If you haven't heard of the Drobo, you're probably not being as productive as you could be. The Drobo 5D is one of the easiest to use, simplest to maintain, and most effective enclosure bays in its field of data storage. The Drobo 5D offers room for up to five 3.5" SATA I/II/III drives (sold separately) and one mSATA solid state drive. It handles drives from any manufacturer, at any capacity, spindle speed, and cache. You can add drives on the go - hot-swapping drives is not a problem for the Drobo 5D.

But what puts this unit ahead in the storage game are the dual Thunderbolt ports. We've talked about Thunderbolt before - it's 25 x faster than USB 2.0 - and its data transfer rates almost approach warp speed, but more importantly, for disk arrays of this size, it reliably and safely transfers big-project data across multiple disks. Imagine having to put a crucial 200GB file on a USB 2.0 drive, as you're late for an important meeting and running out the door. You'll be delayed for ten minutes or more, trust us. The same crucial information on a Thunderbolt attached drive - 20 seconds.

You can also daisy-chain up to six Thunderbolt devices and/or a non-Thunderbolt monitor at the end of the chain. With six Drobo 5D arrays in a chain, you can have up to 96 TB of usable capacity. And, the bi-directional 10 Gbps performance of Thunderbolt allows all devices in the chain to achieve maximum throughput. They even throw in the Thunderbolt cable so Mac users can get started immediately.

But Thunderbolt isn't the only option. The Drobo 5D also sports USB 3.0 connections, which is still 12 x above the transfer rates for USB 2.0. This interface allows PC users to utilize the power of the Drobo 5D right out of the box.

The Drobo 5D also uses their proprietary Data-Aware Tiering technology, usually reserved for business-class storage solutions, but also available in this desktop Drobo. It intelligently uses the high-performance flash in SSDs to accelerate performance of the storage array, allowing applications such as Adobe Premiere and Apple Aperture fast access to data. If you want a total, all-out speed/storage solution, you could load all the bays with solid state drives. Minimal seek time, no drive spinning - pure zoom.

And the Drobo 5D is built on the BeyondRAID technology, which features single- or dual-drive redundancy. This added layer of protection will create  mirrors of one drive so that you'll always have a backup. Paired with the ability to hot-swap drives, this conceivably allows you to formulate a game plan on the fly in the case of a drive failure or power outage.

Speaking of power outages, the Drobo 5D also includes a battery backup for all data in memory or cache, - anything on its way to the drives, in other words.

The design of the unit has you in mind as well -it's sleek, sturdy, and has a carrierless drive-bay design so that hard drives fit closer to each other, and the unit houses a significantly quieter variable-speed cooling fan.

The Drobo 5D is the perfect choice for content managers or data archivists that need speed and performance and room in one easy-to-use desktop enclosure.

BeyondRAID Technology

BeyondRaid Technology features single- or dual-drive redundancy. This added layer of protection will create  mirrors of one drive so that you'll always have a backup.

Data Aware Tiering

Data-Aware Tiering technology, usually reserved for business-class storage solutions, is also available in this portable Drobo. It intelligently uses the high-performance flash in SSDs to accelerate performance of the storage array, allowing applications such as Adobe Premiere and Apple Aperture fast access to data.

Thunderbolt and USB 3.0

Drobo Mini is equipped with dual Thunderbolt ports for daisy chaining. Connect up to six Thunderbolt devices and/or a non-Thunderbolt monitor at the end of the chain. This allows even the most portable laptop computers access to high-performance storage while retaining connectivity to other devices and an external monitor. Drobo is the only storage array that offers Thunderbolt and USB 3.0. This latest USB also offers high-performance connectivity and is backward compatibility with computers running compatible versions of Mac OS X or Windows.

Power and Critical Data

Drobo doesn't just protect you from a drive failure, but also from potential data loss after a power outage. Drobo Mini includes a battery that protects all data in memory, or cache, that is, data on its way to the drives. When power spontaneously goes away, the battery keeps the Drobo alive long enough for the data to be written to nonvolatile storage. The battery recharges itself and is designed to last for the life of the product.

Quiet

Drobo 5D is also significantly quieter than previous-generation Drobos due to its tuned, large, variable-speed cooling fan. You can even configure Drobo to spin down drives when they're not in use to further reduce noise and save energy.