BeyondRAID™ Technology
Every Drobo product comes with the revolutionary BeyondRAID storage technology — the next generation of redundant disk protection. BeyondRAID not only keeps your data safe, but will also increase uptime and availability. BeyondRAID technology offers several improvements over traditional RAID-based storage systems, including the flexibility to replace failed disks and increase capacity all without costly downtime.

Key features of BeyondRAID include:
  Data protection against hard disk failure
  Instant capacity expansion without downtime
  Self-management
  Automatic healing

File and Operating System Agnostic
Drobo and its underlying BeyondRAID technology currently support the Windows, Mac and Linux¹ platforms, with file system support for NTFS, HFS+, EXT3 and FAT32. Since Drobo is a block level system, it easily adapts to almost any environment.

Mixed Drive Capacity Utilization
Grow storage to meet your data capacity needs with minimal effort. To add capacity, simply insert a new hard disk or replace the smallest disk with a larger one, even when all four disk bays are full. Unlike traditional RAID systems, the BeyondRAID technology enables IT managers to efficiently mix and match disk brands, capacities and speeds. This allows for continuous expansion as disk capacities grow. Now, expansion is automatic, instantaneous and access to data is always maintained.

To find out exactly how much free capacity you'll have with your choice of disk capacities, try out our interactive Capacity Calculator.

Redundant Safety
Drobo can ensure your data is safe even if a hard disk fails. You’ll feel safer knowing that if disks do fail, Drobo automatically enters a state of self-healing wherein it relays out your data across the remaining healthy disks and sectors.

Proportional Rebuild Times
The time it takes Drobo to rebuild data after a drive failure or removal is proportional to the amount of data stored in the pool—meaning the less capacity that is used, even on a 2TB disk, the shorter your rebuild times will be. This is superior to traditional RAID, which lacks proportional rebuild times, and is forced relay out every drive block even if it does not contain user data.

Since Drobo is “Data Aware”, it tracks where data is on each disk, so it can differentiate between used and unused portions of disk. This expedites rebuild times and reduces your risk of losing data to an additional disk failure. In short, your data is safer on a Drobo.

Self-Healing
When Drobo detects a "bad" hard disk, it proactively advises you with a series of warnings ranging from a blinking red LED on its front panel, to pop-up alerts in Drobo Dashboard, to email alerts. What Drobo does next is exceptional. It enters a self-healing mode where it repairs around the bad sector or disk, and will work until it returns to the safest state possible. If Drobo has sufficient time and free capacity (indicated by all lights returning to a solid green state), it can even withstand additional hard disk failures — that's the power of self-healing.

Storage Virtualization
BeyondRAID was designed from the ground up to allow the storage capacity of the array to expand and contract. BeyondRAID makes this a simple process by utilizing a technology called “virtualization.” Virtualization provides a layer of abstraction between the data requested by the file system and the physical location of that data on the disk drives. A given piece of data can be located on any drive, and on any physical location on that drive. This is what makes adding a drive to a Drobo so simple. The new drive just provides additional places to store data.

Virtualization is what enables BeyondRAID to effortlessly change the data arrangement on the drives, for example, changing data stored as a mirror into data stored as parity stripe, without interrupting the user access to data. Virtualization completely decouples the physical space available in the array from the space reported to the operating system. This is how BeyondRAID is able to eliminate the need to manually expand/contract the file system as more space becomes available or is removed.

Thin Provisioning
Thin provisioning is a technical term that describes how the BeyondRAID technology communicates with your operating system. BeyondRAID communicates with your OS about how much disk space you have, up to 16TB (this varies with older operating and file systems). Specifying a larger amount of storage than is physically available allows you to grow into the volume without having to reformat or migrate your data in order to add capacity. BeyondRAID automatically also reclaims space as you delete files.

Self-Managing
Drobo is highly automated storage. There are no complex configuration screens, DIP switches, confounding choices, web consoles or other complications that prevent so many other storage devices from working out of the box.

Drive Reordering
One long-standing requirement inherent in traditional RAID-based systems was that if for some reason you needed to remove the drives, you’d have to replace the drives in the exact same order. When you remove your disks from Drobo, you can put them back in any order you like.

Product Specifications

Host Interface: eSATA, FireWire 800 (FireWire 400 compatible) and USB 2.0 Drives: Accommodates from one to five 3.5” SATA I / SATA II hard drives of any manufacturer, capacity, spindle speed, and/or cache¹. No carriers or tools required. Power: Idle system (standby, drives off) = 12 watts Typical busy system (four drives) = 56 watts Box Contents:  Drobo S  External power supply (100v-240v) with U.S. 110v power cord  eSATA cable  FireWire 800 cable  USB 2.0 cable  User Guide and Quick Start Card (printed)  Drobo Resource CD with Drobo Dashboard application, help files, and electronic documentation Accoustics Normal operation: 31.8 dB²

Capacity Continuously upgradeable with larger and faster drives. Use our capacity calculator to estimate your storage in various configurations.

Dimensions   Width Height Length Inches 5.9 7.3 10.3 mm 150.3 185.4 262.3  Weight: 8lbs (without hard drives or packaging)

File System Options Windows: NTFS Mac OS X: HFS+ Cross-Platform: FAT32 Linux: EXT3 Certification: Emissions FCC Class B, Underwriters Laboratories (United States, Canada) Security Kensington lock port (lock not included) Warranty One (1) year warranty in the US, two (2) year warranty in the EU (as provided by EU law), or as provided by local law. Operating System Support Windows 2008 Server Windows 2003 Server Windows 2000 Server Windows XP Windows Vista Windows 7 Linux using EXT3 Mac OS 10.4 or later

¹ Tests performed with OS X Leopard on a Mac Pro using a 7200 RPM internal hard drive and a Drobo using two 7200 RPM drives over FireWire 800. Large file transfers performed with 1GB of video files via drag & drop. Small file transfers performed with 1GB of mp3 files via drag & drop. Kona video benchmarking test performed using the Disk Read/Write test with the following settings: 1GB file size, DVCProHD1080i60 video frame size, and disable file system cache enabled. Performance will vary significantly according to many factors such as file size, number of files, software drivers, operating system, hardware support, and other factors. Data Robotics, Inc. cannot guarantee all host systems will achieve similar results. ² Acoustics tests performed 1m from the front of Drobo with four 1TB Western Digital GreenPower™ drives during a file copy to Drobo. Drobo has a smart, five-speed fan governed by multiple internal temperature sensors that will normally be off or operate on its lowest setting. The fan is programmed to minimize noise, but never at the expense of disk integrity. The fan can switch to higher speeds if necessary in in hot operating environments or during strenuous usage to protect drives from overheating up to 38.1dB.