Drobo Mini, 5D storage arrays go up for pre-order
updated 02:12 pm EDT, Tue July 24, 2012
The Mini will cost $650 while the 5D will be prices at $900 when they arrive next month
The two Drobo storage arrays introduced last month have now popped up at online retailers and Drobo's own site, revealing their prices and ship dates. The Mini and 5D are priced starting at $650 and $850, respectively. The Mini is due to ship in about two weeks' time, while the ship date for the 5D isn't yet listed, though they were supposed to arrive in September.
The bays have Thunderbolt ports and can also house mSATA SSDs for further boosting performance. The Mini can accommodate four 2.5-inch drives along with an mSATA SSD. The latter lets users run the Drobo Accelerator caching system for faster transfer speeds. It has one Thunderbolt port and another for daisy-chaining devices. A USB 3.0 port is the only other connection.
The 5D gets five 3.5-inch hard drive bays for up to 16TB of capacity and otherwise has the same connections and mSATA SSD bay. All the required cables are included with either device.
