New idea popped in my head...

[aperrigo]

I had a new / old idea I would like to try...
I am tempted to get 2-4 thumb drives and set up a software RAID 0
I know this can be done in Vista and Ubuntu....just wondering if anyone else has ever tried it.

http://www.bigbruin.com/reviews05/thumbraid_1

I could think of it as the cheap way to install an OS without the more expensive Solid State Drives...

Oh well...I guess I will leave it up to the fellow members to think about it.

[vinca]

I had a new / old idea I would like to try...
I am tempted to get 2-4 thumb drives and set up a software RAID 0
I know this can be done in Vista and Ubuntu....just wondering if anyone else has ever tried it.

http://www.bigbruin.com/reviews05/thumbraid_1

I could think of it as the cheap way to install an OS without the more expensive Solid State Drives...

Oh well...I guess I will leave it up to the fellow members to think about it.

whaaaaat? flashdrives in raid.... ru crazy.... never tried it, what would you use it for? as far as i know ultimate won't install on raid anyway.

[DaddyX3]

Not a new idea. I've read it in a couple different sites. The one caveat with it is that the throughput of a USB 2.0 device is still just 480Mb/s not enough to replace internals yet. Heres a thought, somebody please educate me here cause I hate to spread inaccurate info, but the first thing that came to mind when I clicked the link you posted is that he is using a usb hub ...huh? This is something that should be noted. A single USB controller can host 127 USB ports all totaling up to a maximum speed of 480Mb/s. This is going to be a limiting factor here. There will be no Motherboard manufacturers that will install more than one controller on a board (because nobody in there right mind will have more than 127 USB devices connected at the same time - let alone the power supply wouldn't be able to support them!). Thus you will be stuck at a maximum throughput of 480Mb/s (aka 60MB/s) This is an absolute maximum and even the max burst rate will be limited by this. Now if you got a manufacturer to install more than one USB controller on board, then yes, you could have twice the throughput and something to look at there

Any other takers?

[DaddyX3]

Sorry to throw you under the bus Vinca:

as far as i know ultimate won't install on raid anyway.

Ultimate Edition will and can be run on Raid 0, you just have to be creative!
I'll give you a hint, on your raid array, you will have one partition that is not part of the set for the raid, this will be the /boot. I haven't done it personally, but I've read much about it.

[aperrigo]

I personally did speed tests on my 8gb Sandisk Contour and had roughly 27 mb/s read and 24.8 burst ...not all too fantastic when compared to my SATA II 500 gb western digital which had roughly 60 mb/s read and a burst of 158 mb/s...then I tested my SATA I Raptors in RAID 0 with 128 mb/s Read and 187 mb/s burst.

I then tested my external 120 Gb Sata I USB drive with similar results to my Contour. So bottlenecking is a huge issue in my little small scale tests. The only benefit from RAIDing 4-6 cheap thumb drives would be the reduced access time...but as DaddyX stated the bottle necking is a major issue....I might have to research the FireWire / ESATA technologies and see if the is a similar setup...

In my opinion, Software RAID is not going to beat Hardware RAID. The only difference is for example you can use a software RAID on laptops/desktops with no hardware RAID devices installed... making them easily swappable...

I will keep looking into it...it is basically a cheap man's attempt at keeping in himself busy.