{"id":36555,"date":"2022-07-20T20:56:09","date_gmt":"2022-07-21T00:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=36555"},"modified":"2023-05-17T14:05:14","modified_gmt":"2023-05-17T18:05:14","slug":"drobo-files-for-bankruptcy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2022\/07\/20\/drobo-files-for-bankruptcy\/","title":{"rendered":"Drobo Files for Bankruptcy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gannon Burgett<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Drobo was founded in San Jose, California back in May 2005 under the name Data Robotics. Over the years, its line of Drobo products took hold in the data storage market, offering simple solutions for anyone needing to store and back up their digital data. Unlike many of its competitors, Drobo succeeded in simplicity, with a proprietary technology that allowed users to hot-swap hard drives without the need to manually migrate data.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

At a time when RAID solutions weren’t necessarily commonplace in the consumer world, Drobo offered a lifeline to creatives who wanted a simple solution to keeping their data safe. Things started taking a turn, however, at the turn of the decade, with a few notable names in the photography industry publicly announcing they were no longer using Drobo products due to their unreliability and slow speeds.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Over the years under this ownership, Drobo release new products on an annual basis, but started to feel the heat as the likes of Buffalo, Lacie, Promise Technology, QNAP, Synology, Western Digitals and others improved their simplicity and expanded their respective product lines at a price below what Drobo’s proprietary technology came in at.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

William Gallagher<\/a> (Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n

[The] company appears to have been badly affected by the coronavirus. In February 2020, the company tweeted about production delays<\/a>, and in March 2020, its CEO Mihir Shah addressed concerns over how the coronavirus would affect the company.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

liberoj<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

When expressing a concern about sending my unit into Drobo (post bankruptcy filing) my support person reassured me with this:<\/p>\n

For the company bankruptcy, we are not closing.<\/p>\n

“The restructuring process will enable us to continue servicing our customers and partners and make the necessary investments to achieve our strategic objectives.”<\/p>\n

“StorCentric concluded that the voluntary Ch 11 reorganization is the best way to fix our balance sheet and we will remain fully functional during the restructuring process.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Update (2023-05-16): Kevin Purdy<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Now, AppleInsider reports<\/a> that, based on an email sent by StorCentric, the bankruptcy shifted from reorganization-minded Chapter 11 to liquidation-focused Chapter 7 in late April.<\/p>

The writing for Drobo was on the wall, or at least on its website<\/a>. Text at the top of the homepage notes that, as of January 27, 2023, Drobo products and support for them are no longer available. “Drobo support has transitioned to a self-service model,” the site reads. “We thank you for being a Drobo customer and entrusting us with your data.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Chris Espinosa<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The death of Drobo also means the end of Retrospect, the first major file backup system for Macs which dated from 1989.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Update (2023-05-17): Adam Engst<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The initial version of this article raised the question of what would happen to Retrospect<\/a>, which was also owned by StorCentric. I’ve now heard from Robin Mayoff, director of Retrospect Support (and a Retrospect employee since 1995), that Retrospect (and another StorCentric subsidiary Nexsan<\/a>) has emerged from Chapter 11 under new company ownership. Mayoff posted this Alive and well<\/a> note in Retrospect’s support forum yesterday[…]<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

If my math is correct, Retrospect’s new ownership marks the company’s eighth incarnation across 33 years, a history that exceeds even our own.<\/p><\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gannon Burgett: Drobo was founded in San Jose, California back in May 2005 under the name Data Robotics. Over the years, its line of Drobo products took hold in the data storage market, offering simple solutions for anyone needing to store and back up their digital data. Unlike many of its competitors, Drobo succeeded in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2022-07-21T00:56:11Z","apple_news_api_id":"d6569bda-e8df-4719-875b-51cf5dcded74","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2023-05-17T18:05:17Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAg==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/A1lab2ujfRxmHW1HPXc3tdA","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[101,1931,347,214,174,1451],"class_list":["post-36555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-business","tag-covid-19","tag-drobo","tag-retrospect","tag-storage","tag-sunset"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36555"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39410,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36555\/revisions\/39410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}