Drobos are slow due to their processors lacking power. On Firewire 800 connection, the possible transfer speed is up to 90 MB/s.
If you're lucky, a Drobo may be able to achieve 32 MB/s peak when copying one big file to it. And may be 35 MB/s peak when reading a big file from it.
Transfer speeds suffer greatly when accessing multiple files. On my multiple Drobos (on independent FW800 buses) speed plummets to around 7 MB/s total when two applications access the Drobo.
Drobos are great for data safety, but their speed sucks.
Data Robotics on Tuesday launched a new Drobo S system, which uses USB 3.0 technology, and landed Hewlett-Packard as a reseller to small businesses.
The storage company, which has solid momentum in the small- to mid-sized business market, said that HP’s Small Business Direct, its SMB online store will begin carrying Drobo. Coupled with Dell and Apple and other resellers, Data Robotics has solidified its sales channel for the Drobo line.
On the product front, Data Robotics said its Drobo S system will feature the following:
- USB 3.0 connectivity with capacity up to 32 terabytes.
- A 10x speed improvement from USB 2.0 systems.
- Backwards compatibility with USB 2.0 systems.
In addition, Data Robotics said a new version of Drobo Sync, a remote backup for SMBs, is available on its DroboPro FS system.
The Drobo S will run you $799 with configurations up to $1,799 for a 10TB bundle. Drobo Sync is on the DroboPro FS, which has a starting price of $1,999 up to $3,299 for a 16TB bundle.
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