Drobo 5C Five-Bay USB-C DAS Review

The Drobo 5C is the latest addition to the Drobo family. It joins the Mini, 5Dt, and 5D that I reviewed three years ago. This latest generation holds true to the iconic and recognizable design on the outside but inside Drobo has upgraded this solution to take advantage of USB-C.


Drobo uses a type of Hybrid RAID with all of their platforms called BeyondRAID. This type of RAID allows you to mix and match drive sizes or to upgrade on-the-fly simply by removing and adding in a larger capacity drive. Further hardware features include an onboard battery backup system for the NAND flash onboard the 5C, which takes any in-flight data from your hard drives and stores it in flash should you ever have power issues. The Drobo Dashboard is the software platform that gives you complete control of your storage with Drobo. This too hasn't changed much over the years although it does include Time Machine support that allows you to control how much storage you want for MacOS backups.


The specifications above go over in a bit more detail the features of the 5C. This, of course, is a five-bay appliance supporting 3.5" SATA disk drives with no capacity ceiling. Operating system support includes MacOS 10.10 and above along with Windows 7 through 10. BeyondRAID features include Thin Provisioning, Instant Expansion as I explained above, and single or dual disk redundancy. File systems of choice are NTFS and HFS+.

Oculus Rift review:

Hey -- it's my hands.

I can see them as I look down. I lift my finger. That floating, glowing hand moves its finger. I grip my fingers into a fist. I point.

I pick up an Oculus Rift Bundle on the table in front of me. It takes a little practice. Now I'm holding it. I pull the elastic band back. I aim, and shoot paint pellets across the room.

Am I really holding my virtual slingshot? Yes and no. In my hands are controllers that I'm resting my fingers on, with buttons and triggers. I lift my fingers and control those hands. But when I let go completely -- oops, my controller falls to the floor.

Virtual prosthetics take time to understand.

The Oculus Rift arrived way back in March, but all that came with it was a headset and an Xbox controller. It didn't have real VR hand controls, like the HTC Vive or PlayStation VR. You could sit down and play games, but you couldn't move anywhere. There was the promise of exciting things, but the reality was less than we expected.

This is what we thought of the Rift then: potential. Now, it's time for reality.

But if you don't? You'll need to pal an expensive bundle, but it's now at least more affordable than it was last year. Oculus is now a complete package, and a compelling journey into VR worlds with lots of games and apps to try.

Oculus' collection of unique games and apps gives it a more polished edge over the Vive, but Vive's more open Steam platform feels like it has an edge on larger-scale VR experiences that Oculus is still trying to catch up to.

An updated review of the Oculus Rift -- including how the Touch controllers change the equation -- follows.

If I were rating the Touch controllers on their own, I'd give them an A. Anyone who already has a Rift should definitely get them. But that doesn't make the Rift a slam dunk for buyers coming into VR from scratch. With an expensive VR headset that has limited room tracking, the Oculus Rift as a whole is still a work in progress.

Adopt These 12 Habits for a Better Work-Life Balance

Being an entrepreneur or successful leader in business takes a lot of work. There’s no way around it. Fortunately, many people are able to find a lot of fulfillment in their work -- whether that comes from the customers they serve or the colleagues they enjoy working with.

However, it’s still true that “all work and no play make Jack a dull boy.” You need work-life balance. Here are 12 habits you can use to create it:

The 7 Different Loans You Can Get as a Business Owner

When you're looking for debt financing for your business, there are many sources you can turn to, including banks, commercial lenders, and even your personal credit cards. And you don’t need to pinpoint the exact type of loan you need before you approach a lender; they will help you decide what type of financing is best for your needs. However, you should have some general idea of the different types of loans available so you'll understand what your lender is offering.

Here's a look at how lenders generally structure loans, with common variations.

5 Preventable Disasters That Have Ruined Countless Startups

Disasters happen, it’s the natural course of the world. An earthquake may strike unexpectedly, a car may collide with ours or a fire may destroy our homes. Most of these disasters are unexpected, unpredictable and random, and are therefore unpreventable. When they happen, it’s tragic, but at some point you have to accept the fact that they happened and move on.

There are some disasters in the business world with similar characteristics: they strike randomly, unexpectedly and can dismantle a business before you even know what’s going on. But most business disasters are the opposite -- they are predictable and completely preventable, yet they have still ruined countless startups with otherwise promising potential.
Allowing your business to succumb to one of these entirely preventable fates will lead to regret. Don’t let these preventable disasters happen to you: