Tina and I have varying needs regarding having a reliable backup solution for our computer-related/techno-geek sort of needs. For me, I like to store all of our media for the Apple TV, as well as have a reliable backup solution for any of the projects/files I drum up. Basically, I like knowing that everything in the ‘My Documents’ folder is backed up.

Tina’s needs relate more to her photography work than anything. Immediately upon taking somebody’s portraits, her first instinct isn’t to backup the data just in case. She immediately wants to get right to work at editing pictures. I don’t know that I can blame her.

In each of our scenarios, we have been looking for a solution that provides us an immediately redundant backup system without any additional effort on our parts. I don’t know of anybody that has serious “backup religion.” And consequently so, all of us run the risk to a certain extent of losing critical data.

The DROBO ends all of these worries. As their site describes, DROBO is the “worlds first data storage robot.” Like raid, there exists all of the backup benefits of RAID without any of the complexity. The system is configurable on the fly without any loss of access to the data. Recovering from a hard drive failure or upgrading a hard drive can happen without ever losing access to data. Also, increasing the size of the array can happen on the fly without any downtime — a benefit not afforded by any raid system (to my knowledge).

Tina and I each bought a DROBO. I also convinced DuPont to purchase two (one for our IT failover system and the other for our graphic arts/video editing department). Several other people have also purchased a DROBO due encouragement from me.

At $500, a DROBO is a bit expensive, however, the benefits outweigh the costs. One significant benefit is that hard drives of any size or speed are supported. Configuration on the fly, immediate redundancy, etc. I can’t say enough.

I’ll let the next two items speak for themselves:
1) PC World came up with a list of the 25 most innovative products of the year. For 2007, they ranked the DROBO as #12. Here’s what they had to say:

• Innovation: High-end, redundant storage for the masses.
• Benefit: USB 2.0 storage appliance delivers RAID 5 benefits without mind-numbing complexity.
• “Redundant array storage” and “sexy” don’t normally go hand-in-hand. But Data Robotics’ unique Drobo ($500) offers high-end storage features in a sleek design with software that doesn’t require a master’s degree in IT to figure out. Drobo uses storage virtualization algorithms to provide many of the benefits of RAID 5, but is relatively easy to set up: Just place the drives into the case, plug in the USB cable, install the software, and you’re off. Source Data Here.

2) Watch this video from DROBO themselves.

In case anybody is interested, I have a $25 coupon code for DROBO. The code is: EVDE.

Buy it… Love it…