an advertisement . please help improve it by removing promotional content and inappropriate external links and by adding encyclopedic content written from a neutral point of view . may 2015 learn how and when to remove this template message drobo inc. type private industry computer hardware computer data storage founded san jose california u.s. may 2005 2005 05 founder geoff barrall julian terry headquarters san jose california u.s. area served worldwide key people mihir h. shah ceo products drobo website drobo.com drobo is the name of a series of products classified as external storage devices for computers . they are made of different types including das san and nas appliances made by connected data inc. current drobo devices can house up to four five eight or twelve 3.5 or 2.5 serial ata or serial attached scsi hard disk drives and connect with a computer or network via usb 2.0 usb 3.0 firewire 800 esata gigabit ethernet or thunderbolt . drobo devices are primarily designed to allow installation and removal of hard disk drives without requiring manual data migration and also for increasing storage capacity of the unit without downtime . the company drobo inc. changed its name from data robotics in 2011 since the familiarity with the drobo name which until then had only been the name of their product line far exceeded the data robotics name . 1 drobo inc. merged with connected data inc. in june 2013 with the new company taking the connected data name . contents 1 products 1.1 overview 1.1.1 consumer models 1.1.2 business models 1.2 2nd generation 1.2.1 technical specifications 1.3 drobopro 1.4 droboelite 1.5 drobo fs 1.5.1 specifications 1.6 drobo 800fs 800i 1200i 1.7 drobo mini 1.8 drobo 5d 1.8.1 software 2 features 2.1 beyondraid 3 criticism customer support issues with drobo 4 competitors and alternatives 5 references 6 external links 6.1 reviews products edit overview edit consumer models edit drobo 1st drobo 2nd drobo 3rd drobo s drobo s 2nd drobo 5d drobo fs drobo 5n drobo mini model number dr04dd10 dr04dd14 ddr3a21 drdr3a21 drdr4a21 drdr5a21 drds2a21 drds4a21 dr mini 1p11 release date 5 june 2007 8 july 2008 28 may 2014 23 november 2009 16 november 2010 2 november 2012 6 april 2010 13 december 2012 26 october 2012 status discontinued discontinued available discontinued discontinued available discontinued available available type das das das das das das nas nas das drive bays 4 4 4 5 5 5 1 5 5 1 4 1 redundancy single drive single drive single or dual drive single or dual drive single or dual drive single or dual drive single or dual drive single or dual drive single or dual drive hosts single single single single single single up to 10 users single data aware tiering no no no no no yes no yes yes usb 2.0 2.0 3.0 2.0 3.0 3.0 no no 3.0 firewire 800 no yes no yes yes no no no no gigabit ethernet no no no no no no 1x afp and cifs smb 1x afp and cifs smb no esata no no no yes yes no no no no thunderbolt no no no no no yes no no yes plus one msata ssd slot for data aware tiering 2 business models edit drobopro drobopro fs b800fs droboelite b800i b1200i model number drpr1a21 drds3a21 dr b800fs 4a21 drel1a21 dr b800i 2a21 drb1200i1a21 release date 7 april 2009 5 october 2010 8 february 2011 23 november 2009 8 february 2011 8 february 2011 status discontinued discontinued available discontinued available available type das nas nas san san san drive bays 8 8 8 8 8 12 redundancy single or dual drive single or dual drive single or dual drive single or dual drive single or dual drive single or dual drive hosts single up to 25 users up to 100 users up to 16 up to 8 up to 24 data aware tiering no no no no no yes usb 2.0 no no 2.0 admin only 2.0 admin only no firewire 800 yes no no no no no gigabit ethernet 1x iscsi 2x afp and cifs smb 2x afp and cifs smb 2x iscsi 2x iscsi 3x iscsi and 1x management esata no no no no no no thunderbolt no no no no no no 2nd generation edit in july 2008 drobo announced a 2nd generation model 3 4 which offered a faster core processor optimized firmware better usb 2.0 performance and a pair of firewire 800 ports which are compatible with firewire 400 to 800 cables and adapters . firmware is available to support drives in excess of 3tb firmware v1 .4.0 . . 5 technical specifications edit marvell 500 mhz system on a chip soc processor marvell 88f5281 d0 includes support for pci x pci express gigabit ethernet usb 2.0 ddr2 32bit 200mhz based on marvell feroceon risc core armv5te same processor used in the apple time capsule and in several other nas devices marvell pci x 4 port sata ii controller marvell 88sx6042 bcz1 1 gb ram 2x hynix h5ps5162ffr 512mb ddr2 sdram 2 5 5 5 128 mb nor flash memory spansion gl128p90ffir2 90 nm 25ns page access 90ns random access 64 macrocell pld programmable logic device xilinx xc2c64a 3 port firewire 800 1394b controller ti xio2213azay pci express 45 mah manganese rechargeable lithium nvram battery ml2020 3v dc cooling fan 2 wire brushless drobopro edit in early 2009 drobo announced a new model called the drobopro which is physically larger than the drobo and offers the option of being mounted in a 19 inch rack . the drobopro has the increased capacity of 8 drive bays rather than 4 in the original model giving a 32 tb theoretical maximum with the current 4 tb drives . it also adds dual disk redundancy akin to raid 6 . iscsi via gigabit ethernet has been added alongside existing usb and firewire 800 400 interfaces . however the iscsi implementation currently only supports connection to a single server 6 and unlike the drobo fs the ethernet interface can not be used for other networking protocols such as nfs ftp or smb . droboelite edit on 23 november 2009 drobo added a new model to its product line called droboelite . its main difference versus the drobopro is that it allows simultaneous access for up to 16 hosts via two iscsi ports . the elite version also supports up to 255 volumes vs. 16 in the pro version . 7 drobo fs edit drobo fs launched at tech field day in may 2010 . 8 the key difference with the s models as well as the first and second generation models is the lan port i.e. ethernet rj45 without the requirement of a drobo network interface . 5 hdd slots available . it provides up to 10.89 tb of storage when using 5 hdds of 3tb . this is less than the sum of the drives because of fault tolerance . dual disk redundancy will reduce the possible storage capacity to 8.17 tb . larger capacity drives greater than 2tb are automatically supported as they become available . 5 specifications edit processor arm926ej s rev 0 v5l memtotal 189028 kb drobo 800fs 800i 1200i edit on february 8 2011 drobo updated its business hardware suite discontinuing older models for three new ones 800fs 800i and 1200i . the latter two are storage area networks with 8 bays for the 800i and 12 bays for the 1200i respectively . the lower case i stands for iscsi . 9 drobo mini edit shortly after updating their business hardware suite drobo also updated their professional hardware suite . designed for mobile photographers drobo mini was made available on october 12 2012 . 10 the mini retained many features of earlier drobo models including single and dual drive redundancy while introducing several new features such as thunderbolt ports . 4 drobo 5d edit released shortly after the drobo mini the drobo 5d continued drobo s attempted capture of the professional photographer market . 11 software edit kernel linux drobo fs 2.6.22.18 busybox v1 .14.2 2009 07 29 17 47 47 pdt multi call binary current droboapps on the official website application version droboadmin 1.3 apache http server 1.3.41 1 ctorrent dnh3 .3.2 1 dropbear 0.52 1 but d l file is 2 firefly media server 0.2.4.2 2 fuppes r578 1 lighttpd 1.4.26 1 pure ftpd 1.0.28 1 rsync 3.0.7 1 unfsd 0.9.22 1 wake on lan 1.09 1 perl v5 .10.0 perl is the underlying programming language for the droboapps . all apps are specific for each type of drobo . features edit data protection for all drives as drobo controls any access to the data . recognizes and utilizes newly added storage devices on the fly . hard drives do not need to be matched in terms of capacity speed or manufacturer . the drives appear as one unified drive to the host operating system without requiring the installation of the management software on the host . supported file systems hfs plus ntfs ext3 and fat32 ddr3a31 only supports hfs and ntfs according to data sheet . file system redundancy is managed by a virtualization layer which lays data out in a proprietary drobo format . second firewire port allows a user to daisy chain multiple drobos up to a computer . each drobo mounts as a separate system on the computer . with the addition of the drobo fs network attached storage nas add on functionality can be added via open source software . examples are itunes music server functionality upnp dlna support and ftp access . beyondraid edit this section does not cite any sources . please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources . unsourced material may be challenged and removed . april 2015 learn how and when to remove this template message drobo inc. implements a storage technology that they call beyondraid in their drobo storage devices . while not a true raid iso spec extension it does provide for using up to 12 sata hard drives in the devices and consolidating them into one big pool of storage . it has the advantage of being able to use multiple disk sizes at once much like a spanned volume volume set or the synology hybrid raid while providing redundancy for all disks and allowing a hot swap upgrade at any time . internally it uses a mix of techniques similar to raid 1 and raid 5 . depending on the amount of data stored on the unit in relation to the installed capacity it may be able to survive up to 3 drive failures if the array can be restored onto the remaining good disks before another drive fails . citation needed the amount of usable storage in a drobo unit can be approximated by adding up the capacities of all the disks and subtracting the capacity of the largest disk . for example if a 5 4 2 and 1 tb drive were installed the approximate usable capacity would be 5 4 2 1 5 7 tb of usable space . internally the data would be distributed in two raid 5 like arrays and one raid 1 like set drives 1 tb 2 tb 4 tb 5 tb x unusable space 1 tb a1 a1 raid 1 set 2 1 tb b1 b1 raid 1 set 2 1 tb c1 c2 cp raid 5 array 3 1 tb d1 d2 d3 dp raid 5 array 4 1 tb with the introduction of the drobopro a raid6 like feature was also introduced . beyondraid also has the ability to perform hash based compression using 160 bit sha1 hashes to maximize storage efficiency . detailed technical information about beyondraid including how it handles adding and removing drives can be found in the patent application at the us patent office us patent application no. 20070266037 . criticism customer support issues with drobo edit the drobo was initially criticized for lacking