You Don't Need To Read About Drobotech; Dataaware ™ Storage; Data Virtualization Engine; Adaptive Data Mapping - Drobo User Manual

Drobo User Guide
V. You don't need to read about Drobotech
(but you might want to)
Although not at all necessary for understanding how to use Drobo,
you might be interested to know how Drobo works and how it
compares to other mass storage systems available today. Data
Robotics, Inc. has developed three significant pieces of patent-
pending technology that live inside Drobo:
DataAware Storage
™
Knowing where your data is on the installed drives, and where it
is not, lets Drobo provide key benefits over ordinary digital storage
products which copy all storage space whether used or not:
• Instant access to capacity
when drives are added or
upgraded.
• Data protection is highly
efficient because only
"real" data is protected
• Knows where data is and
how to protect it most
efficiently.

Data Virtualization Engine

™
Virtualization technology allows Drobo to transcend the limitations
inherent with hard disk drive arrays like RAID:
• Drobo's virtualization
technology creates a single
large "pool" of storage ca-
pacity regardless of number
of hard drives
• It allows drives of different
manufacturers, speeds or
capacities to be used to-
gether in the same storage
pool taking advantage of all
of the capacity available.


Adaptive Data Mapping

™
The ability to automatically optimize and layout data when need-
ed provides significant advantages over other storage solutions:
• By automatically adapting to changes in pooled storage
capacity and remapping data throughout the Data Bays, Drobo
allows you to upgrade capacity "forever" as long as you replace
a smaller drive with a larger one.
• Adaptive Data Mapping allows Drobo to be self-healing;
by sensing any data that becomes corrupted and guarding
against hard drive failure.
• Automatic data optimization also allows Drobo to maximize the
usable capacity of the drives, unlike some other storage tech-
nologies which base available capacity on the smallest drive.
These three pieces of technology rely on each other to provide an
overall user-experience that is not only easy to set-up initially, but
also effortless to use on an ongoing basis.

Who is Data Robotics, Inc?

Data Robotics was formed in 2004 in California's Silicon Valley
with a vision to take the pain out of making people's data forever
accessible. Data Robotics developed the technology inside Drobo
for people who "have to" protect their valuable digital assets, but
"hate to" – because it's complex and time-consuming. For those
people, Data Robotics created Drobo, the world's first storage
robot. It is a fully automated data storage system that provides
the only truly effortless, safe and expandable storage solution.
Unlike outdated technologies that emerged twenty years ago and
the frustrating products on the market today, Drobo is an industry-
changing product that combines the advanced concepts of stor-
age virtualization and cybernetics, to take the pain out of storage
management.
V. You don't need to read about Drobotech