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Drobo says it will soon have Thunderbolt-enabled data storage products, as well as adding support for solid state drives. The setup, while extremely pricey, would allow data to run 20 times faster than with USB 2.0 alone.
Drobo CEO Tom Buiocchi wrote in a blog post that "customers have been very clear to us about their desire for Drobos with Thunderbolt support".
I was brought up on the east coast, where we enjoyed the monster summertime thunderstorms every year. One of the coolest things about thunder is that you see it first and then you hear the “kaboom” impact – the delay sends anxious anticipation through everyone, and if you’re into science, you can estimate how far away the bolt is based on the length of the delay. Let’s face it, thunderbolts are cool.
Today, Drobo is previewing our new Thunderbolt technology much like the real thing – you’ll see it now (check out our home page for the quick glimpse) and you’ll soon hear the kaboom. Yes, there are some other Thunderbolt products out there now, but I guarantee you that you haven’t seen anything like what we’re building. Nothing even close.
The company will be demonstrating prototype Thunderbolt-enabled Drobos at a technology show in Taiwan. The company didn't offer details on pricing or availability.
Top Rated Comments
(View all)Makes me wonder if a thunderbolt-equipped product would change anything.
We have a DroboPro... While it's great and all for storage, the stupid thing is god-awful slow.
This. Until they improve their underlying processor and firmware capabilities, there's no chance the thing will come close to needing Thunderbolt's speeds. The one I used to have stuggled under the best of times to even come close to saturating USB2.0.Makes me wonder if a thunderbolt-equipped product would change anything.
How about dual drive redundancy and no downtime should a drive fail? Also you never get any old drives lying around, just buy drives and slot them in as you need which can be cheap. Great selling points of the Drobo and it's still a valid product in today's market. I'd never use any single system proprietary or not without backup. At least with drobo you get warnings when drives have failed with still access to your files if you need. I'm not a drobo fanboy as my next drive is a DIY enclosure just because it's so cheap. x2 4TB drives and done, my external backup solution which will reduce backup time from my drobo to be much quicker. I can even add another 5 bay enclosure vía eSata. Customer service is beyond excellent and they offer many software updates with plenty of great stuff (the newest update came with Plex).
I do think the price of Drobos should come down as everything is so much cheaper, faster etc.. Even with FW and USB 3.0, Drobo is very slow.
You make it sound like Drobo is the only option that can do those things.
Double redundancy? Ive got that on my Synology NAS. Ive had it for 2 years and not a single drive failure ever. I can still access my data if a drive fails and its much, MUCH faster than any Drobo. I can stream 4 HD 1080p on 4 screens al the same time and probably even more.
Drobo is ****. Before buying one I googled info and there is people mad at it all over the internet.
This might have been a selling point when drives were more expensive but today it seems rather moot. Furthermore, if stability is your goal, using a mix of old drives is asking for trouble. If your data is valuable enough to invest in a four bay enclosure, then why go with a proprietary system and trust your data to a bunch of mix and match hard drives? Seems pretty foolish.
How about dual drive redundancy and no downtime should a drive fail? Also you never get any old drives lying around, just buy drives and slot them in as you need which can be cheap. Great selling points of the Drobo and it's still a valid product in today's market. I'd never use any single system proprietary or not without backup. At least with drobo you get warnings when drives have failed with still access to your files if you need. I'm not a drobo fanboy as my next drive is a DIY enclosure just because it's so cheap. x2 4TB drives and done, my external backup solution which will reduce backup time from my drobo to be much quicker.I do think the price of Drobos should come down as everything is so much cheaper, faster etc.. Even with FW and USB 3.0, Drobo is very slow.