Drobo gen. 2 FW/USB2 - Availability

[Yvan256]

Received my new Firewire Drobo today.

1st impressions:

Packaging really cool, Apple style.
Unit smaller than I expected

Can you post a few pics of the packaging and the unit?

 

[TheNightPhoenix]

Got my 2nd Gen one last week. Really pleased. Stuffed 4 1TB Seagate barracudas with 32MB of cache on them in. Got 2.7 TB of usable space, quiet as hell, small, looks sexy, easy to configure, lovely.

 

[macpluslaptop]

Drobo owners help

I think I understand the backup idea (Drobo duplicates your data and needs equivalent free space for a buffer), but I have some basic questions beyond that.

Say I have 2 external HDs and my Macbook Pro internal HD. Can I copy all these drives to a Drobo setup, then add NEW stuff to one of the Drobo drives? (as one would to an external HD)

In theory, as long as there's enough space in the Drobo to duplicate everything with the buffer, it should work just as any external HD setup does?

Thanks in advance😀

 

[pprior]

Drives you put into Drobo are formatted so you lose anything on them. So if you're planning on using current drives, you have to have space somewhere else temporarily to park it until you can put the drobo into service. As for a "buffer" it's not really that, but depending on how many drives and what size you have you will "lose" 1/4 to 1/2 (worst case) of your total space to provide the redundancy that drobo offers.


To the poster about packaging, sorry I didn't take any pictures. The entire inside of the box was black with black "styrofoam" stuff on the ends of the unit and black antistatic fabric bag. A cool box saying something along the lines of "welcome to the world of drobo" sitting on top. Just really classy looking.