I'm very tempted by the Drobbo, I've added it to my basket more than once then bottled it. You see I used to own a Netgear Toaster and having had everything backed up to that with both drives in RAID1 I thought I was safe.. how wrong. "Unable to attach drive", "No drives detected" etc. Having lost a LOT of mission critical data I have always used a software imaging solution to a RAIDed array with lots of redundancy. I've tried Server2k3 and I have a licensed copy of WHS ver1, but that was a nightmare too. Connector software that didn't work, drives that could not be seen, data lost etc.
What I am waiting for is Drobbo mk3 or whatever they are going to call it. It will have the following:
* At least Ten SATA3 bays - sorry but 6 is NOT enough.
* EIGHT port Gigbit ethernet switch INBUILT which can be stacked to another Drobbo for expansion.
* Onboard web server with cloud access and differing levels of account security.
* Automatice disk recovery to spare disk.
* Email and GSM/text notification - technology is cheap enough now and it could send/receive MMS's too while we're at it.
* Realisticly priced WITH these features for around £600
* Next day swap out service if faulty with a 3 year warranty as options.
I don't ask for much do I? Well until something comes along like this, I will stick to rebuilding my useless server, and imaging everything that moves. At least given the time it takes, I KNOW that my data is safe.. any anyone that has ever has the mis-fortune to own a Netgear toaster will know that the paranoia is justified
