Drobo's new 5N is a speedy $600 NAS for when you need files, stat

Tragically, we only learned about Drobo's new 5N after we'd hired a warehouse the size of an aircraft hanger to store our latest, 12 million page novel. If you want to avoid our mistake, then the company's latest NAS might end your own storage woes. The new hardware is part of the same family as the 5D and Drobo Mini, except this one ditches the Thunderbolt connection in favor of a single gigabit-ethernet port. Inside, there's space for five 3.5-inch drives, giving you a maximum capacity of 20TB. An mSATA slot for an SSD drive will let you make use of Drobo's "data-aware tiering" feature, which gives applications like Adobe Lightroom and iTunes faster access to your NAS-stored files. The base model will set you back $600 and will be available in "mid December," which we impatiently hope is a euphemism for "tomorrow."

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Drobo CONTINUES TO LAUNCH "the future of storage" with NEW networked Drobo 5n

More Speed, Greater Data Protection, and Seamless SSD Support Build on Drobo's Ease-of-Use and Flexibility

SAN JOSE, Calif. – December 13, 2012 – Drobo, maker of award-winning data storage products for businesses and professionals, today announced the Drobo 5N, the latest in their new lineup of ultra-modern, high-performance storage systems. The Drobo 5N, a sophisticated, network-attached storage (NAS) device, extends Drobo's traditional ease-of-use with increased performance and data protection enhancements for personal and professional users who want a fast, easy, and ultra-reliable file sharing and backup experience over the network. Like the recently introduced Drobo Mini and Drobo 5D, the new Drobo 5N features Drobo's patented BeyondRAID™ and Data-Aware Tiering technologies, to deliver capacity, performance, and data protection that have traditionally been reserved for more expensive, enterprise-grade storage.

"Drobo is the future of storage," stated Robin Harris, chief analyst at StorageMojo.com. "I've said it a number of times in public forums – the new Drobo products are automated, fast, affordable, and artfully meld both hard drive and SSD technology to deliver a great capacity/performance value proposition. Drobo has once again advanced the state-of-the-art in storage."

Driving a New Era of Performance and Data Protection
The new Drobo 5N, like all Drobos, employs BeyondRAID technology, which automates sophisticated data protection and capacity expansion operations so that even users who aren't storage experts can enjoy the peace-of-mind that comes with knowing that their data is automatically protected.

In addition, the Drobo 5N, much like its sibling Thunderbolt-powered solutions the Drobo Mini and 5D, utilizes Drobo's Data-Aware Tiering capability, which intelligently uses high-performance flash (SSD) technology to accelerate performance of the storage array, allowing applications such as Adobe Lightroom and Apple iPhoto or iTunes fast access to data. This unique solution maintains traditional Drobo ease-of-use in that the configuration, provisioning, and performance optimization of the hybrid storage is completely automated. Now even storage novices can enjoy benefits traditionally reserved only for storage experts with enterprise-grade systems.

Drobo extends its data protection in the Drobo 5N with a new feature that protects user data in the event of an unforeseen power failure or interruption. Like all advanced Drobo innovations, this new data protection feature is fully automated, so all users can enjoy the data safety benefits traditionally reserved for large enterprise customers, and previously unattainable in this price category.

Flexible for a Myriad of Uses
Like all Drobo storage arrays, the Drobo 5N networked storage is extremely easy to set up on the network. The Drobo 5N supports both Mac and Windows systems and can be used in a wide variety of use cases, such as:

Centralized backup for multiple systems on the network, including very intuitive, native support for Apple Time Machine on Mac OS computers.
Data sharing for both Windows and Mac OS systems across the network.
As an easy and powerful upgrade to existing customers of the Drobo FS network-attached storage solution. Drobo FS customers can quickly upgrade to the new Drobo 5N simply by removing their disk drives from the FS and inserting them into a new 5N. Step-by-step instructions may be found at http://www.drobo.com/products/migrations.

Specs, Pricing, Availability – and Live Demos
The Drobo 5N is easy, affordable, and provides a superior user experience with innovative capabilities that professionals require and typically find only in products at a much higher cost.

Drobo BeyondRAID, which provides thin provisioning, instant expansion, mixed drive size flexibilty, automatic protection levels, dual-disk redundancy, virtual hot spare, and drive reordering.
Drobo automated Data-Aware Tiering, which automatically configures and utilizes both hard drives and SSD technology.
Five storage bays, each of which can hold one standard 3.5 inch SATA hard disk drive or solid state drive; and one mSATA solid state drive in the Drobo Accelerator Bay for increased performance.
Maximum capacity 20 Terabytes (TB) when configured with 4 TB drives, resulting in 16TB of protected storage.
One Gigabit Ethernet port.
Support of Mac OS X 10.7.x Lion, Mac OS X 10.8.x Mountain Lion, Windows 7 SP1 32 and 64 bit, Windows 8 32 and 64 bit operating systems.
Support of Common Internet File System (CIFS) / Server Message Block (SMB) and Apple Filing Protocol (AFP).
The Drobo 5N, like the Drobo 5D and Mini, includes a new 2-year standard warranty.

Pricing starts at $599 MSRP, and the new Drobo 5N is available from leading online stores, direct marketers, and resellers worldwide. Visit http://www.drobo.com/products/professionals/drobo-5n/index.php to learn more about the new products and to sign up for a live online demo with Drobo experts.