Hello Drobo

Remember when you bought your first 256MB USB memory stick and wondered what you would possibly fill it with ? How about your first 4GB USB memory stick did it feel daunting to have so much storage and responsibility ? Have you grown accustomed to the constant space available in Google mail ?

Be prepared then to experience that sense of wonder and intimidation as you look upon storage space that seems to stretch for Terabytes before you.

I  bought my first Drobo this week and I  am  astounded  at the prospect of having nearly unlimited storage space available on my network. The knowledge that the Drobo protects my data across a series of inexpensive hard disks is reassuring as are the four green lights currently glowing on my Drobos face.

The Drobo was released with support for Mac and Windows users via USB cable.  There is a new version which offers support for  firewire and USB. If you want to host the Drobo on the network you can purchase an accessory which provides network sharing  capability .

I chose to place my Drobo on my Ubuntu server and whilst this means I dont get access to the control panel interface for the Drobo it does allow me to share it on my network as well add it to my archiving and backup regimes.

If your looking to host a Drobo on a Linux box then the instructions here detail how to format and attach your Drobo to your Linux box. Follow them  and adjust nothing on the mke2fs line and its going to work fine. Bare in mind that the time required to run mke2fs  varies on your processor speed and the size of the Drobo array. Theres no need to partition the drive and once configured the only thing lacking is the control to shutdown the drive however there may be controls and tools available.

Setting up the Drobo and installing the hard drives is really, and i mean REALLY, simple. It is a plug and go operation as you can see from my  Phreadz demo.

If your looking to calculate your prospective Drobo size then check out the very interactive Drobolator.

Ive bought a few Drobos for clients and I cant recommend them enough as a mechanism for adding very sensible and safe storage space to your network or your home computer. My Advice go and buy one ( and the subsequent hard drives ) today.

Thanks for reading.