Drobo expands line with Drobo S

I know that both the Drobo S and Drobo Elite were released, but the Elite is way too expensive for the average user.  So this post only discusses the Drobo S. The price without drives is $799.

The new Drobo S offers huge capacity and speed upgrades over the current Drobo model. The Drobo S sports an additional drive bay over the current Drobo, offering five drive bays for up to 10TB of storage (using five 2TB drives). Additionally, the Drobo S has eSATA connectivity to supplement the two FireWire 800 ports and a USB 2.0 port.

Data Robotics claims that the Drobo S is 50 percent faster than the current four drive Drobo while offering 90 percent of the performance of the Drobo Pro, the high-end Drobo model launched last April. Data Robotics claims that during tests, the new Drobo S achieved speeds averaging around 80 megabytes per second—blazing speeds if proven accurate.

Meet the new primary and backup storage solution that’s perfect for creative professionals and small businesses with “set it and forget it” storage needs. The safe, expandable Drobo® S offers blazingly fast eSATA, and the best data storage experience ever. In addition to eSATA, Drobo S features enhanced FireWire 800 performance and USB 2.0 connectivity. It is a self-managing, self-healing solution ideal for safely storing large files and rapidly growing data.

Built on award-winning BeyondRAID™ technology with single or dual-drive redundancy, Drobo S protects your data without any user interaction, even in the event of multiple drive failures. It can hold up to five hot-swappable drives, for on-the-fly drive capacity expansion with zero downtime.

Up to 5 Drives of Instant Expansion to 10TB and Beyond
Grow your storage to meet with your data capacity needs with minimal effort. To add capacity, simply insert a new hard drive or replace your smallest drive with a larger one, even when all five drive bays are full. Unlike traditional RAID systems, the BeyondRAID technology found in Drobo S enables you to mix and match capacities, drive brands, and speeds. This allows for continuous expansion as drive capacities grow and larger drives become available. With Drobo S, expansion is automatic, instantaneous, and access to data is always maintained.

Protection from Two Drive Failures
Enable the dual-drive redundancy option to protect your data from failure of up to TWO hard drives. It’s all done with a single click, and without ever losing access to your data. Running out of space? Switch back to single-drive redundancy. Unlike moving between traditional RAID 5 and RAID 6, there’s no need to reformat or migrate data off of Drobo, potentially saving you hours or days.

Self-Healing Technology
With the self-healing technology now incorporated into Drobo S, your data is safer than ever. Even when sitting idle, the Drobo will continually examine the blocks and sectors on every disk, flagging questionable areas. This preemptive “scrubbing” helps ensure your data is being written only to the healthy areas of your drives, and that your data is always safe. And if a drive fails, Drobo S will strive to keep your data in the safest state possible, utilizing the available space on the remaining healthy drives.

Windows, Mac, or Linux
Drobo S connects to Windows, Mac and Linux¹ systems and supports NTFS, HFS Plus, EXT3, and FAT32 file formats. Regardless of operating system, everyone can take advantage of simple, powerful, complete Drobo data protection.

Host Interface:
eSATA, FireWire 800 (FireWire 400 compatible) and USB 2.0

Drives:
Accommodates from one to five 3.5” SATA I / SATA II hard drives of any manufacturer, capacity, spindle speed, and/or cache¹. No carriers or tools required.

Power:
Idle system (standby, drives off) = 12 watts
Typical busy system (four drives) = 56 watts

Accoustics:
Normal operation: 31.8 dB²

Box Contents:

• Drobo S
• External power supply (100v-240v) with U.S. 110v power cord
• eSATA cable
  
• FireWire 800 cable
  
• USB 2.0 cable
  
• User Guide and Quick Start Card (printed)
 
• Drobo Resource CD with Drobo Dashboard application, help files, and electronic documentation

Apple releases 2TB Time Capsule, shipping now for $499

Hope you didn’t purchase the 1TB drive just yesterday at $499, It has now been lowered to $299.

Mac compatible Hive desktop mini-RAID system launched in uk

I guess we can always hope that this product hits the US as well.  Or if this technology seems to be getting old, check out the holographic scene.

Hive Tech, an off-shoot of UK storage specialist United Digital, has launched a new Mac compatible desktop mini-RAID system aimed at creative freelancers and studios, including designers, film-makers and photographers.

The Hive 4-disk desktop mini-RAID systems utilises energy-saving disk drives from Western Digital and holds up to 6TB of data and includes an eSATA connection option for fast data transfer. 

Fully pre-configured, the Hive can seamlessly rebuild 1TB of data within just three hours if one disk fails; ensuring that zero data is lost and no downtime occurs says Hive Tech.

The Hive comes with a 2-year onsite warranty; with local UK support a phone call away and onsite repairs carried out for free.

“No professional can afford to lose their work, so we developed the Hive to offer desktop RAID customers the same heavy-duty, ultra-reliable protection that we supply for multi-national companies, without the big-company price-tag,” said Hans-Henrik Enoksen, CEO of United Digital and Hive Tech.

The Hive comes with USB 2.0, eSATA and FireWire 400 and 800 connectors. Available in 2TB, 4TB and 6TB configurations, the Hive will be available from selected resellers from 1 May. Introduction prices are £585($859), £825($1210) and £1095($1607) respectively. All prices exclude VAT.

source:macworlduk

OWC ANNOUNCES MERCURY ELITE-AL PRO Qx2 raid solution

Other World Computing (macsales.com), a leading PC and Mac technology company, announced today the new Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 for the ultimate in flexibility and convenience in a Plug and Play desktop hardware RAID storage solution. Featuring a Quad Interface of FireWire 800, FireWire 400, USB 2.0, and eSATA ports; 4 Serial ATA (SATA) hard drive bays; and 4 user selectable hardware RAID settings, the Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 offers up to 8TB of total storage capacity and data transfer speeds up to 300MB/s for the ultimate professional grade RAID storage solution.

Professional Performance With User Conveniences

Built for performance-intensive applications, such as A/V, HD-video, digital photography, professional music, graphics, and redundant backup, the Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 is beautifully designed for both Mac and PC with a shock resistant, heat dissipating aircraft-grade brushed aluminum housing preconfigured with up to 8TB of storage capacity. Its front panel LEDs gives quick, at-a-glance system status, while the removable key lock ensures the installed hard drives remain secure.

Selectable Hardware RAID Flexibility

An easy to access front panel selector switch provides simple configuration of the 4 Hardware RAID settings: 0, 1, 5, 10, as well as a Span (NRAID) setting, for the best level of speed, capacity, or redundancy; or any desired combination of the three operations.

OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 is Available in 7 Configurations:

Click to read more ...

Reports: Apple to bulk up iPhone storage

The following article is reprinted from the Today@PC World blog at PCWorld.com.

Apple has ordered large amounts of flash memory to be used in a new iPhone expected in June, according to reports. What makes this report interesting is that Apple is allegedly ordering twice as much flash as it did last year, according to reports from DigiTimes. A large request for flash from Apple backs the rumor of a larger capacity iPhone model, slated for early this summer.

The DigiTimes report continues claiming Apple ordered 100 million 8GB NAND flash chips, mainly from Samsung Electronics. Apple could recombine these chips in the manufacturing process, creating 16GB and 32GB storing capabilities for new iPhone models. One hundred million 8GB chips would be enough for 12.5 million 8GB iPhones or around 3 million 32GB devices.

Speculation around Apple’s massive flash memory order could mean that the long-rumored 32GB iPhone might be on its way and possibly a larger capacity 64GB iPod Touch. In the case of the iPod Touch, 64GB could mean a much higher price, somewhere around $500. A 32GB iPhone is feasible, especially as video-recording capabilities are expected in the new model (requiring more storage).

However, Apple uses this kind of NAND flash chips in other of its products as well, like the iPod nano and shuffle, so at the moment it is not very clear how the Cupertino company will use the 100 million chips. As previously reported, the new iPhone model is expected to feature a better camera (with video recording) and higher storage capacities, besides the 3.0 software improvements announced last month.

Data Robotics rolls out 8-bay DroboPro

Data Robotics this morning chased after more than just individual users with the DroboPro. The external array now has 8 SATA bays and can carry as much as 16TB of storage using current hard drive technology. It also expands Drobo’s well-known automatic data redundancy by supporting the failure of as many as two disks at once and dynamically shuffling information as disks are added, removed or partitioned into new volumes. The DroboPro is also the first Drobo to have Ethernet built-in and serve as network-attached storage, though it keeps both the single USB and dual FireWire 800 jacks of the more recent 4-bay Drobo. New to the pro version is support for iSCSI over the Ethernet connection that reportedly requires no configuration in Mac OS X or Windows and which is fast enough to be used for important applications.

Prices start at $1,299 for an empty model and scale up to as much as $3,999 for a fully-loaded 16TB edition. Data Robotics says its new enclosure should be available immediately in multiple countries.

source:electronista