Thanks for the video ... pretty cool but wouldn't pay that much for it

Looks like OOS too!

yes!

http://www.Amazon.com/Drobo-Fully-Automated-Robotic-Storage/dp/tech-data/B000PDLZ1A/ref=de_a_smtd

- That's the old version with only USB 2 connection -

The new model has Firewire 800 & USB 2 connections

TheNerds.net still show in-stock

My top link sometime shows 100 in stock, and sometimes shows out of stock.

- Haven't seen 1.5 TB yet, 1TB Drives seem to be running around $169.

I'm starting out with: 3 SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD753LJ 750GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

Newegg.com has them for $ 99 each LINK

Fry's BM Store has them at $ 109.99 each

nuck44 said:Thanks for the video ... pretty cool but wouldn't pay that much for it

Looks like OOS too!

Drobo is cool, but it is somewhat limited.

While rolling your own isn't for everyone, getting an old Dell server and dropping $90 on an unRaid license is a good alternative. As a bonus, the resulting box will be a NAS with a nice web interface. Rumor has it the next unRaid version will have the option for a hot-spare as well. unRaid is about the easiest way to get a multi-disk box up, with no linux knowledge required. All you need is a box that will boot from a USB key. A trial version is available (three discs - 2 + parity) to make sure the hardware (network card, mostly) is supported.

Overzeetop said:
Drobo is cool, but it is somewhat limited.

While rolling your own isn't for everyone, getting an old Dell server and dropping $90 on an unRaid license is a good alternative. As a bonus, the resulting box will be a NAS with a nice web interface. Rumor has it the next unRaid version will have the option for a hot-spare as well. unRaid is about the easiest way to get a multi-disk box up, with no linux knowledge required. All you need is a box that will boot from a USB key. A trial version is available (three discs - 2 + parity) to make sure the hardware (network card, mostly) is supported.

I agree to an extent that Drobo is limited. I do wish that it had l larger drive capacity version among other things. The price is rather steep as well. But I also view it like a TiVo, it's worth it if you can afford it. That being said, unRaid looks very nice. I ran a linux file server at home since ~2002 but I got rather tired of replacing bad drives and using power on a computer 24x7. I wonder how unRaid deals with failed hardware since it appears to be all off the shelf hardware. I'm going to have to do some research on this... Maybe a 16 drive unRaid would give me enough storage to keep my DVD collection on the network at all times

i received an email on the 31st stating that they canceled my order. however, my credit card has already been charged (not just a hold). i'll be calling them today...

i've been running 2 at work and 1 at home. i like that they handle all of the redundancy for you (but this is NOT a backup) just as advertised. overall, i'm rather pleased. i would note that the claim of no software needed isn't exactly true since you can't really configure the device without installing the drobo dashboard. you must run apple osx or windows vista/server 2008 if you want to have a partition over 2TB. the linux driver is still beta and i _think_ there are plans to make it allow larger partitions with ext3 in the future, but as for now, it is limited to 2TB. i don't think there are plans to make windows xp allow more than 2TB. at work, i'm running them on windows server 2008 and at home, they are on osx. i would recommend these to a friend over just about any storage solution a home user or small business/department could afford. when the driver for linux is out of beta, i might just wipe windows 2008 from my servers.