A few years ago, I purchased a DroboPro-FS Pro 8 bay NAS system. After getting a demo from one of my vendors, I was sold on the ability to have different sized hard drives, hot swapping, and the self repairing file system. Another feature I liked was that it also monitors the health of my hard drives. If one starts developing issues or gets full,  Drobo will warn me, and robotically shift my data to other drives until I can replace that drive. I did my research and at the time, it looked like a fantastic deal.

After a few years with it, I can readily admit I made a huge mistake in purchasing the product. I'm lucky in that the unit has not failed yet like it has for others but it's also a horrible choice for backups for a myriad of reasons.

I purchased a Synology DS1918+ 8-Bay Drive and the differences are pretty stark. I've actually been moving important files from my Drobo over to it as a safeguard.