You guys probably know that we are big fans of Drobo here at Gear Live, which is why we are happy to bring news of the DroboPro. When the last Drobo refresh happened a few months ago, the DroboPro is what we were hoping we would see. A smart, sexy, almost-foolproof NAS box that can currently hold up to 16 TB of storage in its 8 hard drive bays. So, what else is different about the DroboPro, aside from the 4 extra drive slots? How about that fact that there is no need to purchase a DroboShare to get this thing on your network? It has an integrated gigabit Ethernet port, in addition to it’s dual FireWire 800 ports and USB 2.0 connection. The gigabit Ethernet uses iSCSI, which allows for speedy file transfer of about 100 MB per second. Not bad, at all.

The DroboPro is also rack-mountable, thanks to the wider form factor. Drobo is definitely coming out big with this one. We desperately want to get our hands on one (along with either 2 TB hard drives.) Oh wait, did you feel that? That was the shudder of realizing that this might be a tad on the expensive side. You see, ordering a DroboPro with no hard drives will run you $1300. Of course, for businesses and the like, not a big deal—but for us home folk, it’s spendy in this rough economic climate. Still, price notwithstanding, the DroboPro is slick. Hit the jump for a shot of the back of the unit.