The Drobo 5N2 NAS vs the Drobo 5N NAS - Old versus New Drobo - Which one deserves your data

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• published: 29 Mar 2017
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Should you buy the New Drobo 5N2 or stick with the Drobo 5N NAS https://www.span.com/product/Drobo-Drobo-5N2-DRDS5A31-5-Bay-RAID-Enclosure-for-SATA-HD-Dual-Gigabit-Ethernet~61423 The Drobo 5N leaves little room to grow and evolve your NAS applications. You cannot upgrade the memory, the app centre has fewer apps than the likes of Synology NAS and QNAP NAS, and finally the device's hardware, though modest and specific application targeted, is not going to give you the sort of horsepower designed for transcoding, Virtualisation and higher end graphic creation. If you need a network attached solution that is reliable, practical, dependable, sensible and lots of other words that end in 'ible' - Then the Drobo 5N is certainly the NAS for you. What is apparently lacks in hardware innovation, it gains in being a no fuss, stable and incredibly reliable piece of kit. It is not designed with change in mind, but more to provide a solid network based RAID solution with as little interaction on a technical level required. Additionally with a lower power consumption and noise output that most NAS devices, it is certainly the NAS choice for those that want a more secluded and hidden piece of hardware in their IT environment. Sadly those who want a NAS Server witha little bite in terms of hardware, applications and expand-ability will find the Drobo 5N a very limiting experience and therefore it is not recommended to buy the Drobo 5N NAS if you like to tinker with your technology. In that case, perhaps consider the QNAP TS-253A and the Synology DS716+ NAS. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. This must be the motto of the designers at Drobo. Because the chassis design on the Drobo 5N2 has not changed for almost 10 years across the entire Drobo Range. Not that it is a bad thing, it is a sleek and modern chassis. Compact, but not to the point where heat is an issue, thanks to the large fully controlled fan on the rear and ventilation throughout. Additionally the lack of trays in favour of a removable front plate (no screw driver required) and slot loaded HDD Bays, makes this a very self contained and hassle free device Only available in one colour, it may stick out like a sore thumb in a white and silver mac environment. Additionally, although you can dim the LED lights, you cannot fully disable them and given the device is designed to be very discreet, this is an odd facility not to have. Thought I imagine it will be introduced in a further firmware updated, so check first! Like the previous unit, the Drobo 5N, this new unit supports a number of popular Mac and Windows based applications. In some cases providing a valuable network element to local based software. Likewise for those looking for a sold background device to perform all your network and internet sharing based tasks in a way that requires the least amount of live input from yourself, will find the Drobo 5N2 a very competent device. Sadly the ARM Based quad core CPU, though of a relatively good frequency/power, is still not ideal for a large number of graphically led applications. Additionally those who are used to the premium and pro-sumer features of the likes of QNAP and Synology will find the Drobo 5N2 a little sparse in it's applications and abilities. With an improved CPU over the previous Drobo NAS, as well as twice the memory at 2GB of DDR3 RAM, the Drobo performs it's tasks well. Likewise the Drobo Dashboard software has seen a number of improvements sine I last played with it on the Drobo 5N and has a number of new apps including surveillance applications and plex. Definitely an improvement over it's older brother and worthy of a look. Lastly this unit alongside the mSATA SSD bay in the base (where other NAS devices force you to lose a HDD bay for SSD Cache upgrades), the unit also arrives with dual LAN ports on the rear. This opens up the possibility of using Link Aggregation (port trunking) and offers upto double the previous read/write, upload/download speeds of the older Drobo 5N. Once again, the CPU is a sore point. Lacking the ability to transcode is a killer for applications like Plex and the lack of NAS-Basic connections (yes there is dual LAN ports, but this is something the rest of the NAS industry has supported for almost 5 years) is a little disappointing. Ports like USB 3.0, HDMI and even simple Audio in/out are not available and in the age of network media being so popular, a NAS that lacks this connectivity and even 4K will bother some. Once again though, remember, this is a NAS to live in the background of your live, not the foreground!