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on the sidelines for a long while since Drobo 5n died. what I am looking for is something that operates like it. I need it to be a NAS for mixed operating systems can connect to it. SMB for my Mac primarily. ability to segment "shares" Ala Drobo, dedicated spaces each for Time Machine back up, cold storage, and a windows machine back up. media server nice. but no necessarily a need. ideally out of the box and ready to go turnkey solution like Drobo since I personally do not have tons of time to dedicate to setting up and fiddling with a NAS. I would like this to have the Drobo capability to mix and match hard drive sizes to scale up when I need to /also having the Drobo data redundancy protection. long term, I would like to also rip/store my physical media collection to it.
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The closest modern equivalent to Drobo BeyondRAID is Synology Hybrid RAID, and that makes a Synology Plus series unit the best fit for what you described. It gives you the same mix and match drive freedom, automatic expansion when you add larger disks, and single or dual drive redundancy. It also handles separate shared folders for Time Machine, Windows backup, cold storage, and media without any extra work.
A good starting point is the Synology DS224 Plus if you only want a simple setup. If you prefer more drive bays so you can grow into it like your old Drobo, step up to a four bay Plus model. These units are turnkey and guide you through the whole process the moment you power them on.
A few reasons Synology is the closest match to Drobo:
You can mix drive sizes and expand at any time using SHR.
It presents simple network shares over SMB and works well with Mac and Windows together.
Time Machine support is native and very reliable.
You do not need to learn complex RAID settings or advanced tuning.
It is quiet, stable, and easy to maintain long term.
QNAP and Ugreen offer strong hardware, but their RAID systems follow traditional rules, so you lose the mix and match flexibility that Drobo users rely on. Synology is the one brand that preserves that convenience.
