Windows only recognizes drives as fault tolerant if Windows is managing the dynamic volume. RAID controller volumes and drobos both show up to windows as not fault tolerant. So the gui for drive pool would need to have a section that would allow fault tolerant disks to be designated.
For your 2, that would be the downside. As I mentioned, a controller fault would still leave you vulnerable, but while it happens it is extremely rare. Post people would take that chance. To answer your question, no a drobo drive or a drive in a RAID pool cannot be pulled out and read as a standard NTFS volume. However, the drobo drives can be put in a different drobo as long as it's a comparable model, and RAID arrays can be move to a different controller.
I realize it's not a "clean" a solution as having a bundle of a dozen disks in a server, but for instance I have three systems at work that have three drobos plus an internal RAID array, and it'd be nice to be able to pool them all without double duplicating.