Drobo 8D 8-Bay Storage Array, 2x Thunderbolt 3, BeyondRAID Technology

Bigger. Better. Bolder

The Fastest Drobo Yet With Thunderbolt 3 Speed
Meet the bigger, better and bolder Drobo 8D. Capable of supporting 16 volumes of up to 128TB, with a total storage pool of 256TB, 8D is designed to meet the need for data-intensive workflows. With lightning speed Thunderbolt 3, the Drobo 8D is the fastest direct attached Drobo yet. The 8D comes equipped with a Drobo Accelerator Bay and is the only Drobo with the new Intelligent Volume Management technology.

Leave Your Limitations Behind Go BeyondRAID
Built on award-winning BeyondRAID technology, Drobo 8D simply protects your data against a single or dual disk drive failure. Drives can be added, hot-swapped and updated in real time for storage expansion with zero downtime. If you're running low on space, the lights on the front provide guidance. Just add a drive in an empty bay or remove a smaller drive and replace it with a larger one. In addition, Smart Volumes are thinly provisioned volumes, that automatically utilize capacity as needed from a common pool of storage.

SSD Acceleration Boosts Performance
Most storage arrays use either all hard drives or all SSDs. The Drobo 8D delivers the best of both worlds by intelligently combining hard drives and SSDs to deliver both capacity and performance. The Drobo 8D gives you the option to enable Hot Data Caching through the Drobo Accelerator Bay on the rear slot. Using an SSD allows access to most frequently read data to deliver blazing fast speeds. This boosts performance of popular applications such as Apple's Final Cut and Adobe Lightroom.

SSDs can also be utilized in the front bays of the Drobo 8D for Data-Aware Tiering, allowing for transactional data to migrate to the SSDs. This ensures that both writes and reads are accelerated.

Intelligent Volume Management
New to the Drobo product line is the Intelligent Volume Management technology available on the 8D. This technology combines the flexibility of manual volume configuration with the convenience of Drobo's legendary automation, allowing for separation of file systems as customer needs dictate. The 8D allows the creation of up to 16 volumes with a maximum 128TB volume size and a 256TB storage pool.

Power of Thunderbolt 3
Drobo 8D storage array offers a lightning fast Thunderbolt 3 connection (macOS only) that is both fast and backwards compatible. This optimizes your performance when transferring large volumes of data. With the dual ports, the Drobo 8D connects up to six Thunderbolt devices or five devices and a monitor at the end of the chain. Supports one 5K or two 4K displays (with a Thunderbolt dock).

Enhanced Backup for Time Machine

Time Machine and Drobo: A Perfect Pairing
Apple's Time Machine was designed to make backing up your files simple and painless. Pairing Time Machine with Drobo improves your data protection by ensuring your data is safe in the event of hard drive failure.

Control How Much Storage Time Machine Uses
Apple's guidelines are to set the storage space for Time Machine at twice the size of the Mac's hard drive that is to be protected. Time Machine users know that it will gradually use all available disk space without an easy way to stop this from happening. With Drobo you can easily control the maximum storage space available for Time Machine backups through Drobo Dashboard. When you install a Drobo, Drobo Dashboard prompts to see if you want to create a dedicated storage volume for Time Machine's use, allowing you to set the size of this volume.

Power Protecting Your Critical Data
In addition to drive failure protection, Drobo also protects against potential data loss during a power outage. In every Drobo we include battery backup technology to protect data in memory or cache. When power spontaneously goes away, Drobo moves any in-flight data to onboard flash in your Drobo, so it will be protected and moved to your disk drives once power is restored. This ensures your important information is safe and sound. Even better, your battery recharges itself and is designed to last for the life of your Drobo.