You're tight about USB. However, that's only part of the story. There's a lot of "overhead managment" that goes on in the Drobo -you can here the thing churning away sometimes, even when your not doing anything, and it likes to go to sleep - both of which slow my machine down. It also slows down booting my machine up as it slowly loads itself. Part of the fault is USB, but a lot of it is Drobo's "overhead". The HP, by contrast, is really fast, never slows my operations down and comes packed with so many included features, I think the thing is a steal at the price. For very close to the same money, the Drobo loses to the HP in so many areas that it's not even a contest.