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#1
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Crazy idea........USB flash drives converted to IDE or SATA disks.
My computers HD crashed again and I have to reinstall everything. Recently,
these USB flash drives are getting quite reasonable and I began to think how nice it would be if I could used them as a boot drive instead the traditional head thrashers. I was looking at the 3.5 inch dead HD and perhaps you could fit about a dozen of those USB flash drives into a case. Then, with a onboard raid controller, it could stripe it to create a large LUN. Of course this is all speculation. I've not run into such a animal while googling. |
#2
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Crazy idea........USB flash drives converted to IDE or SATA disks.
Boll Weevil wrote:
My computers HD crashed again and I have to reinstall everything. Recently, these USB flash drives are getting quite reasonable and I began to think how nice it would be if I could used them as a boot drive instead the traditional head thrashers. I was looking at the 3.5 inch dead HD and perhaps you could fit about a dozen of those USB flash drives into a case. Then, with a onboard raid controller, it could stripe it to create a large LUN. Of course this is all speculation. I've not run into such a animal while googling. There is a company that builds an adapter that takes CF-cards and turns them into a SATA drive, see: http://www.provantage.com/addonics-a...f~7ADDO1A7.htm -- Nik Simpson |
#3
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Crazy idea........USB flash drives converted to IDE or SATAdisks.
On Jun 12, 9:53*am, Boll Weevil wrote:
My computers HD crashed again and I have to reinstall everything. *Recently, these USB flash drives are getting quite reasonable and I began to think how nice it would be if I could used them as a boot drive instead the traditional head thrashers. *I was looking at the 3.5 inch dead HD and perhaps you could fit about a dozen of those USB flash drives into a case. *Then, with a onboard raid controller, it could stripe it to create a large LUN. *Of course this is all speculation. *I've not run into such a animal while googling. What's wrong with a flash SSD like those available from any number of vendors? |
#4
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Crazy idea........USB flash drives converted to IDE or SATA disks.
On Thu, 12 Jun 2008 12:54:16 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote: What's wrong with a flash SSD like those available from any number of vendors? Well, they are too small for one thing and if you get the 32GB ones you have to loose limbs. To be comfortable for windows XP, you need about 20GB minimum. But I wouldn't even entertain that. Vista..... forget it. It would be nice to have a HD sized case where I can plug in 10 to 20 SD, Flash, CF cards to be striped into one big logical disk. Like I said, this maybe another year or two before we see anything like this...... I am thinking. |
#5
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Crazy idea........USB flash drives converted to IDE or SATA disks.
Boll Weevil wrote:
My computers HD crashed again and I have to reinstall everything. Recently, these USB flash drives are getting quite reasonable and I began to think how nice it would be if I could used them as a boot drive instead the traditional head thrashers. I was looking at the 3.5 inch dead HD and perhaps you could fit about a dozen of those USB flash drives into a case. Then, with a onboard raid controller, it could stripe it to create a large LUN. Of course this is all speculation. I've not run into such a animal while googling. You'd need need a raid controller with a usb driver, and since they are cheap, perhaps take somewhere between 6 to 8 of them and make a raid5 parity group so you don't lose your data if an individual flash drive fails. Or you could use two and mirror them with a controller where you could break the mirror and move one copy to another system. If you truly can't find one, look for some startup capital and go for it. |
#6
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Crazy idea........USB flash drives converted to IDE or SATAdisks.
Boll Weevil wrote:
On Thu, 12 Jun 2008 12:54:16 -0700 (PDT), " wrote: What's wrong with a flash SSD like those available from any number of vendors? Well, they are too small for one thing and if you get the 32GB ones you have to loose limbs. To be comfortable for windows XP, you need about 20GB minimum. But I wouldn't even entertain that. Vista..... forget it. It would be nice to have a HD sized case where I can plug in 10 to 20 SD, Flash, CF cards to be striped into one big logical disk. Like I said, this maybe another year or two before we see anything like this...... I am thinking. My bet is that you'll never see it, the price wouldn't be that much better than a conventional flash drive, maybe even worse. Give it a couple of years and nobody will care because the flash-based drives will be cheap enough for all practical purposes. -- Nik Simpson |
#7
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Crazy idea........USB flash drives converted to IDE or SATA disks.
Ok, looks like there is a critter as such:
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/periphera...ive-237908.php But, the page doesn't say anything about who makes it!! |
#8
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Crazy idea........USB flash drives converted to IDE or SATA disks.
On 06/14/08 06:58 PM, wrote:
Ok, looks like there is a critter as such: http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/periphera...ive-237908.php But, the page doesn't say anything about who makes it!! It's from a company called Century. A few similar designs around for IDE or SATA, using CF os SD memory. (google for 'DIY SSD') http://www.itechnews.net/2007/02/19/...b25sd-diy-ssd/ One user describes using a unit with 3 CF on raid 0/5 config: http://blog.geekstuff4u.com/index.ph...aid5-with-3-cf (But as flash is not as reliable as a hd for rewriting, I think I'll pass). /Rolf |
#9
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Crazy idea........USB flash drives converted to IDE or SATA disks.
On Mon, 16 Jun 2008 13:02:30 +0200, Rolf Blom wrote:
(But as flash is not as reliable as a hd for rewriting, I think I'll pass). /Rolf Can you elaborate on your technical insite? |
#10
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Crazy idea........USB flash drives converted to IDE or SATA disks.
On 06/17/08 07:51 PM, Boll Weevil wrote:
On Mon, 16 Jun 2008 13:02:30 +0200, Rolf Blom wrote: (But as flash is not as reliable as a hd for rewriting, I think I'll pass). /Rolf Can you elaborate on your technical insite? There is often no wear-levelling on CF or usb-sticks what I've seen in the specs. (some do have them, but not all) This (IMO) makes the use of cheap CF/USB memory in a normal disk configuration less optimal than a 'real' SSD drive, since blocks cannot be remapped due to wear on the cheaper DIY version, and they will thus break sooner. If the disk is only written to very seldom, it is acceptable, but for logging filesystems (NTFS,ext3 etc) I don't think would be so good to use DIY flashdisks, if you know there is a lot of rewrites. /Rolf |
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