USB flash drive RAID? :P

Interesting idea actually. Portable falls down a bit when you realise you have to rebuild the array every time you move it, but raid 0 spanning half a dozen usb sticks with an OS could be worth experimenting with.

If you want fast, portable memory put an ssd in a hard drive usb (or preferably e-sata) enclosure.
 
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Well, it would be interesting to see what you could do if you raided 2 or 3 fairly large USB sticks, (like 20GB), and 3 usb sticks are dozens more portable than a small hard drive, you can keep them in your pocket easily.

Just number them 1, 2, 3 or something. Depends on how large the raid controller is.
 
Oh, you have hardware raid in mind? That'll be expensive, software is loads cheaper. You can buy internally raided usb sticks, think ocz sell one or two. That's probably the only economic approach.

Solid series SSD + enclosure works very well though.
 
JonJ678 said:
Oh, you have hardware raid in mind? That'll be expensive, software is loads cheaper. You can buy internally raided usb sticks, think ocz sell one or two. That's probably the only economic approach.

Solid series SSD + enclosure works very well though.
Click to expand...

I was thinking the same way as you as well...

Stelly
 
Well, expanding on your idea from earlier, would software raid work with an OS or similar?

I now have an urge to install Windows 7 along with my most used programs (like Visual Studio or Office 2010) on a large USB stick and carry it around with me everywhere I go, for use with presentations etc, since most often presentation laptops run Windows XP and Office 2003 except for the ones I've manually upgraded already).

Does software raid generate the significant speed benefit? Would I need the same software on the receiving end, or would I be able to run it off one of the USB sticks plugged in alone?

Edit: Some searching tells me Windows XP Professional supports software raid (at least for HDDs, not sure about USB sticks), but as far as I know the laptops run XP Home.
 
Software raid 0 will be the same speed as hardware raid 0. Motherboard implementations are thinly disguised software raid anyway. When there's calculations involved, e.g. raid 5, then hardware acceleration can make a difference.

If you install windows 7 such that it runs from a usb stick, it's likely to throw hissy fits on various hardware. I imagine it'll also be savaged by viruses. And it'll be slow. I did this for a while, gave up on using windows for it. I still run ubuntu from a usb stick.

Installing windows across several usb sticks will not be realistically possible. Not without considerable reverse engineering of microsoft code at least, I believe you'll be breaking new ground with it. Window's implementation of software raid doesn't even let you boot from it, let alone track down other usb sticks and assemble the array then boot.

You can probably work it through linux, grub on one stick boots a minimal kernel via initrd, which assembles the raid, loads the new kernel and hands control over to it. You can then run windows within virtualbox if you must.

It'll be a fascinating project for a while, but end performance will suck badly relative to just using an ssd as an external drive. Windows just isn't set up for doing things like this.

@ Stelly I think I'm going to plagarise your signature for awhile, instead of logging daft comments as and when I notice them. Hope you don't mind :)
It's clipping the last 68 pixels and I'm not competent enough to resolve this. Boo
 
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JonJ678 said:
Software raid 0 will be the same speed as hardware raid 0. Motherboard implementations are thinly disguised software raid anyway. When there's calculations involved, e.g. raid 5, then hardware acceleration can make a difference.

If you install windows 7 such that it runs from a usb stick, it's likely to throw hissy fits on various hardware. I imagine it'll also be savaged by viruses. And it'll be slow. I did this for a while, gave up on using windows for it. I still run ubuntu from a usb stick.

Installing windows across several usb sticks will not be realistically possible. Not without considerable reverse engineering of microsoft code at least, I believe you'll be breaking new ground with it. Window's implementation of software raid doesn't even let you boot from it, let alone track down other usb sticks and assemble the array then boot.

You can probably work it through linux, grub on one stick boots a minimal kernel via initrd, which assembles the raid, loads the new kernel and hands control over to it. You can then run windows within virtualbox if you must.

It'll be a fascinating project for a while, but end performance will suck badly relative to just using an ssd as an external drive. Windows just isn't set up for doing things like this.

@ Stelly I think I'm going to plagarise your signature for awhile, instead of logging daft comments as and when I notice them. Hope you don't mind :)
It's clipping the last 68 pixels and I'm not competent enough to resolve this. Boo
Click to expand...

I consider myself told off :p

I did notice the clipping and think its something to do with the size of the forum.... not sure though...

Stelly
 
These forums impose a limit on image in signatures, something like 400x80. I'd quite like to crop everything to the right of the vertical line, but I can't work out how to. I'll let you know if I make progress with it
 
JonJ678 said:
These forums impose a limit on image in signatures, something like 400x80. I'd quite like to crop everything to the right of the vertical line, but I can't work out how to. I'll let you know if I make progress with it
Click to expand...

Code: 
http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/sigs/sigimage.php?u=<userid>

thats what you need.

Stelly
 
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