I've been considering buying a Drobo (not Pro) to use for an external storage and backup device. For my application, it is important that I can use Truecrypt to encrypt the external device.
Since the Drobo manages the usable space inside of the Drobo device itself and passes an unchanging 16 TB device (by default) to the OS, is it still possible to use Truecrypt's "Encrypt a non-system drive" option with the Drobo and use Truecrypt to mount it as you normally would with a conventional external hard drive encrypted by the same method?
I've searched for information on this for a while and didn't find anything useful. Thanks for the help!
Best Answer
Yes, you can use TrueCrypt on a Drobo volume. To the OS (and TrueCrypt), it's just another disc drive. The device takes care of the spanning the volume across the discs and the data protection.
However, you're not going to see 16 TB, even with a Drobo Pro (at least not until they start making drives with capacities above 2 TB). They say a standard Drobo will give you about the sum of the capacity of all the drive minus the capacity of the largest drive (it can survive the failure of one drive). So, if you filled a standard Drobo with 2TB drives, you'd have about 4 bays * 2 - 2 = 6 TB of storage space. A Drobo Pro is the sum of the capacities minus the capacity of the two largest drives (it can survive the failure of two drives). So, if you filled a Pro with 2 TB drives, you'd have about 8 bays * 2 - 2 - 2 = 12 TB of storage space.