Drobo at eBuyer - any way to get it cheaper

BikerEd

Drobo is currently available with the Droboshare NAS addon for free. eBuyer sell this Drobo bundled deal at £399.99 and also have Hitachi Deskstar 1TB SATA-II drives for £49.97 - meaning I can get a networked 4TB Drobo for a few pence under £600. That is a very compelling offer to me.

So, putting on my moneysaving hat, is there any way to get it cheaper? Are there any eBuyer coupons or cashback deals around? Any other suppliers of the Drobo bundle that are cheaper? (I spent a while on google this morning and couldn't come up with any)

BikerEd

I am also interested to see if anyone has an opinion on the EdgeStore NAS400 box which is £100 cheaper than the Drobo - http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0012L6244

kevsan

If you want a 'cheaper' approach, and don't mind getting your hand's dirty you could build your own.

If you've got an old pc lying around, you could buy a sata raid controller for £30-40 which can take up to 4 disks and buy disks for £70-80 a piece.

It's what i have done - i had to get the older version of the controller because my old pc only had pci slots ( http://www.ebuyer.com/product/123967 ) and 4 500gb drives for £45 a piece. This gives me a 2tb NAS for £214. I could expand that at much less than a dedicated NAS - depends if you want a big box or not really.

You could install a proper nas OS such as freenas, but eqaully windows etc can cope just as weel.

timbim_2

Wouldn't run a NAS on windows. Run Freenas, fully set up for nas, web interface for remote management and remarkably small footprint.

jmc160

If we're on the subject of self-builds, what about a Windows Home Server?

Web interface, easy to add or remove storage, excellent backup/restore features and redundancy too.

BikerEd

Thanks, but have freenas running on old Cobalt Qube. It is good, but I want a newer and faster system - hence looking at dedicated boxes.

kevsan

Buffalo have just released the terrastation III but for 4tb its probably over your budget.

BikerEd

Having done some serious background reading on the Drobo I have decided it might be a bit of a non-starter. However, the same background reading has thrown up this gem of a box - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/143537 - from Intel, which does everything the Drobo does at less than half the price and gets a three year warranty instead of just one. Not only that it also supports DLNA so my new telly (whenever I get around to buying it) will be able to stream multimedia content directly off it. Order going into eBuyer on Monday methinks...