The number one complaint about the
Drobo is pretty obvious:
getting the damn thing on your network without using a host computer. Well, consider that complaint sorted. Today Data Robotics is releasing a NAS upgrade for Drobo called the DroboShare, which will support:
- Gigabit Ethernet (yes!), static or dynamic IPs
- Auto-mounting SMB shares via Drobo Dashboard (supports SMB authentication)
- Dual USB 2.0 ports for two Drobos per DroboShare
- EXT3 file system support (officially!)
- Capacities up to 16TB per Drobo (provided you feed it 4TB drives that won't be out until, say, 2010)
- And possibly our favorite: email alerts, should a drive happen to crash, for example
It's also worth noting that Drobo is still capable of switching between NAS and direct-attached modes if you decide you want to take your Drobo OFF the network (but why would you do a thing like that?). The biggest problem with this add-on? It's $200, which brings the total cost of a DroboShare NAS rig to $700 --
without drives. Still, we have a feeling for many a Drobo user -- ourselves included -- the value of the functionality will far outweigh the borderline unreasonable price tag.
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