It was 9 years and 2 months ago to the day that I received and unboxed my Drobo 2 Generation data storage device. At that time I was digitizing my entertainment collection and my need for space was expanding rapidly. Up until that time I was storing things on external hard drives and backing them up manually to protect against drive failure. As the space needed grew this became more difficult and cumbersome.
When the first Drobo was release in 2007 I had my eye on nearly the first day. Â Drobo’s were expensive and I wanted to make sure the technology was sound, in September 2009 I made the jump. In the 9 years that followed I have had the best tech experience for a single product ever. Â It just works! Unlike a lot of tech that claims to be expandable my Drobo truly was, as my needs grew I just chucked in another drive. Â Today its sporting four 3 terabyte drives but when I started out it was a mixture of 250 & 500 gig drives.
This Drobo has been with me through 4 moves & 3 states all the while running 24/7 attached to my server. I know it seems odd to write about a product that just does everything it claimed to do when you bought it, but I think this needs to be recognized. My Drobo has been performing like a rock star with hardly a day off in 9 years.
This week my Drobo 2nd Gen started un-mounting from the server several times a day. In the past this has happened a few times but never with the frequency and consistency that it did this week.  I’m sure it could be something else besides Drobo’s age and use, but considering the important job it does for me I decided to replace it with a new Drobo 5c.  Because Drobo cares about its customers I am able to just remove the disk pack from my old Drobo to my new one and be off and running.  You may have noticed that I did not get a network capable Drobo and that’s because of my setup a NAS really doesn’t meet my needs.
The new 5c is now in place, running beautifully, much much faster, and boy is this thing quiet compared to my old one.
In the end I just wanted  to say “Thanks Drobo” for making a product that did everything it claimed with dependability and quality.  My new 5c has some high expectations to live up to, but I am sure it will be up to the task.