I’ve been thinking about getting a NAS device for a while now and Amazon had the Drobo 5N for $439.99, which is about $160 off of retail. I pulled the trigger with one left and received it on Saturday. I was going to use some existing drives I have laying around, but decided to purchase a the WD Red NAS 3TB drives. Here are a few quick thoughts:

Setup: This couldn’t have been easier, slide in the drives and turn on.

Construction: I’m quite pleased that it is a nice heavy metal exterior rather than cheap metal and plastic. The front bezel is attached magnetically and really snaps into place.

Performance: It is plenty quick, but I didn’t realize my router only has a 100 Mbps ethernet jack on it. Through Wi-Fi from my iMac, I can easily push 95.5 Mbps to it.

Oddities: I’ve noticed that after I create a share and mount it for the first time I cannot do anything with it. If I unmount and mount it again, it works without a problem.