ha, #16, why yes, I do work for a government-affiliated University. (UW-Madison)

But if you can think of a better way to turn four flaky 500GB drives into 1.3TB of protected storage with less than 5 minutes of work I'd love to hear it...

Also, that 1.3TB of protected storage can grow to 16TB without ever going offline.

As needed I can upgrade it by swapping out the 500GB drives for 2TB drives, the Drobo will increase the volume size without me needing to do anything.

I didn't spend $400 to use my 500GB drives, I spent $400 to give my video archive a single drive that is protected, easy to expand, and relatively fast. The drives that are inside don't matter much to me, I just had the 500 gig's around to get started.

I'd call the Drobo a fine (if expensive) product for the lazy archivist.