Day 5: Rick's 12 Days of Christmas - Drobo Mini

Anyone who has a home, office, or even home office and does serious work on a computer could use a Drobo.

it's also the fastest portable storage array--with cutting-edge Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 connectivity and innovative use of solid state drives (SSDs). Along with the power of BeyondRAID, it delivers all the power and flexibility of its larger sibling, Drobo 5D, in a miniaturized package.

Whether you're working at your desktop, shooting and editing photos or videos on-site, or traveling to the next location, it's the world's first high-performance and protected portable storage array. So now you can take and access your valuable digital assets wherever you go. Easiest, fastest, safest, smallest--Drobo Mini is very unique and unexpected--but frankly that's what you should expect from Drobo.

Drobo Mini has everything that's in the high-capacity Drobo 5D in a package that's the size of a deli sandwich. Made of a cutting-edge metallic carbon fiber with a soft-touch rubberized finish, Drobo Mini is small, ruggedized, and feels as cool as it looks. From the modern materials to the wraparound light indicators to the drive bay design, Mini is truly big storage in a small box.

Weighing in at about 3 pounds (fully loaded with drives installed), you can now carry up to 3TB of usable and protected capacity in your travel bag. (When drives with more than 1TB capacity become available, you will have greater capacity.) To make Drobo Mini as portable as possible, there's an optional carrying case that holds the Drobo, power supply, and a connectivity cable.

Drobo Mini takes 2.5" drives--that's what makes it portable. Four hot-swappable drive bays support drives of any capacity. No carriers or screws are needed to insert drives into a Drobo and the Drobo Mini is no different. An innovative new design allows drives to click in and out like a ballpoint pen.

Since 2.5" drives are primarily used in laptop computers, they're designed to be portable. Because of this, you can pick up and move Drobo Mini around with confidence.

I advise you to consider a Drobo Mini.