Pros: Well marketed. Exciting-sounding features. Easy to set up and expand. Cons: Not terribly fast. Known to suddenly not be able to detect the drives after months of use. Not repairable. The drives are written in a proprietary format, so salvaging the data is out of the question. I just lost about 30 TB of data because I trusted this device. Drobo isn't helpful with out of warranty questions -- they charge you to even ask a question. I don't know what they charge to recover data, but it can't be cheap. Don't buy Drobo products! Next I'm going with a DIY NAS. There is a thin metal plate inside that vibrates incessantly, not nice if you keep it close to you.
Verified purchase: No
Solid update to previous versions. I appreciate the 5th bay over the older 4-bay units. Networked storage is great for using Apple's Time Machine feature, or accessing various random files. It's 1gbps though, so don't expect it to serve up your video files in real time. Plan to use it for deep storage and backups, and all should be good. It takes a while to understand how to access all the features through the Drobo Dashboard, so take your time. The unit also runs various 3rd party applications to serve up media or website data, and for remote access of files.
Verified purchase: No