USB Flash Drive RAIND Array Experiment

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TheUltimateMacUser's picture
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Last seen: 6 years 1 month ago
Joined: Jan 28 2004 - 12:14
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USB Flash Drive RAIND Array Experiment

I realise it's been done, but... the question is, can it be useful?

Ok... For this experiment, i used 3 identical PNY 2 gig USB flash drives.
IMAGE(http://img127.imageshack.us/img127/1007/threesoment2.jpg)
IMAGE(http://img117.imageshack.us/img117/9060/thumbdriveinfowr8.png)

To start of with a baseline, i ran an XBench disk test on a single, freshly formatted drive:
IMAGE(http://img79.imageshack.us/img79/4277/baselinejq5.png)

Ok, that being done, lets plug in all the drives. I plugged the three drives into a USB hub, and fired up Disk Utility.

IMAGE(http://img370.imageshack.us/img370/6629/hubdzh9pz0.jpg)
Click for high rez

I set the array up to use all three drives as one big drive. This should give an increased read & write time. ...In theory, at least.

IMAGE(http://img117.imageshack.us/img117/8660/seperateiconses3.png)
All 3 drives mounted separately

IMAGE(http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/6012/raidsetupyn7.png)

The newly formed array:
IMAGE(http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/3562/raiddonenj8.png)IMAGE(http://img123.imageshack.us/img123/1428/iconmp4.png)
IMAGE(http://img114.imageshack.us/img114/9798/raidinfoif4.png)

Running XBench again, on the array:
IMAGE(http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/7828/raidresultstg0.png)

The XBench tests, along with my highly unscientific test of copying a large image file to a single drive, and to the array indicate a significant speed increase when the 3 drives are RAID'd together.

Now, to answer the question i posed at the beginning of this post. Can it be useful? Well, that's questionable... but, this was fun!

TheUltimateMacUser's picture
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Last seen: 6 years 1 month ago
Joined: Jan 28 2004 - 12:14
Posts: 615
Continued...

Looking at the above results, you may notice a decrease in speed of the RAID array. This is due to it being plugged into a USB hub. With each drive plugged into it's own port, directly into my G4, there is an overall increase in speed:

IMAGE(http://img123.imageshack.us/img123/6435/picture1hz2.png)

IMAGE(http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/391/picture2xw5.png)

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