Drobo 5N Shipping

Drobo, Inc. announced the availability of its fastest and most technologically advanced networked storage, the Drobo 5N.

The 5N further expands the line of professional storage products, which includes the recently released 5D and the Mini, by leveraging the company’s patent-pending SSD and tiering technology with networked storage. These, combined with Drobo’s ease-of-use and flexibility, enable the 5N to provide an package of simplicity, affordability and performance for home users, small offices and creative professionals. The 5N also utilizes Drobo’s new, enhanced data protection capabilities, typically only found in more expensive enterprise storage systems.

"Drobo continues to add truly impressive modern storage capabilities that are perfect for professionals and small businesses," stated Mark Peters, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. "Drobo stands alone in delivering its comprehensive range of advanced capabilities – automated tiering, SSD performance and hard drive capacity, plus enterprise-grade reliability features – in this price category for the networked home office and small office customer. By also maintaining its renowned ease-of-use, Drobo ensures it delivers both financial and operational value."

Like all Drobos, the 5N utilizes
patented ease-of-use technologies, including:

• ‘traffic light’ management;
• the ability to automatically keep data in a protected state, even withstanding disk drive failures;
• mix-and-match disk drive support and
• expansion of system capacity by adding or hot-swapping drives on-the-fly with zero downtime.

The  5N adds a performance boost via a new hardware design and the use of Drobo’s patent-pending Data-Aware Tiering technology. The increased horsepower and ability to support SSD technology in addition to HDDs accelerates the performance of the storage array, allowing faster access to data from applications such as Adobe Lightroom and Apple iPhoto or iTunes.

In addition, the 5N provides a data protection feature often found on enterprise-grade storage that protects user and system data in the event of a spontaneous or unexpected power failure. The system utilizes intelligent software and battery technology that allows critical data to be written to non-volatile storage, ensuring all important information is kept safe, even in the event of power loss.

Upgrades
The 5N replaces the FS, one of Drobo’s most popular products ever, as an entry-level networked storage solution that supports both Apple and PC platforms. It also provides an easy-to-use interface for Apple’s popular Time Machine. Existing customers of FS can upgrade by either copying their data to a new 5N or moving their FS disk drives to the 5N, thereby gaining access to the performance and data protection features of the 5N within minutes.

For Media, Networked Homes and Small Offices
For media enthusiasts looking to share and backup video, photo and music files, the 5N provides a plug-and-play storage solution with the real-world performance to run rich media libraries such as iTunes and iPhoto as well as to safely store and backup personal data. With automated data protection, the 5N 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.

In addition, home and small office users who need an easy and affordable solution for network backups, file sharing and expandability in Apple, PC or mixed environments will appreciate the features of the 5N, including its compatibility with a range of local and cloud backup solutions to deliver remote access and off-premises data protection.

Pricing and Availability
Pricing for the 5N begins at $599 (U.S. MSRP), and the new system is available at Amazon, B&H Photo Video, CDW and the online Drobo store.

Read also:
Drobo 5N, NAS for Mac and Windows
$1,600 for 15TB