Digital Home Thoughts: A Look at the Drobo In Depth

"Matt's not alone, either—we're coming to a point where everyone and their dog has at least a digital music and photo collection, and tons of folks (especially folks in the Ars reader demographic) have collections of ripped movies and TV shows on top of that. All that stuff has to reside somewhere, and to that end there's a huge array of network attached storage devices—NAS boxes, as we in the biz say—that can keep the data safe, with redundancy and protection that you wouldn't get from storing the collection on your computer's main hard drive or on a single external disk."

I have always tended to think of Drobo as a higher end NAS solution from a consumer perspective. However, with the apparent death of my reason to go with Windows Home Server, a careful re-evaluation of my options makes Drobo a strong consideration, despite its cost. There are cheaper options, but many of them tend to require a certain amount of tinkering or upkeep, and I am that point where I just want something that I can set up once and not have to worry about managing. Do you have a preference for a NAS solution? Do you like one where you get down and dirty, or do you prefer one that is more hands-off?