14 DAY TRIAL // Solid state drives didn't qualify for long-term business or consumer storage for a fair amount of time due to their low capacities (compared to HDDs) and limited write cycles (which caused performance to drop massively after a while). Now, though, they've started being used for everything HDDs are, and the Drobo is now in on the action.
Drobo, the series of smart storage solutions from Connected Data, has finally welcomed the first model with support for solid state drive storage technology. Although it would be more accurate to say that SSD storage has been brought to the Drobo Mini.
After all, the Mini is perfectly capable of using hard disk drives instead. However, the performance is 80% better on the SSD-equipped model, even though capacity can't be as high in that case.
Drobo Mini is intended to play nice with photographers, creative professionals, and filmmakers who need to capture a lot of data in various places and safely transport it to the studio for post-production.
Thus, the Drobo Mini is not an NAS device, but an external storage unit that communicates with a host PC via USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt. Four 2.5-inch SSDs can be held within at any time, and you can even use the mSATA accelerator option if you wish.
Moreover, the Drobo Mini external storage device can safeguard data, not just store it, or backups of it. The Mini automatically offers full access to data while protecting from data loss by means of a battery backup power (so a sudden power loss won't destroy whatever backup you're making or files you may happen to be editing directly on the Mini).
Also, if a drive fails for whatever reason, the Drobo Mini “repairs itself” and returns to a protected state. Basically, the data isn't lost easily.
Schoolyard Films, a producer of short nature and science documentaries for teachers and students in grades K-12, is one of the main supporters of Drobo Mini. It has made it a habit to constantly transfer and back up video footage to Drobo Mini while on the site of a shooting. Even at 6K resolution, the video is backed up every night.
Admittedly, this can be done on any external HDD and RAID device, but the aforementioned data security and health features give this product an advantage over many, and the four bays are another plus (most other RAID devices or USB-connected units have 2 bays, though there are exceptions).
Drobo Mini has a starting price of $1,199 / €894 when equipped with 1 TB drives, but it comes with 2 TB and 4 TB units as well.