Drobo (Second generation)

4/10 Great device but Interface needs Work

FriBaby - 01/09/09

Pros: Elegant, quiet, ergo box with plug-and-play simplicity. Very fast in setting up and making drives available. Drobo dashboard works very well, finds the drive and mounts a drive letter on both MAC and PC (didn't try LINUX). Cons: Very upset to find out you can use the USB OR FireWire NOT BOTH. They should warn the consumer that the DroboShare uses the only USB port and if you use DroboShare you can't use FireWire port. Such a great device but no integrated NIC? Rediculous!! Bottom Line: Wonderful solution for a workgroup looking for RAID-protected SAN... home or small business... or even a small department in a large business. If the manufacturer get's off their duff and makes it so that all of the ports work, this will be a five-star device and would be very recommended. Without the integrated NIC and with only one port working at a time, I think it's only suited for low-speed data and for archiving.