Drobo Goes to UK

LONDON -- Data Robotics today announced the official UK and Ireland launch of Drobo, the world's first storage robot. Drobo is a striking black desktop device that connects via any USB 2.0 port on a Mac or Windows PC. Under its magnetically attached faceplate are four bays that can accept any brand, size, speed or capacity mix of standard 3.5" SATA internal hard drives (sold

separately and available at most electronics stores).

Following its US launch earlier this year, Drobo has gained a worldwidefollowing of enthusiasts including creative professionals such as graphicdesigners, photographers and video editors, as well as users in theeducationsector and small business owners.

Drobo works like any external USB drive and installing it is as easy aspulling it out of the box and plugging it into a USB port. However, unlikecompetitive solutions, Drobo requires no software, no configuration, and nocomputer expertise to start reliably storing important data. In addition,Drobo users benefit from the extensive reliability features of the storagedevice, which uses patent-pending RAID-like proprietary software. Droboboasts data redundancy features normally associated with RAID such asmirroring and data striping, but without the hassle of RAID. Drobo createsone large pool of protected storage out of the available drives, enablingusers to get rid of multiple external drives.

Data Robotics was founded by two Brits, Dr. Geoff Barrall and JulianTerry. Barrall earned a doctoral degree in Cybernetics from the UniversityofReading and serves as CEO of the company. Terry, who earned a degree inComputer Engineering from the University of Bristol, UK, serves as chiefarchitect of Data Robotics.

Barrall - a 20-year-veteran of the storage industry - said he wasinspired to create Drobo after losing irreplaceable personal data from asystem crash at home. "After inventing enterprise storage technologies andbuilding entire data centers, I understand how to store and protect databetter than most," Barrall said. "When I investigated what solutions wereoutthere, the only options were managing a growing number of external harddrives or managing RAID. That's when I realized there needed to be an easiersolution, and I began the development of Drobo four years ago."

Data Robotics Inc.0