Put a Barracuda 4TB in your Drobo 5C

You need drives to populate your Drobo 5C (see my review), and one of the best, all-round choices I’ve run across so far is the 3.5-inch Barracuda 4TB drive. 

It offers lots of bang for the buck (about $100) and allows you to store and retrieve data quickly. You can store about 480 HD videos or 80,000 photos or 1,000,000 songs — or, of course, a combination of all these. Like me, your collection of photos, music, and videos probably grows dramatically each week. With the Drobo 5C/Barracuda 4TB combo, you can store LOTS of digital media, then add another drive (or four) for even more storage capacity.

The Barracuda — which sports a SATA 6Gb/second interface and 64MB cache — comes with a generous two-year warranty. My one complaint is that has a slower spindle speed than its smaller, brethren models (5900 RPM vs. 7200 RPM.) Still, I was able to copy about 110GB of data in 25 minutes (as a single 4TB volume).

If you need to have the fastest drive around, you’ll go with a flash version. But a 4TB flash drive will cost you three times as much (and probably much more). So, even with the Barracuda 4TB’s 5900 RPM drive, it’s hard to complain too much, especially considering its price.