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STORAGE SOLUTION REVIEW.

Often we have been asked by photographers and agencies what is the best storage solutions available on the market.
With file sizes increasing, 250 and 500GB hard drives soon run out of space and only provide an immediate solutions on shoots but not a long term one.
Here at Three Four Digital we store data for three months after the shoot date for free and also offer long term solution. For further information on Long term stoage solutions feel free to contact us at info@threefourdigital.com

In this post i will be looking at our favorite storage solutions on the market for photographers and anyone with alot of data.

The Drobo

Firstly what is new from the first generation;
- Faster read/write performance thanks to an upgraded core processor and faster transfer method (Firewire vs. USB); slower read/write performance was a big point of contention with the first-generation Drobo
- Two Firewire 800 connectors in addition to the USB 2.0 connector, so you can daisy-chain other Firewire devices to the Drobo
- Different design for the cooling grille and a bigger cooling fan (the fan, without the cooling grille, was a silent upgrade that was also applied to some late builds of the first-generation Drobo)

- FireWire 800: Up to 52MB/s reads and 34MB/s writes
- USB 2.0: Up to 30MB/s reads and 24MB/s writes

The drobo has got great storage flexibility and the safety of one’s data. The only thing that’s holding it back at the moment, storage-wise, is the capability of the hard drives themselves. This means,(having 2TB drives inside) according to the Drobolator, that you can get up to 5.5TB of disk space on a single Drobo unit, which is still far from the 16TB limit.

For something a bit bigger you can go for the Drobo Pro. It has 8 bay slots which will give you 12.48TB of space if filled with 2TB disks.
The great thing about both is that you don’t have to have the same volume in all the drives. This means that you can expand when you have to and not have to spend a loads of money upfront.
Read all the technical sheets at the Drobo website www.drobo.com who we thank for the images above.

If you need any information or advice on which storage solution is best for you contact us at info@threefourdigital.com

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