Drobo 5D3: DAS with Thunderbolt 3 and USB Type-C Interface
It’s all about the high performance of the Thunderbolt 3 interface, the new Drobo 5D3 DAS, a model that combines 5 hard drives with BeyondRAID technology to provide a simple but effective way to store data.
We have on several occasions talked about Drobo devices, Direct Attached Storage (DAS) and Network Attached Storage (NAS) storage products that the US company proposes to those users who are looking for a local storage solution that is easy to configure, flexible in Type of hard drives that can be installed and can provide adequate protection against data loss.
The Drobo models are available with different types of the interface, designed both for direct connection to a system and for sharing in your local network so that you can easily and quickly access the data. The latest arrival of the family is the Drobo 5D3 model, a solution that combines a two-port USB Type-C 3.0 Thunderbolt 3 interface.
The Drobo 5D3 external aesthetic is identical to that of the other versions: we find a front panel mounted with magnets that encircles the 5 hard disk drives. Some LEDs indicate the proper operation of the unit, indicating if a case is concerned about how to respond to hard drives if there is a malfunction of some type or problems related to reaching maximum capacity suggest that one or more of them should be replaced by others with higher capacity.
Like the other Drobo solutions, Drobo 5D3 is based on BeyondRAID technology that allows you to manage different combinations of hard drives for each manufacturer, model, and capacity by combining them together and making the most of your overall capacity. Disks are matched in a mode that we can indicate as equivalent to Raid 5, allowing data redundancy even in case of malfunction. It is possible, from the Drobo Dashboard control panel, to configure a superior level of protection against hard disk failure at obviously part of the overall storage capacity.
The Drobo 5D3 integrates a slot for a mSATA-type SSD drive, which acts as a cache memory for hard drives, speeding access to be more frequently requested data. At the back, there is the power button and the connector for the external power supply, in addition to the 3 connections in the form of 2 ports Thunderbolt 3 and a USB 3.0 Type-C.
The presence of two Thunderbolt 3 ports in Drobo 5D3 allows you to configure this device in different modes. In addition to cascading up to 6 Thunderbolt devices, Drobo 5D3 can support up to 2 display 4K or 1 display 5K, allowing even a 15-watt maximum power output to charge a portable PC connected via Thunderbolt 3.
Drobo 5D3 implements a small backup battery, which protects the unit’s operation in the event of sudden power failures. The guaranteed operating time is reduced but more than adequate to safely shutdown the unit as well as allowing you to write all cached data.
To better evaluate the performance of Drobo 5D3 with USB Type-C 3.0 interface, we connected the unit to a motherboard MSI X299 Gaming Pro Carbon AC, which also comes with a USB Type-C 3.1 port.
In this way, we have touched a data transfer rate of sequentially writing about 240 Mbytes per second; Slower the data-transfer speed from Drobo to the PC, with an average data rate of 110 Mbytes per second which may be justified by the performance of the SSD used on the desktop PC.
The last test was done by connecting the Drobo 5D3 Thunderbolt 3 interface to an Apple Macbook. We recorded a data transfer rate from Mac to Drobo of 230 Mbytes per second, with a value from Drobo to Mac rising to just over 400 Mbytes per second: 30 seconds to copy 10 Gbytes of MP3 files.
At present, Drobo 5D3 is not compatible with the Thunderbolt 3 interface under Windows 10: this is not a particularly widespread combination of commercial PC systems, but in perspective, it may take time now that Intel chose not to claim more royalties. The use of this interface. Drobo is also working to implement this support, but a precise date has not yet been provided; we can assume that it will be introduced with a software update between the third and fourth quarter of 2017.
Because of the Drobo 5D3 Thunderbolt 3 interface, it is especially recommended for those users who use devices with this interface and need a storage solution that can also be used as the primary storage.
For example, we consider the areas of video production, in which a great deal of data is associated with the need to store everything at its best: Mac users who are in touch with these usage scenarios are the ones that more than others will benefit from this Particular version of DAS Drobo 5.
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