Drobo equips 5D and Mini with msata and Thunderbolt connections

Drobo, a manufacturer of external storage devices, has announced the Drobo 5D and Drobo Mini. Both storage arrays are equipped with an msata bay for a cache SSD, two Thunderbolt connections and a USB 3.0 input.

In the 5D up to five 3.5″ SATA hard disks can be placed. All drive bays are hot-swappable and various raid modes can be selected via BeyondRAID technology. In addition, the NAS has an msata slot on the bottom; in this ‘accelerator bay’ you can be placed on an msata ssd.

According to Drobo, its data-aware tiering algorithm can automatically determine which files are being manipulated the most and put them on the SSD, while the hard drives are used for data that is written sequentially and requested less frequently. To further increase the performance, SSDs can also be placed in the regular drive bays. The tiering algorithm would automatically recognize the SSDs and use them as a cache.

The Drobo 5D has two Thunderbolt connections, so that multiple devices can be daisy chained together. According to the manufacturer, five Drobo 5Ds can provide a total of 96TB storage capacity, with the bidirectional Thunderbolt connections maintaining the performance. The storage system also contains an UPS function: a battery must prevent data loss if the voltage is lost.

Drobo also has a portable variant called mini announced. Like the Drobo 5D, this NAS contains an MSATA slot, while there is room for four 2.5″ SATA drives. The Mini also has two Thunderbolt connections and a USB 3.0 port.

According to Engadget, the 5D will cost less than $800, while the Mini will retail for less than $650. Hard drives or SSDs are not included, but Drobo does include a Thunderbolt and a USB 3.0 cable in the package. The manufacturer will announce in July when the Mini and 5D will be on the market.