| The Thumb Drive RAID Experiment
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Conclusion:
The idea of a thumb drive RAID array might not be practical for every day needs, but it is a novel idea that could be of benefit to some people. For one, owners of mini-ITX systems that boot from a flash drive might be interested in the sizable speed burst a RAID 0 array could provide. The configuration in Linux was not particularly difficult, although it would be nice to see Windows extend the software RAID functionality to include removable drives.
In the end, results were achieved that showed great promise for thumb drive RAID arrays. The transfer rate for a four drive RAID 0 array was quite impressive, offering up to 6x the speed of a single drive while writing, and 2x the speed of a single drive while reading.
The whole experiment wound up being rather frustrating though, but greater than 90% of my problems can be traced to these sub-standard thumb drives. With reliable hardware on hand, I am hopeful that I (or anyone) could duplicate this and perhaps create a reliable array of thumb drives that could perform at even higher transfer rates. If anyone happens to be set up with the hardware to do so, I would be very interested to see results from others (feel free to post here).
Although these "Version G" drives are lucky this wasn't a review about them specifically, Geeks.com no longer carries them and that definitely isn't a bad thing. Geeks.com does have a wide selection of sizes, styles, and prices for other thumb drives, many from names we will all recognize.
Pros:
• High(er) performance
• Solid state RAID
• Numerous configurations possible
• Bootable
Cons:
• Not reliable as tested (seems to be hardware related)
• Software RAID only
• Didn't work in a Microsoft operating system (Linux only)
Special thanks to Geeks.com for providing the Version G 512MB USB Flash Drives to Bigbruin.com for this little experiment!
Please drop by the Bigbruin.com Forum and feel free to post any comments or questions.
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