_sw_r_udp_awd_ff61tb131WRME

Plus £15.99 for a tool-less installation, 400Mb/s rated Inatech USB 3.0 enclosure:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00FCLG65U/ref=cm_sw_r_udp_awd_0c61tb17782MF

Or this 440Mb/s rated Dr. Bot MiniSwap enclosure for £98:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00D78W6Q8/ref=cm_sw_r_udp_awd_ep61tb0CNHCX4

Which bests EVERY Thunderbolt 2.5" enclosure by embarrassing levels in this set of benchmarks:

http://www.barefeats.com/hard168.html

Why a Thunderbolt-based multi-SSD enclosure like the Drobo isn't using some kind of RAID system to hit 1500Mb/s makes no sense. I fail to see who they're for.

 

[Dilster3k]

Those speeds are low for Thunderbolt. Raid 0 should be used.

And why are we still rolling with SATA III? It's limiting and PCIe SSD's (more portable) are becoming more of a thing. Imagine fast 2x PCIe SSD's in Raid 0.

 

[Orlandoech]

Drobo prices and specs are a joke.

You could get a USB 3.0 2.5" enclosure that performs over 400Mb/s read/write and add any number of 1Tb SATA 6Gb/s SSDs to it for far less than their prices.

Starting with a minimum of a 1Tb SSD and 400Mb/s rated USB 3.0 enclosure FAR CHEAPER and better performing options are either:

£298 for a 1Tb Samsung 840 EVO

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00E3W16OU/ref=cm_sw_r_udp_awd_ff61tb131WRME

Plus £15.99 for a tool-less installation, 400Mb/s rated Inatech USB 3.0 enclosure:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00FCLG65U/ref=cm_sw_r_udp_awd_0c61tb17782MF

Or this 440Mb/s rated Dr. Bot MiniSwap enclosure for £98:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00D78W6Q8/ref=cm_sw_r_udp_awd_ep61tb0CNHCX4

Which bests EVERY Thunderbolt 2.5" enclosure by embarrassing levels in this set of benchmarks:

http://www.barefeats.com/hard168.html

Why a Thunderbolt-based multi-SSD enclosure like the Drobo isn't using some kind of RAID system to hit 1500Mb/s makes no sense. I fail to see who they're for.

Couldn't agree more. Inferior overpriced products for the blatantly ignorant people imo.

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

Nice looking and simple but overpriced. Their market is silly. People that think they need a ton of storage but don't know how to set it up.

 

[Orlandoech]

Nice looking and simple but overpriced. Their market is silly. People that think they need a ton of storage but don't know how to set it up.

For people that "think" they need a ton of storage while over overpaying whom don't know how to setup it up but regardless the end result is a slow and inferior storage solution.

 

[redmac]

Is this a joke? Drobo is asking for pro prices for this consumer level product. For only $100 more, you can get a LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt 2 that can get speeds up to 1375 MB/s (over 4.5 times faster).

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

For people that "think" they need a ton of storage while over overpaying whom don't know how to setup it up but regardless the end result is a slow and inferior storage solution.

Pretty much. Those guys that think they need to archive every single DVD they've ever ripped and keep every porn video they've ever downloaded. Basically those that don't know that you can now stream stuff online without the need to wait for it to download. Those that want the cool looking solution and don't care if they have to overpay for it.

 

[solamar]

Is this a joke? Drobo is asking for pro prices for this consumer level product. For only $100 more, you can get a LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt 2 that can get speeds up to 1375 MB/s (over 4.5 times faster).

Yeah.. Drobo's are inherently slow too, they use software raid.. slow slow slow..

What surprises me is it's THAT slow with SSD. Hell, a 4 HDD Disk raid array should be able to nearly match that.. This SSD unit should be pushing 1000 MBs easy..

At that price and poor performance.. .Passsss.

 

[roland.g]

Drobo is overpriced, unreliable, and is simply multi drive raid storage for those who don't know any better. Some in the know have been lucky to not have failures and issues, but Drobo's track record shows that it isn't worth the risk. There are other options from Synology and OWC that would be better than this.

 

[ZMacintosh]

yuck...I tried Drobo, so many issues/failures with their proprietary setup...have been running Synology and Promise RAIDs with no issues.

if youre gonna spend the money, get the right and best solution.

 

[AngerDanger]

Aaagh, I saw the word 'mini' in the title and got all excited over nothing. Writers here should not be allowed to use that word unless they're referring to the most neglected Mac.

 

[PocketSand11]

"Prices start at $1,199 for the 1TB model and climb to $1,799 for the 2TB and $2,999 for the 4TB option. A $449 option with no drives is also available."

What?! If anything, I'd buy the one without drives and put my own in. But I've heard it's unreliable and full of proprietary stuff.

 

[barkmonster]

Aaagh, I saw the word 'mini' in the title and got all excited over nothing. Writers here should not be allowed to use that word unless they're referring to the most neglected Mac.

The parts the MacBook Pro they base it on just got a restock today. I'd like to see them go i7 across the board. 2 core low end, 4 core high end. Iris Pro, Thunderbolt 2 and a theoretical maximum RAM of 32Gb should be minimum on the next Mac Mini. That or the late 2013 MacBook Pro spec with an i5 at the low end.

 

[foodog]

I've always wanted to get one of these as it fits exactly what I'm looking for in a multiple disk solution, but the price is pretty high -- and the first Drobo mini has had some terrible things said about it reliability wise.

Plus it looks really cool!

I owned one Drobo in my life and I learned my lesson... lost every bit of data after one drive failed and the rebuild process was unsuccessful. No one, including Drobo, could recover the data because of the proprietary way data is written. My solution now is large time machine drive for the little data loss issues and a backblaze subscription for a catastrophic loss. Almost 7 TB of data backed up to backblaze is $50.00 a year for unlimited storage.

 

[Nightarchaon]

How is this "new" those mSATA port drobo mini and 5D have been available for ages , if it wasn't for the fact im looking to go from my 2nd gen 4 bay to an 8 bay, id have bought a 5D with mSATA last year !!!

is it JUST the capacity jump of the SSD they are touting ?

----------

I owned one Drobo in my life and I learned my lesson... lost every bit of data after one drive failed and the rebuild process was unsuccessful. No one, including Drobo, could recover the data because of the proprietary way data is written. My solution now is large time machine drive for the little data loss issues and a backblaze subscription for a catastrophic loss. Almost 7 TB of data backed up to backblaze is $50.00 a year for unlimited storage.

not had an issue with my drobo (touch wood) but both my time capsule and time machine backup to a single 4TB drive have regularly corrupted and required full drive wiping before it could be used again.

as always, i dont treat the drobo as a SAFE place to store files, i still have a crashplan backup of everything on it, and everything that goes onto it.

the drobo is not an excuse to not backup, its just slightly more tolerate to a single disk failure than not at all.

treating any raid as an alternative to good backup practice is inviting disaster sooner or later.

 

[Quadrant4]

That sounds pretty good actually, I wonder if they changed over to USB 3 or Thu—



Oh.

Right... the whole point of the article.

the Drobo Mini has both USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt 1.

 

[AppleInLVX]

Couldn't agree more. Inferior overpriced products for the blatantly ignorant people imo.

Annnd that's why I don't own one. I know this to be the case, but I also don't have the know-how to set something up myself. So, I go without backup storage.

Rather, I go without any kind of RAID seup. I do have a 2TB slow-as-molasses backup disk attached to my USB2 port. Yeah... sigh.

 

[Orlandoech]

Annnd that's why I don't own one. I know this to be the case, but I also don't have the know-how to set something up myself. So, I go without backup storage.

Rather, I go without any kind of RAID seup. I do have a 2TB slow-as-molasses backup disk attached to my USB2 port. Yeah... sigh.

I meant ignorant as in what options are available, ignorant to believe the hype of Drobo, ignorant to believe they have good products, but I guess by default that does mean tech savvy ignorant people too, but thats not what I meant.

There are so many other cost-effective options that would suffice for those "ignorant" and non-ignorant people, such as your solution.

But for god's sake, buy something USB3 lol

----------

Annnd that's why I don't own one. I know this to be the case, but I also don't have the know-how to set something up myself. So, I go without backup storage.

Rather, I go without any kind of RAID seup. I do have a 2TB slow-as-molasses backup disk attached to my USB2 port. Yeah... sigh.

PS

I dont have a raid setup, not because I dont know what RAID is or how to manage a RAID setup, but because I dont need one. I have a different solution and it works for me and cost less than $150.

I have two 500GB drives, one is raw files/folders, then another 500GB drive that does TM of the first 500GB drive.

500GB isn't a lot, but its all I need for now, so it works.

 

[subsonix]

Drobo prices and specs are a joke.

You could get a USB 3.0 2.5" enclosure that performs over 400Mb/s read/write and add any number of 1Tb SATA 6Gb/s SSDs to it for far less than their prices.

Your comparisons are not accurate though, because this is a four drive enclosure, with an optional 5th mSATA accelerator drive. And according to the Drobo product spec, RAID is available.