With the 5N2 Drobo presents the successor of their 5N NAS, which we’ve reviewed almost a year ago. Compared to the predecessor there are for instance two Gigabit Ethernet ports and there is also a quicker processor as well as an internal backup battery.


As with all other Drobo products, the vendor is focussing on NAS (network attached storage) and DAS (direct attached storage), that is very easy to use. For that purpose there are features like for example “Beyond RAID”. This allows you to upgrade the RAID in your Drobo storage device at any time with hard drives or SSDs of any given size, thus enabling RAID volumes spanning across differently sized hard drives.

Another neat feature this particular Drobo NAS packs is the so called “Accelerator Bay”. On the underside of the unit there is a small cover which is hiding a mSATA port. If equipped with an mSATA drive it acts as a caching device to the actual RAID array, lowering access times by holding the most accessed data in the mSATA SSD cache.

We already mentioned that the predecessor of the 5N2 came with “only” one Gigabit Ethernet interface. In the case of the 5N2 Drobo decided to add a second Gigabit Ethernet interface allowing for link aggregation or failover redundancy.

Checking Geizhals for prices we find the Drobo 5N2 already available for 554 Euro. If you own already a Drobo FS or 5N you receive a $50 US discount. The Drobo 5N2 is covered by 2-year warranty.




Source: Drobo