Drobo’s newest entry into affordable, safe storage–the Drobo 5C is available today. What’s new? Watch my interview with Drobo CEO Mihir Shah and Chief Technology Officer Rod Harrison as they present the new 5C.

Features

The big news is the Drobo 5C adds another drive bay and it sports the ultra high speed USB C connector. USB C boasts Read performance of up to 241 megabytes per second (220MB/Sec average) and write speed up to 261 MB/sec (average 255 MB/Sec.) The 5C officially retires Drobo’s venerable 4 bay units. Best of all, a four drive RAID pack from a first generation Drobo can be moved directly into a Drobo 5C for a speed increase of ten times for a third of the cost of an original Drobo. Be sure to upgrade the four bay’s firmware before making the transfer.

  • Drobo 5C Read / Write 220 / 250 (Drobo Gen 1: 25 / 20) The 5C is 10x faster
  • Drobo 5C Volume Size: 64 terabytes (Drobo Gen 1: 2 terabytes) The 5C volume size is 32x larger
  • Drobo 5C Drive Bays: 5 (Drobo Gen 1: 4 Drive Bays)
  • Drobo 5C Single Drive Redundancy: Yes (Drobo Gen 1: Yes)
  • Drobo 5C Dual Drive Redundancy: Yes (Drobo Gen 1: No)
  • Drobo 5C Battery Backup Cache plus eUSB: Yes (Drobo Gen 1: No)
  • Drobo 5C MSRP $349.00 (Drobo Gen 1: $499.00) The Drobo 5C is priced 33% less than its Gen 1 counterpart

Safe storage affordably

Just a Bunch of Disks (yes, JBOD is a thing) behind a desk is not only a mess it’s also lots of data waiting to disappear. The Drobo 5C is an expandable solution to JBOD’s messy, potentially devastating promise of lost data. It’s maximum volume size of 64 terabytes makes it ready for the latest in higher capacity drives. While drives large enough for five of them to make a 64 tb volume don’t exist yet. It’s reassuring to know that this device along with its siblings the 5D & 5N have the capacity to grow with photographers and videographers ever increasing storage needs.

Caveat

A single Drobo does offer single or even dual disc drive failure. One Drobo is not a backup. Photofocus strongly recommends a minimum of two additional copies besides the working drive with one of these three placed in an offsite location.

Credits

While my name is on the video as host, it was produced, directed, photographed and edited by my amazing Photofocus colleague and fellow author Nick Minore.