You will get $50 off of Drobo with Firewire (as well as the Drobo with Firewire 2 or 4TB bundles).

I spoke to Drobo who suggested I use Disk Warrior to check the drive (a $99 dollar program), I have a copy so used it and the resulting diagnosis was that the Drobo unit is faulty. I was then told to mail it to Germany (I am in the UK) and they would send another one which may, or may not, be able to read the hard drives created by the first one, depending if the first one trashed them. At this point I cut my losses and returned it to the store where I bought it before the 30 day money back guarantee ran out. I really wanted this peice of kit to work but unfortunately it looks like it needs more work before prime time. If you buy it don’t rely on it.

Anyway, no problems so far, I highly recommend this baby. The one caveat to me though, is what happens if Drobo itself dies, but the drives are fine? The company says you can put your drives in a new Drobo (with the power off, otherwise it will format them of course), and it will read them perfectly. That’s great, but, am I really going to want a new Drobo if this one dies? Why reward them for their faulty gear? Well, hopefully this doesn’t come up.

That said, I was able to split the cost…if I was buying one for myself full price, then I’d have to reconsider for sure. But, you also have to take into account the money you’ll save by only adding drives when you need more space (or replacement). Soon enough, buying a 1TB will cost the same as a 500GB does now. Not many drive enclosures can offer that angle…as opposed to buying a whole other external drive or whatever.

Can’t wait to see what the folks at Drobo come up with next. After having 3 drives/enclosures die on me last year, I vowed Never Again! So far, so good. But yeah, if they drop the price someday, count me in for a second one.

I’ll give you ease of use (unless you set it up for your parents then it’s easy), but for security I don’t think it’s so cut and dry. WHS doesn’t automatically mirror everything, you have to designate a folder to “mirrored” but this also let’s you backup only the important stuff you want to make sure you don’t lose. I know I have tons of digital media I wouldn’t miss if I lost. And WHS does pool all the HDs installed together so it also shuffles the data.

The thing which is holding me back from a Drobo is the price, it isn’t too bad, but I can build my own NAS for less.