Drobo Mini and 5D Arrays Available

Drobo, Inc. announced the availability and shipping of the Drobo Mini and Drobo 5D.

          Drobo 5D

The Drobo Mini and 5D products are storage arrays to include Thunderbolt
connectivity, USB 3.0, automated tiering that supports SSDs,
reliability features and storage-array portability.

The products are designed to intelligently and seamlessly use
high-performance SSDs with HDDs to accelerate workflows for creative
professionals managing rich-media catalogs and Mac enthusiasts who need
fast, capacity and portable storage.

"With the Drobo Mini and 5D, we’re adding speed to Drobo s
well-known ease-of-use. They are the industry s first storage arrays
that automatically and affordably mix and match high-speed SSDs, HDDs
and Thunderbolt support," said Tom Buiocchi, CEO of Drobo. "We
created these products with the needs of creative professionals and Mac
enthusiasts in mind. They re faster and more reliable than ever before."

For Creative Professionals in the Office or On-the-Go
The Mini and 5D are storage arrays for creating and working with amounts
of rich media. In particular, professionals who are users of Adobe and
Apple applications, including After Effects, Aperture, Final Cut Pro,
Lightroom, Photoshop and Premier Pro, will find the Mini and 5D ideal
for storing catalogs and backing up files of all types.

Both products include Drobo s Data-Aware Tiering technology, which
embraces the use of affordable SSD storage in conjunction with
traditional HDDs to deliver both accelerated performance and substantial
capacity. For under $100, customers can add SSD technology to the new
Drobos, increasing transactional performance by up to 12 times over
previous Drobo models.

In addition, Drobo is a storage array that offers both Thunderbolt and
USB 3.0. The Mini and 5D are of the first in a group of sophisticated
and accelerated hybrid-storage products; like the Apple Fusion Drive,
leading the hybrid storage movement for professionals.

The 5D is designed as the desktop workhorse to the meet demanding data
storage requirements of professionals and media creators. Without the
need for complicated RAID setup or configuration, it makes storing and
protecting valuable data simple, with enough storage for more than
90,000 16 megapixel raw photos, 650 Blu-ray discs, and up to 5,000 hours
of 1080p HD video.

Designed for the mobile professional, Mini accommodates four 2.5-inch
drives, an SSD Accelerator Bay, two Thunderbolt ports and a USB 3.0 port
in a package fitting in a portable travel bag. The product weighs in at
about 3 pounds loaded with drives installed, and can hold up to 3TB of
usable and protected data – enough to accommodate data protection for
15,000 raw photos and 1,000 hours of HD video.

"I’ve been using Drobo now for years, and it’s provided the best
protected storage and most reliable backup solution for my business, but
I’ve been anxiously waiting for a unit that is both fast and portable," said Jeff Cable, Drobo fan and official photographer for Team USA Water Polo at the 2012 Summer Olympic Games. "Now,
with the release of the Drobo Mini, I will finally have a unit that
supports SSDs and delivers Thunderbolt performance and RAID protection
in one portable, easy-to-use, compact solution."

Drobo for Home and Personal Use
For home media users looking to consolidate and accelerate video, photo
and music files, the Mini and 5D provide a plug-and-play accelerated
storage option with the real-world performance to run rich media
libraries like iTunes and iPhoto, as well as to safely store and backup
personal data. Both products are compatible with a range of local and
cloud backup solutions to deliver remote access and off-premises data
protection.

Thunderbolt Power and Flexibility
Thunderbolt I/O technology provides performance that is up to five times
faster than the previous-generation Drobos. This enables users to move
large amounts of data in a fraction of the time previously required.
Mini and 5D are equipped with dual Thunderbolt ports for daisy-chaining;
users can connect up to six Thunderbolt devices and a non-Thunderbolt
monitor at the end of the chain. The bi-directional 10 Gbps performance
of Thunderbolt allows all devices in the chain to achieve maximum
throughput.

Reliability and Data Protection
Like all Drobos, the Mini and 5D protect users from a drive failure by
enabling them to add or hot-swap drives on-the-fly for storage expansion
with zero downtime. When drives are running low on space, the
traffic-style lights on the front tell the user what to do: add a drive
in an empty bay or remove a smaller drive and replace it with a larger
one.

New with the 5D and Mini is an additional feature often found only on
enterprise-grade storage for extended data protection: a larger battery
and intelligent software that protects all data in memory or cache in
the event of a spontaneous or unexpected power loss. The battery keeps
the Drobo alive long enough for the data to be written to non-volatile
storage, ensuring all important information is kept safe, and then
recharges itself. The battery is designed to last for the life of the
product.

The Drobo Mini starts at $649 and the Drobo 5D starts at $849. Both include a Thunderbolt cable.