As I am sue many of you are aware, Drobo are an award winning manufacturer and brand in the field of storage arrays for businesses, professionals and consumers. Earlier last month their finally released their first Thunderbolt 2 Storage device, the Drobo 5D Turbo (5Dt). Alongside the features and functionality one would expect from a top tier storage brand, the 5Dt is built on Drobo’s patented BeyondRAID™ technology to meet the demanding data storage requirements of professionals and media creators providing them with simplicity, flexibility and performance. Technologically it is a rather impressive method of bulk storage and redundancy providing you with the ability to scale your storage needs as the years progress. In brief though, BeyondRAID give you the ability to mix and match HDD and SSD of different brands, sizes, speed and capacity and still maintain a solid balance between redundancy and keep the biggest possible capacity. The 5Dt reinforces Drobo’s commitment to innovation, despite many of their critics asking about the lack of a Thunderbolt 3 device or the time it has taken for the Drobo 5Dt to be released.
The 5Dt offers both High Speed Thunderbolt™ 2 and USB 3.0, providing the ultimate in flexibility. The 5D Turbo is a complete solution that also supports 4k Thunderbolt connected displays. Included with the 5Dt is an mSATA card for increased performance, Thunderbolt 2 and USB 3.0 cables and DroboCare for 3 years at no additional charge. However many people are having difficulty making the choice between the latest Drobo device and the previous iteration, the Drobo 5D. Yes, the Drobo 5D only supports Thunderbolt 1 and lacks additional features that have been upgraded or evolved in the Drobo, but the price between these two units is of such a large margin that the real question is – is the Drobo 5Dt THAT much better?
The Drobo 5Dt is a natural extension of the 5D product line. Drobo customers require a high quality, high performance solution for media editing and storage. The 5D has been engineered to meet the expanding data storage needs of creative power users. The Drobo 5Dt builds on the fully automated functionality of previous Drobo arrays by adding blazing fast performance with Drobo’s award winning simplicity along with Thunderbolt 2 and USB 3.0 connectivity. The Drobo 5Dt is the most flexible, easiest to use personal storage array on the market. Additionally the Newer units arrives with an additional 3 years of DroboCare support on every 5Dt sold to ensure the best storage experience ever.”
What is the difference between the Drobo 5D and Drobe 5Dt?
Another key area of distinction between these two devices is that the latest Drobo 5Dt comes with a 128GB mSATA card to power Drobo’s patented Hot Data Cache technology right out of the box. The original Drobo 5D in include the Drobo Hot Data Cache, but did not include an SSD . The inclusion of an mSATA SSD for the newer device will be considered very beneficial for some photo and video editors and is a welcome additional. It keeps a copy of the most frequently accessed data so that it can be delivered even faster, directly from an SSD/Flash device, when needed. The Drobo 5Dt is also the only 5 bay direct attached storage array that offers dual Thunderbolt 2 and USB 3.0 connectivity, allowing for instant expansion via multiple drive bays. This allows daisy chaining of up to six 5Dts, for up to 240TB of usable capacity based on current hard drive capacities. The 5Dt’s Hot Data Cache gives up to a 30% speed boost for streaming video and 3x faster read performance when using applications such as Lightroom. These performance enhancements give media professional’s quick access to large files. The 5Dt also supports 4K monitors, not previously offered on the Drobo 5D.
Still not sure which unit deserves your data? Why not let Robbie at SPANTV make it easier with his comparison of the Drobo 5D and Drobo 5Dt below:
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