You may have heard that the Livid Lobster storage closet is full of Drobos. These RAID storage devices house all our video files for GeekBeat.TV and the other video and photography projects we do. They’re easy to use and reliable. If you haven’t heard about them before, one of the things I love is that you don’t actually have to know what RAID is or how to manage it in order to use a Drobo! They put simplicity into a complicated system and keep your data backed up securely.
But here’s the thing… as much as we love them, we have to use other drives when we’re on the road. And we travel A LOT! I have been waiting for 5 years for Drobo to make a portable RAID storage device so we can be sure that our files are duplicated.
All that to say… I don’t have to wait anymore! They’ve finally announced the Drobo Mini.
The Drobo Mini is the smallest storage array out there, and it accomplishes it by using 2.5 inch drives. There are four drive slots, and you can configure it in Single Drive Redundancy (using one drive for protection and the rest for storage), or in Dual Drive Redundancy (using two drives for protection, and two for storage).
It has Drobo’s usual bars of lights to keep you informed on how much more room you have until you’re full, and of course the yellow and red lights will inform you of any hard drive failures or warnings.
For speed’s sake, the Mini has both Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 ports. AND… they’ve included a “trapdoor” on the bottom of the device. Put in a SSD there, and it’ll speed up the device.
They’ve also announced the Drobo 5D, which is a 5-drive bay with an SSD Trapdoor. It has Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 as well.
We’ll give you all the details (including price) when we get our hands on it next week at the CEA Line Shows, so definitely pay attention to our tweets and livestream.
