During a recent class discussion on RAID, a student recommended I look into Drobo, an external storage unit that promises some real advantages over standard RAID arrays. The basic Drobo unit plugs into either a USB or Firewire connection on your computer and holds up to four hard drives, which you can supply, or which you can buy with your Drobo.

One cool feature is that unlike standard RAID arrays, the drives don’t have to be equal in size. You can throw a newer, larger hard drive in right next to an older, smaller one and Drobo intelligently manages the data and parity information so that if either drive fails you don’t lose any data.

Cooler yet is that Drobo makes any old drive hot-swappable. While your system is running and accessing Drobo you can open it up, eject a hard drive by pressing a button, and insert a replacement. I wouldn’t have believed it had I not seen their video, which I recommend.

CompTIA doesn’t ask about Drobo on the A+ certification test, but RAID is covered in Domain1.0 Hardware, and NAS (network attached storage) is mentioned, though not directly asked about. Still, Drobo represents an interesting, if proprietary, step forward from the hardware basics CompTIA covers in the A+ certification exams. CompTIA prefers A+ certified technicians to have 500 hours of hands-on experience. That emphasis is reflected in the new CompTIA A+ Practical Application exam. Keeping abreast with new technologies like Drobo, and how they differ from the RAID arrays asked about on the A+ certification tests, helps frame CompTIA’s A+ certification exam objectives in a real world context.

Drobo

Posted on October 7, 2009 at 11:08 pm
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Tagged with : 1.0 , a+ , comptia , drobo , hard drives , hardware , raid , storage