The demise of DROBO?

Vicki
I like your idea of always using one huge external drive and also cloud backup.
Can't help you. I own ~17 hard drives from 250 GB (Maxtor) to 2, 3, 5 and 8TB drives. One 4-yo WD drive does not  work. But the drives are double and triple redundancies. 
Oh, BTW, I do manual back ups monthly. If I take critical photos they are double backed up immediately. It's a bit sketchy, but it is rare that I am unable to find a specific digital photo. They go back 20 years now.  
Good luck. 
Clive
    

Thanks, Pete...I had seen that article while doing my own search, but didn't really look at it until you posted it. I kind of like the Sandisk solution, but don't have >$4000 to get the one I'd need. The base one is too small for what I already have on my Drobo. I'm going to do some research to see if Synology has a Direct Attached Storage option--I saw this product demonstrated at a trade show a few years ago and it looked good then..but I already had my Drobo set up and was happy with it.

Thanks for researching this for me.

Buckskin, No...the world won't end if/when the company goes belly-up. However, upgrades to the software and support will end. My concern is what to do if something fails and I have no support from the company. If this 're-organization' doesn't work and they go out of business, I might just start small with another system and gradually add to it. I'm not looking to replace it all at once. I do hope to use it for quite a while longer, but, since I only have sons, I was a boy scout (leader) and I like to 'be prepared'.

BuckSkin...that's why they finally let women wear tan shirts! When I first started, women could only be cub scout leaders and wear yellow shirts...but there weren't enough men volunteers, so we got our chance!

Andy, thanks for your thoughtful answer--you make a lot of sense and it might work...but there are a couple of issues specific to my situation.

First, my backup isn't NAS, it's Direct via USB (so no Synology).

Second, my Carbonite backup would disappear if I disconnected my Drobo (I'd get 30 days to reconnect, but the backup would start over if I connected a different drive). I'd have to start over with backing up the hard drives. I learned that lesson the hard way when I decided to rearrange some folders on my Drobo...and Carbonite took a couple of months to rewrite all the files in their new locations!

Third, I can only back up one external to Carbonite without going to a business/enterprise version (which I can't really afford). I actually have almost 15 TB of files stored on my Drobo. I haven't checked lately, but don't remember seeing a single external HD that can hold that much data (and still have room for more).

The above reasons are why I'm investivating a replacement for Drobo. I'd LOVE Synology, but they don't offer a direct connection solution.

:::sigh::: What's really sad is that I've always been very happy with my storage solution. Hopefully, Drobo will use this Chapter 11 opportunity to really reorganize and get back on its feet!

15TB is a lot of data and does make the problem more challenging. I'm not sure there is an inexpensive way out of that problem.
Newegg has some DAS devices - QNAP looks like the primary option. www.newegg.com/p/pl?d=direct+attached+storage. Looks like that may require an interface card for the PC. You might have to move to a NAS device.

With that amount of data and Carbonite as your backup, you should look into Carbonite's policies for a full restore. If your Drobo were to melt down completely today, you would have to find a new backup solution then recover 15Tb from the internet. That is a lot of time. Carbonite may not be the right backup solution for your situation.