Drobo 5D3 Gold Edition: 5-Drive Direct Attached Storage (DAS) Array – Dual Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3.0 Type C ports (DRDR6A21-G)

Just recently purchased this Drobo 5D3 for my new 2017 iMac i7. I have to say, I was quite skeptical from all the reviews, but my personal experience has been nothing but positive. The packaging was very quality and well thought out. The process for setting it up was quite nice. It basically went like this…Installed 256GB EVO SSD drive on bottom. Inserted three 7200 RPM 128MB cache disks that are 3TB each. I then plugged the Drobo into a spare Thunderbolt 3 port on my iMac, using the enclosed Thunderbolt cable from Drobo and turned it on. Once that was done, I installed the Drobo Dashboard that I downloaded from Drobo-ensuring I had the latest. When I launched it, it detected the Drobo and automatically updated the firmware (nice). I think there were some other things I did in the dashboard, like create the volume and setup email messaging. All worked fine. I've not had any disconnects from my iMac or slow speeds as others have indicated-especially when using the enclosed Thunderbolt cable. I even bought an active cable and there were no differences in speed (300MB/s+ write and close to 400MB+ read using 5GB stress file in Blackmagic). I may purchase newer disks at some point ad fill the array for more spindles, but honestly, for my real-world work, the speed is fine. I run several Parallels VMs off it, Lightroom library, movies for iTunes, Plex, etc. No issues. Now here is the cool part-I've been using some form of RAID for decades and this has to be the easiest and most flexible way to upgrade an enclosure. I decided to add a few 2TB disks that were old and slower. Expectedly the read/write performance went down. So…I removed one and the array was rebuilt on the fly. Then I removed the other one and again, the array was rebuilt back to the original 3 disks. NO LOSS of any data and was about a 7-10 minute operation. Honestly, this was so very cool and the flexibility is amazing. I then yanked one of the 3 remaining disks and no issues. Replaced it, no issues and the array was rebuilt to be fully redundant. I'm using single disk redundancy right now. As for the noise, I don't have dog ears so I'm not bothered by it in the least.I saw all the other issues people have posted about disconnects, speed, nice, data loss, service, etc. I honestly do not dispute the reports, as there are so many of those types of postings. All I can tell you that, as of having this Drobo in use for a few days, I've been nothing but super happy with it. YMMV, but my mileage so far is awesome!

So far i have very low confidence in this product woke up this morning to 4 messages showing on my screen "disk not ejected properly" . Also a message saying that lightroom needed to check it's integrity do to a drive being disconnected.I have only had this thing for about 24 hours. So far there have been lots of little things like that. Trying to call customer service resulted in being hung up on by the support number before even reaching a person. This happened 3 times in a row before I gave up. Their online support community is currently not accessible.I bought this device and 5 6TB WD Red drives, as well as a 250 gb ssd. So this represents an investment substantially larger than the $600 for the device.If my experience and confidence in the product improves, I will update my review.Update:I have had this for a few day now. Despite Drobo's response about service and their lines being BS, I still want to update.The device is not very user friendly. This was the main reason I chose it over Synology. If I had known about the lack of tech support availability and that this thing wasn't rock simple then I might have chose differently.That said, the device appears to be working properly. It is noisy. Whether it was worth the expense can only be evaluated over time. This is a "worst case scenario" type product. If it saves your rear in that situation, then it is awesome. If not it sucks.Since long term is "yet to be seen" an short term is "noisy, poor customer service, and a little quirky (being nice here", then I have to say this is solidly a 3* product.So I am raising my review from 1 to 3 stars.Update:7-29-17Support ticket entered at 12:02 pm. Lets see if they respond promptlyProblem: after being up all night shooting timelapse photography I come home to edit photos. Turn on computer and get a message that Drobo wasn't shut down properly. Health of drobo and drives shows good in Drobo Dashboard. However it won't show up in finder. This drive has shut itself down many times in the couple of weeks I have had it. First time though that I haven't been able to locate it at all as a drive in finder. I bought this thing to "just work". Why I went with drobo. I thought I could use it like a regular drive. Now I am sitting here after an all night photo shoot, and I can't edit my work. Drobo has responded here twice as you can see, and that is cool. Doesn't change the fact that this has been more of a headache then is worth so far. I am updating my rating from a 3 to a 2. If they don't help me resolve the issue, it will downgraded to a 1. If they respond quickly, I will update appropriately. Overall my experience withe the device has been frustrating. As of this time I recommend you to not buy this. As said, I will update based on what happens from here.Update: 7-31-1748 hours after submission to technical support. I have received a few "automated messages" from tech support. No real people. In the meantime I called apple and reached real people to walk me through any possibilities of it being my computer. After trying the drobo on several of my macs, I can confidently say this is a drobo problem. Even more confidently I can say that Apple cares about my business, Drobo does not. I am reducing my review back down to 1 star. I will update accordingly if this issue gets resolved.