Drobo Dashboard for Mac

Do not even waste your time... software no longer available.

This product use very easy of software RAID, but throughput is slow... Only the person who does not feel pleasure by an RAID system and the construction of the OS is useful. Aug 17 2014 drop in 2.5.4 at autoupdate. Web site 2.5.3 http://www.drobo.com/drobo-downloads/

I agree that these things are made of nothing but fail. I was wanting to buy a 5 drive RAID enclosure for an enterprise client of mine. And due to the monstrous bureaucracy I had to settle for this. So I find that I can't chose the type of RAID to create. There is only one available RAID type, and I have no idea what it is. I was wanting something along the lines of JBOD or RAID-0 because this was intended to just be a backup destination. But I'm stuck with less capacity than what the drives would otherwise provide since I have no option other than to use whatever RAID it is this thing uses. Then it comes time to create the volume. I have five 500 GB drives installed in the unit, wishing I could get close 2.5 TB (of course allowing for the lost capacity when formatted) . Whatever RAID level it is using indicates that I have 1.8 TB of storage. Yet it wants me to create a 16TB volume. I don't want a volume that is in excess of or less than what the drives can provide natively. I do not want any silly pseudo capacity. I want only the real capacity that would be provided by the drives that are installed or the JBOD RAID I wish I could create. The Dashboard is a silly GUI that is big on eye candy but low on features. It reminds me of Kai's Power Tools from long ago. It's just plain silly. But I guess is will be great for the crowd that's easily impressed with shiny objects. I had low expectations with the thing before purchase. After months of use I can say that it even fell short of that.

The Drobo systems for Macintosh are some of the worst network drive enclosures you can buy. The look great, but function horribly. I own a Drobo FS unit, slapped four 3TB drives, booted up great, but every single time we tried to back up to it, it would randomly dismount the drive and corrupt the TimeMachine backup. After 1.5 years of fighting this thing, and having their technical support blame our network wiring, REALLY? We finally pulled the drives out of the enclosure, and installed them inside the Mac Pros and let TimeMachine function from there, OR, get this for the network speed horse crap, installed one drive in an old G5 stuck in the network room right next to the dysfunctional Drobo FS unit, and had our brand new iMacs TimeMachine to it perfectly! So much for the bag of lies and excuses from Drobo. If you're in the market for a network drive unit AVOID Drobo system. All JUNK! Oh, and Drobo, if you want this review removed, give me my $700 back.