Designed for media professionals, content creators, and small businesses running Apple Final Cut Pro, Adobe Lightroom, and other I/O intensive applications, or even those who just need to back up terabytes of data, the 5D3 5-Bay Thunderbolt 3 Enclosure from Drobo is equipped with five 3.5" SATA drive bays that support SATA III 6 Gb/s and SATA II 3 Gb/s drives. The 5D3 distinguishes itself from the original Drobo 5D and 5Dt through the inclusion of Thunderbolt 3 technology, which is accessed through two integrated Thunderbolt 3 ports. While one of the Thunderbolt 3 ports is used to connect the 5D3 to your compatible system, the second one is used to daisy-chain up to six Thunderbolt devices together, including one 5K display or two 4K displays. The Thunderbolt 3 ports also provide 15W of charging power for Thunderbolt 3 laptops, and there is also one USB 3.0 Type-C port, which transfers data at speeds up to 5 Gb/s. Please be aware that the 5D3's Thunderbolt 3 ports are only compatible with Mac, while the USB 3.0 Type-C port can be used with both Windows and Mac. Mac support includes APFS/macOS High Sierra.

To help complement the speeds of Thunderbolt 3, the 5D3 has been built with Drobo's Accelerator Bay, which uses an separately sold mSATA SSD to boost system performance. It accomplishes this by placing data that is read or written into SSD storage. When the data is active, it is stored in the SSD and will be moved back to the hard drive tier as its use decreases.

To facilitate data protection, Drobo's BeyondRAID technology enables single or dual-drive redundancy. If there are any empty drive bays, BeyondRAID allows additional drives to be inserted into the array, where they would be automatically configured. If all drive bays are occupied, simply replace the smallest capacity drive with a larger one and BeyondRAID will handle the rest. BeyondRAID is also what allows drives of varying capacities to work in the same unit, which helps enable future expansion as larger drives become available.

Additional data protection is provided by the included rechargeable battery, which helps protect data stored in the 5D3's cache. If there were to be a sudden power loss, the battery allows the Drobo to stay powered long enough for the cached data to be written to non-volatile storage. Cooling is provided by a 120mm variable-speed fan and once installed, the hard drives can be configured to spin down when they're not in use, helping to further reduce noise and energy. Also, the LEDs can be dimmed to reduce light pollution when working in sensitive environments. The Drobo 5D3 also includes a 3.3' Thunderbolt 3 cable and a 6.0' power cord with a power supply that operates using 100-240 VAC at 50-60 Hz. Protection is provided by a limited 2-year warranty.

General Features

Data Protection and Expandability

Built on award-winning BeyondRAID technology with single- or dual-drive redundancy, the Drobo 5D3 protects your data without any user interaction, even in the event of multiple drive failures.

Drives can be added or hot-swapped and updated in real time for storage expansion with zero downtime. If you're running low on space, the lights on the front tell you what to do. Just add a drive in an empty bay or remove a smaller drive and replace it with a larger one. Consult the online capacity calculator to determine how the choice of drive size, number of drives, and protection levels affect available capacity.

The Power of Thunderbolt 3 and Flexibility of USB Type-C

Thunderbolt 3 technology provides performance that's twice as fast as the previous generation. This optimizes your performance when transferring large volumes of data.

The Drobo 5D3 is equipped with dual Thunderbolt 3 ports for daisy chaining on Mac only. Connect up to six Thunderbolt devices and/or a non-Thunderbolt monitor at the end of the chain. The 5D3 supports one 5K monitor, two 4K monitors, and 15W of power for device charging. By having 5D3 arrays in a chain, you can have up to 300TB of usable capacity and achieve throughput by enabling the bi-directional 40 Gb/s performance of Thunderbolt 3. It is compatible with systems running supported versions of Mac OS X or Windows, with Windows compatibility only available using the USB 3.0 Type-C port.

Enhanced Time Machine Support

Drobo is compatible with Apple's Time Machine, which will consume the capacity of an external storage system. By utilizing the Drobo Dashboard, you can simply allocate capacity limits for backups and data storage.

Capacity and Performance

The Drobo 5D3 includes a built-in Accelerator Bay, with an mSATA card holder (mSATA card not included). Their patented Accelerator Cache technology keeps a copy of your most frequently accessed data to deliver fast speeds. The accelerator cache can dramatically speed up loading large photo libraries and other I/O intensive operations, smoothing out workflows allowing you to optimize productivity for applications such as Apple Final Cut Pro X and Adobe Lightroom.

Power Protecting Your Critical Data

Drobo doesn't just protect you from a drive failure, but also from potential data loss after a power outage. Often found only in arrays that cost tens of thousands of dollars, the Drobo 5D3 includes a battery that protects all data in the memory, or cache, that is, data on its way to the drives.

During a sudden power loss, the internal battery keeps the Drobo alive long enough for the data to be written to non-volatile storage. The battery recharges itself and lasts for the life of the product.

Drobo Dashboard

Drobo Dashboard is the single tool used to centrally manage all of your Drobo devices. Drobo Dashboard displays status as if all of your Drobos were right in front of you with the same status lights and capacity gauge that are on the front panel. All administration tasks are a single click away.

Designed for You

Drobo devices have always been space efficient and the Drobo 5D3 is no exception. It is designed to provide high capacity, without taking up a lot of your valuable desk space. It is compact because of Drobo's carrier-less drive bay design, allowing drives to be installed very close to each other. Users can also dim the lights and configure drives to spin down when not in use. Included is a Thunderbolt 3 cable.