It seems I got so enamored by the Drobo 5D yesterday, that I neglected to mention another model Drobo will soon be unleashing on the world. In my only defense, this is a tiny device, you might even call it mini. It’s the Drobo Mini, and it will use up to 4 laptop sized hard drives to keep your data safe on the go.
From the Drobo Mini website:
It’s a Drobo, so by definition it’s easy-to-use. Now it’s also the fastest portable storage array—with cutting-edge Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 connectivity and innovative use of solid state drives (SSDs). Along with the power of BeyondRAID, it delivers all the power and flexibility of its larger sibling, Drobo 5D, in a miniaturized package.
Drobo claims the Mini is the world’s first high-performance and protected portable storage array. Weighing in at 3 pounds fully loaded with drives installed, you can now carry up to 3TB of usable and protected capacity with you.
The Drobo Mini takes 2.5” drives. Four hot-swappable drive bays support drives of any capacity. No carriers or screws are needed to insert drives into the Drobo Mini. It allows drives to “click in and out like a ballpoint pen”. Drives can be added or hot-swapped on-the-fly for storage expansion with zero downtime.
The Drobo Mini uses single or dual-drive redundancy, to protect your data, even in the event of multiple drive failures.
From the website: “Drobo is the only storage array that offers Thunderbolt AND USB 3.0. This latest generation of USB also offers high-performance connectivity and is backward compatibility with any computer running compatible versions of Mac OS X or Windows.”
Also, “Data-Aware Tiering technology, usually reserved for business-class storage solutions, is also available in this portable Drobo. It intelligently uses the high-performance flash in SSDs to accelerate performance of the storage array, allowing applications such as Adobe Premiere and Apple Aperture fast access to data. To keep capacity of the Drobo at a maximum, the Drobo Accelerator Bay accepts an industry-standard mSATA SSD, leaving all four 2.5” drives bays available for high-capacity HDDs.”
This thing sounds like it will be smoking fast as well as offering piece of mind that your data is safe in case of a drive failure. You can even load up all the bays with SSD’s. ZOOM!
The Mini also includes a built in battery. If power dies, the battery keeps the Drobo alive long enough for the data to be written to non-volatile storage, ensuring your important information is safe. The battery recharges itself, and is designed to last the life of the device.
I cannot wait to see how this thing really performs in the real world. Drobo, you’ve got me drooling again!
