Connected Data has announced the third generation version of its 4-bay Drobo storage array. A completely new architecture along with USB 3.0 connectivity help make it “three times faster than the previous generation.” Speed is always a welcome upgrade, but the real crowd-pleaser in this announcement is that its MSRP has been chopped to $349, and previous generation Drobo owners are eligible for a $50 customer loyalty discount.

Current Drobo owners will find it easy to migrate their data to the new system because it’s also built on BeyondRAID technology:

It also offers Apple users an easy way to limit the amount of space available to Time Machine. This prevents OS X from storing extremely old backups because it thinks it has access to the entire drive.

If you are in the market for some serious storage we recommend checking out Synology as we have had nothing but wonderful experiences with them.

The third generation Drobo is now available for preorder with an anticipated ship date of late April.