Neil, I agree that any — actually, all — hard drive(s) will eventually fail and there may not be a difference in MTBF for a drive in a Drobo as opposed to in any other enclosure. My big issue is after the failure:

• You take the drive from, say, your Synology box, and pay a data recovery service to recover.
• You take the drive from the Drobo box and pay a data recovery service — it cannot recover a Drobo drive due to the proprietary Drobo software used to write the drive.

I love the Drobo concept, the inexpensive drives, the scalability, the ease of settup and operation. It's only the data recovery aspect — the lack thereof — that stops me from buying.

Jon Kandel
A New York City Nikonian and Team Member
Please visit my website and critique the images!