Drobo (Second generation)

Pros: Fast and Simple to Use

Cons: It's the best desktop array I've tried

Summary: I've no idea what this reviewer was doing. Just in simple drag and drop tests I'm getting around 50MB/s (400Mb/s) on FW800 which is about the best I'm seeing for a desktop array (obviously a little less than a single disk drive but that's normal for any RAID array from any vendor although it's not clear to the reviewer). It's also tricky to know what he means by finicky. I just plugged it in and it's worked fine ever since. On windows you need to ensure you have the right drivers to get good FW800 performance. My guess is that the reviewer had something set up wrong? Also true that every RAID array has a proprietary format and this isn't something unique to Drobo although apparently also unknown to the reviewer.