Drobo price drops to $500

You spoke, Data Robotics listened. Even though we didn't think the $700 pricetag for a Drobo is that unreasonable considering its capabilities, Data Robotics is apparently deciding to preemptively strike and cut its price before it even reaches retail availability. With enough pre-orders in to increase volume and cut costs, Data Robotics was apparently able to shave a full $200 bones (nearly 30%) off the top, meaning now you'll only have to ante up $500 if you want to take one home. Pre-order customers will even get a check back for the $200 difference, which we presume they'll probably blow on more (or larger) drives.

P.S. -For the curious: it's still slated to land in early June.

[hangon @ May 2nd 2007 4:19PM]

I WANT IT IN EUROPE !!!!!!!!!!!! PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Mike @ May 2nd 2007 4:22PM]

I still can't figure out who this device is geared to. No enterprise would buy this and it's too expensive/complicated for the average home user.

Small/Med Biz? They could probably afford a small appliance or budget server with industry standards like how-swappable RAID 5.

SOHO users? But who will support it?

Computer Hobbyists? Maybe. Could you sell enough to this crowd to profit though?

[Alex @ May 2nd 2007 4:33PM]

Mike: Note that they've had enough preorders to get the volume to the point that they can cut 30% off the retail cost. I think there's more of a demand than you think, especially with small business and such as a backup unit. I know i'd rather offer this solution than several other ones. Need more space, throw in another HD, no playing around with finicky settings and such, and you dont need to worry about drive size differences and such. Backup has not kept up with new HD technology, at least not for home users, have you tried backing up 2.5 TB lately? its not fun in the least and this could take SOME of the pain out with a whole lot of reliability thrown in.

[BlackAle @ May 2nd 2007 7:36PM]

RAID isn't about backup, anyone who uses RAID for backup purposes is a fool.

[Tim @ May 2nd 2007 4:33PM]

$500 bucks and no ethernet connector? What's the point of a big storage solution if you've gotta set it up as a share on one computer?

Too bad. Seems like a neat toy.

[RaZor @ May 2nd 2007 4:53PM]

For those interested you can get $100 off (making the total cost $400) by using the discount code "REFPHILS" when you check out through their store until 05/30/07.

[mike d @ May 5th 2007 1:56PM]

Are you sure the REFPHILS code is for $100 off? It only takes $25 off for me.

[RaZor @ May 5th 2007 4:29PM]

Apparently, when they lowered their price, they also reduced the amount the code was good for. You are right, the code "REFPHILS" will only take $25 off now. Sorry about that.

[hoohoo @ May 2nd 2007 5:08PM]

no gigabit no buy.

[citizen @ May 2nd 2007 5:11PM]

man, peoples is just ripping HD-DVDs and blurays by the truckloads...........

09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0....HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Bruno @ May 2nd 2007 5:24PM]

$500 is still pretty high in price for a case with an imbedded drive controller. They had to drop the price to even hope of competing with Infrant and Thecus.

Drobo seems to be positioning their site to realy attract the consumer with some eye candy. This is their strength and how they can compete and do well in the drive market. Infrant and Thecus unfortunately haven't slicked up their sites enough to attract the consumer-level computer user.

But without Gigabit ethernet... Ugh... Lots of storage for one computer - or having to leave the connected computer on all the time to serve others data.

[michael @ May 2nd 2007 5:25PM]

I don't know what this preorder thing is all about. I ordered mine March 20th and it shipped to me that day. Been using it over a week...did the software update yesterday.

It is great! I just can't wait until next quarter when the 8-bay one is released!

[Jarom @ May 2nd 2007 5:30PM]

Has anyone tried their 'Drobolator' on their site? So much for 'just throw in more storage when you need it', put a 1TB drive and a 80GB drive into the machine and how much available space do you get? 72.8GB... Booyah, pop in a 1TB drive and double your hard disk space! Can't say I'm impressed with the machine tbh.

[J @ May 2nd 2007 5:47PM]

At $500, you can add a network enabled front end like an Apple Airport Extreme for $180. That puts it within $30 of Infrant's equivalent box. Seems like a pretty good alternative, especially since Infrant has issues with AFP. If you don't like the Apple front end, there are several similar devices on the market.

I also get the advantage of direct attached storage if I need it. I have the flexibility to switch between the two on demand.

And why is it too complicated for home users? The point of this device is that its drastically simple. Put in disks and Enjoy! If something goes wrong, the bad disk lights up in red. If it gets too full, the smallest disk lights up yellow. You just replace it with a bigger disk and poof, more storage available. You can do it all without taking the disk offline.

[onin @ May 2nd 2007 6:09PM]

I'll wait for windows home server it prolly can do the same thing.

[Tony @ May 2nd 2007 6:45PM]

True hotswap and no brainer redundancy management? Definitely a great product if it does all that it promises - including buffered file delivery while in service mode (replacing disks). Even some of my older Dell 2u's require me to shutdown my box to REBUILD a new drive (arggh!!).

Definitely not too expensive for a mac user. $400 ipods anyone? Since when is installing parts to a device to make it work too complicated? Ink Jet cartridges are far more trickier :P

[michael @ May 2nd 2007 7:20PM]

I have the beta of Windows Home Server running and it works great with DROBO.

Don't mistake yourself...WHS is NOT drobo...I love this little guy.

<
michael

[egadfly @ May 2nd 2007 7:29PM]

One thing you forgot to mention...

The Drobospace website (http://drobospace.com) says that people who already bought the Drobo for over $499 will automatically get rebate checks for the difference.

[Joshua @ May 2nd 2007 8:30PM]

People have to say "Hurr RAID is not backup" every time people are talking about RAID. But what the hell is the point of always bringing that up? Yeah you should have backups elsewhere but nothing is fool proof. The more backup the better. So if RAID isn't backup then what would you call it? Just redundancy? Whats the point of that if not to cut down on downtime till you fix it back to where you can recover again. Do most people run enterprise environments where they really need to store massive amount of tape backup on an off-site location?

I'll be buying one of these eventually because I really don't want to dick around with setups or configuring anything. Can you just slap a drive in an Infrant NAS and have it auto-add or auto-rebuild no matter what size drive you put in? I doubt it.

[Andy @ May 2nd 2007 10:47PM]

Joshua,

BlackAle is correct in that RAID is not about backup. You pretty much said it: RAID is about redundancy (uptime). You're confusing REDUNDANCY with RECOVERY, two different things. Let's assume that you have all of your data on this device. If a drive fails it has REDUNDANCY to stay up until the failed drive is replaced. BUT, if the device itself, say, falls off the desk and is destroyed, then you better have a backup somewhere in order to RECOVER.

However, I disagree with BlackAle in that, there is no technical reason you can't use a RAID array for disk based backups, it just gets expensive.

Anyway, this thing doesn't use RAID in the traditional sense from what I can tell. I'd guess that it uses some type of object based storage (like our disk based email archive system) which would allow it to use different disk types. Slower than a true RAID but infinitely faster than tape.

$700 was way too much, $500 is better but still not worth it to me, $250 I'd consider it.

[matt @ May 3rd 2007 4:31AM]

I still don´t get it:
http://www.google.com/products?q=readynas+nv%2B&btnG=Search+Products&scoring=p

the readynas nv+ was cheaper, now, still being at $600 it´s somewhat more expensive, but as far as I can see, way more capable.

Why this drobo junk? - where´s the real advantge, aside from the lower price?

[matt @ May 3rd 2007 4:39AM]

WOW

NETGEAR® to acquire Infrant Technologies

today´s press release
http://www.infrant.com/company/news_content.php?id=336

[Peter Payne @ May 3rd 2007 10:32AM]

I feel compelled to point out that "dorobo" (very similar to your drobo in most respects) means "thief" or "robber" in Japanese. For reasons of phonetics, you can't express "Drobo" in Japanese without saying "dorobo."

I'd advise against their selling that device here.

[DTXSFC @ May 3rd 2007 11:17AM]

This question is what's going to happen if the Drobo itself fails? Will you be able to retrieve your data that was spreaded out over 2 to 4 drives? I don't knock the technology but there's things like that you have to consider. SATA & Gigabyte Ethernet should have been considered. No remote access to the Drobo is a setback as well. There's too much competition out there who include remote access to NAS devices. The price point is still too high even with $100.00 off with not even one hard drive included. $500.00 with a 250GB HD would be a fair deal. The Drobo looks nice, sleek and appealing with all the lights but I'm more interested in features not looks.