Drobo 5N2 40TB: Network Attached Storage (NAS) 5-Drive Array with Seagate NAS Drives - 2X Gigabit Ethernet Ports (DRDS5A21-40TB)

The Drobo NAS was easy to set up and worked great from the start. It is especially handy that one can hot plug additional storage on the fly with HDs that are the same size or a different size than the original drives it was populated with.I wished it had options for backing up to the cloud in addition to Elephant Drive, particularly Backblaze B2 and Amazon S3 & Glacier.

I bought my first Drobo 5 years ago and love it. I bought this one with great expectations. I set it up and left it overnight to burn in. Today all the lights are flashing and the Drobo is very hot and won't mount. I bought DroboCare so I figured I would give them a call. I registered the DrobCare account, created a support ticket as directed on the website, and called the number I received and my DroboCare email. NO LUCK. Just voice mail. So much for 7x24 support. Three hours later:Time to pack up my broken Drobo, return it to Amazon and buy a competitive product. I am really disappointed in Drobo. I used to love them... Dear Drobo, if you are going to sell 7x24 support, you need to be available 7x24.....

Do not buy a drobo if you want technical support of any kind. Do not buy a drobo if you want to run plex on it, its not fast enough. The support forums they host are down all of the time and email support will send you a doucment that does not help in the least bit or they say they don't have the information on why SMB and SSH use different authentication schemes and why they can't be synchronized through the drobo dashboard. You must know how to add your own SSH users using the linux interface if you want another user to SFTP into your drobo. When your drobo reboots the username and password that you created in SSH will be lost. Only the usernames and passwords saved through the drobo dashboard, which only affects windows file sharing, will persist after a device reboot. Also the drobo CPU is extremely slow. There is a synology NAS for the same price that is 2GHZ, and believe if you want to setup a plex, you need a better CPU than what is in the drobo. The quad core CPU in the drobo is an absolute slug. Not even the SSD cache that came with mine can save its performance to be acceptable.

For us this is overkill way beyond our needs, but for some would be just what they need. We could rip all our CDs and put them on this along with the movie DVDs. Their customer service seems to be at an add on cost although they did with good humor help me get it set up and running. Beautiful visual design and incredible technical design. Would recommend thoughtfulness about the size drives depending on needs

storage, and was added to network system successfully.

So far not a good experience. I received the drobo and 4 drives. Started setting it up and it will not power up. The power brick lights up and when I plug it in to the device the light goes out. I called drobo for support and there answer was to ship it all back to amazon. Really annoying when the easy answer would be to send a new power brick. At least I would think that would be the answer. Now I'm packing up all the drives, the device, and everything else that goes with it.

Great product

I purchased the last generation version, the DroboFS. It seemed to work pretty well initially, although it was very slow. Over time I began to have issues connecting to the device until it stopped working altogether. I tried to fix it myself, but Drobo encrypts the log files so that you have to pay THEM for tech support, even if you're a reasonably accomplished technician. Do a quick Google search, you'll see this is a common problem with the Drobo's and their BeyondRAID technology.It turns out my data is intact, but the device refuses to let anyone gain access to it because of a software glitch. My only hope is to pay them $100 to send me a custom firmware and pull the files off myself over SSH. In other words, to correct THEIR faulty software.If you thought this thing was an easy-to-use, set-and-forget appliance, you'll be in a world of hurt when it gives up the ghost and takes your files with it!