When I first came across the name DROBO I thought this must be a cool gadget, just because of its name. It’s all space-age and futuristic. So what exactly is DROBO? Well it’s a fully automated Direct Attached Storage Solution. Now it wasn’t that long ago that I was singing the praises of the Linkstation Live, especially as it was networked attached rather than direct attached. So what’s changed?

Well, if the truth be told, not a lot has changed. I just think the DROBO is a solution which has so much to offer, especially for those who only have one machine at home. I feel the killer feature of this solution is that it gives you full peace of mind in regards to disk replication and redundancy, unlike the Linkstation which of course is only one drive. At the same time however DROBO does not expect or indeed need you to have any kind of technical understanding of RAID levels and the like. Instead you can start off with two drives, plug them in and DROBO will take care of the rest. Heck the drives don’t even need to be the same size. Then when you need to upgrade DROBO will take care of balancing your data between the 4 drives. And once you have 4 drives in place you don’t have to stop there. Simply replace the smallest drive in the set with a larger drive and once again DROBO will work its magic.

DROBO also works under a very simple principle of flashing lights which can easily guide even the most novice of users to where action needs to be taken, even warning you in advance when you need to think about upgrading.  Just in time storage upgrades are now possible thanks to DROBO.
Having come from a background of managing online storage systems for corporations I can’t stress enough the importance of either some kind of RAID protection, regular backups or both. DROBO will give you the peace of mind on the data protection front without any of the stress of trying to manage it yourself.