Drobo Mini & 5D

A valuable solution for the traveling nerd, Drobo’s brand new Drobo Mini is the world’s smallest full-featured storage array that operates off combined disk and solid-state technologies, making it also one of the fastest. Like Drobo’s other products, the Mini has four hot-swappable drive bays that allow you to manage as much storage as you can afford to purchase. Along with the Mini, Drobo has also released the 5D, a mega storage solution that works with up to five hot-swappabl drives and both have an extra SSD bay which drastically increase the responsiveness of the system.

For the mini you will require 2.5″ Hard Drives (Laptop Size) to fit into it unlike the 5D which can take any type of Hard Drive. The cool data-protecting design features automated SSD acceleration, as well as Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 interfaces—a which I don’t think any storage array has yet on the market. The way these bays have been designed is to make it easy for the drives to slip in and out, and when it comes to design I have to hand it to Drobo they have always perfected that with their products. If you are looking for an external storage device to be connected directly to your computer then this is the solution for you, I have always recommend it to people, for me I prefer network connected storage devices but for some people speed is important and in this case Thunderbolt & USB 3.0 are lightning fast.

The Drobo Mini ($599) and 5D ($799) both already on sale on Amazon without the drives.

Link: More Details @ TheVerge