FAQ: Drobo 5N
What new product has been announced?
Drobo 5N. Five bay array for the best ever experience sharing storage and accessing data featuring Gigabit Ethernet connectivity.
When will the Drobo 5N be available?
The Drobo 5N can be ordered now; it is the next-generation professional networked Drobo following the best-selling Drobo FS.
When will the Drobo 5N be available in Europe?
The new products will be available worldwide
within days of initial shipping by the middle of January.
What performance can I expect to see?
The Drobo 5N has been redesigned from the ground up with performance in mind, allowing applications such as Adobe Lightroom and Apple iPhoto and iTunes fast access to data. It is significantly faster than the Drobo FS.
Do you have any examples of things that will be faster on the Drobo 5N?
Yes, it's faster at listing a large number of files in a folder or directory and moving or accessing small files. If you have an mSATA SSD in the Drobo Accelerator Bay, it will be even faster. The Drobo 5N is better at browsing small files in addition to streaming larger files.
How is the Drobo 5N different from Drobo FS?
The Drobo 5N will be significantly faster than the Drobo FS. It's more powerful and takes advantage of the enhancements in the base Drobo software. And of course, it has SSD support and data-aware tiering.
What are the key features of the Drobo 5N?
Key features include:
- New Hardware Architecture. Redesigned from the ground up with a completely new processor and memory architecture, the Drobo 5N is significantly faster than the previous generation Drobo FS.
- HDD Capacity AND SSD Performance. The Drobo 5N offers both the capacity of hard disk drives (HDDs) AND the performance of solid state drives (SSDs). It has an additional bay (the "Drobo Accelerator Bay") on the bottom that supports a very small mSATA SSD. This unique feature allows the standard drive bays to use high-capacity HDDs while still providing SSD performance.
- Gigabit Ethernet interface. The Drobo 5N is equipped with a single Gigabit Ethernet port for network connectivity and connects directly to your network to make sharing your data easy. Just plug it into any switch or wireless router and you're ready to go. You can even connect the Drobo 5N directly to the Ethernet port on your computer without having to configure any settings.
What type of battery comes with Drobo 5N?
Drobo 5N includes a battery that protects all data in memory, or cache, that is, data on its way to drives. When power spontaneously goes away, the battery keeps the Drobo alive long enough for the data to be written to non-volatile storage, ensuring that your important information is safe. The battery recharges itself and is designed to last for the life of the product. No worry anymore about the battery coming on and running out before power is restored. The Drobo 5N not only protect all data (metadata and user data) in memory, but after a power fail event, it will also write all of that data to non-volatile storage (an industrial-grade USB drive inside) and then turn off the battery.
How long does it take to set up a Drobo 5N?
You can easily be up and running in 10 minutes; Drobo does not need to go through a long process to format drives.
Does the Drobo 5N support disk pack migration from previous Drobo arrays?
Drobo 5N supports disk pack migration from the Drobo FS.
What size HDDs and SSDs are supported?
Just like every Drobo, we support drives of all sizes, which is currently 4TB for 3.5" HDDs and 1TB for 2.5" HDDs. When larger drives become available, they will be supported in the new Drobos.
Does the Drobo 5N use desktop or enterprise HDDs?
Both. You can find the most current information here.
What brand/type of SSDs are supported?
SSDs are not like HDDs; they are all unique in their own way. Make sure you check the SSD compatibility list to ensure that the drive you're considering works with your Drobo.
Can I purchase SSDs from Drobo?
Drobo Store sells a 60GB mSATA SSD Drive in our online store for the Drobo Accelerator Bay.
Will the Drobo 5N support DroboApps development?
No, not at this time.
Will the current DroboApps work on the new device?
No, they won't.
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Drobo announces availability of Drobo 5N, designed with one purpose in mind: to deliver the best ever experience sharing storage and accessing data!
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