The previous installment of this review looked behind the curtain at the magic that Drobo does in order to let you have lots of disks without lots of management. That's all well and good, but I'm sure you're dying to know exactly what it's like to use it.

I ordered my Drobo FS from Amazon, taking advantage of a trial Prime membership to get it to me faster in order to fulfill my rampant sense of entitled consumerism. The machine arrived in a large Amazon box, inside of which was a large Drobo-branded box.

Inside that was a box of accessories, and the Drobo FS itself, which came in a nice recycled fabric bag.

Here it is unwrapped, perched on a table. Its black cover and featureless face kind of resemble Keanu in the poster on the wall behind it.

The bezel is secured magnetically to the front of the unit, covering the disk bays, and on its back it has a sticker which explains the meanings of the drive bay LEDs. Blinking red is bad.

The backside of the Drobo FS has an on/off switch, a gigabit ethernet port, and a plug for power. Through the grille you can see the 120mm exhaust fan for keeping the works cool.

Beneath the removable bezel are the drive bays. Each bay's plastic cover is spring-loaded and flips inward and up when a drive is inserted, and the bays have SATA data and power connectors in the rear. Drives are inserted and require a bit of pressure to seat, and are held firmly both by connector friction and the gray spring clips on each bay.