[rishidev]

im using linux and not windows...ubuntu suse etc

got a bunch of pen drives lying around collected over the years and it measures in excess of 80 GB.....

want to use all of them in RAID0 using ubuntu or any other.........if someone has used software raid in ubuntu please help..

im aware of mdadm and used it a lot but i want to connect andboot of the pen drives in RAID 0 as if they were a single disk..make my computer work as a raid controller.

how should i go about doing this ...ive connected the drives and insert the boot disk but there arent any options in ubuntu for raid...heard need to download alternate disk........



will probably do the same with HDD...i believe most mobos support fake hardware raid (fake raid)....before $100 1tb ssd's come out.......

[habbajabba]

Here's a guide.
http://analogbit.com/node/13
Supposedly it works quite well though I would read this also.
http://analogbit.com/node/4
I would test the pen drive speeds first as some are much better than others and I wouldn't even bother unless they were as fast as possible and new as well.

[Stratus_ss]

I have seen a similar thing done with external USB floppy drives... that was just stupid crazy... slow as hell but kinda funny

[Mpegger]

I think you would hit a limit somewhere long before you are able to use all the sticks if you try to RAID0 them together. I mean, 80GiB must be more then just 3 or 4 sticks (20? 30? 40?). You would run out of PCI/PCIe slots to put in USB controllers to even connect that many. And forget about USB Hubs, as that would kill any speed benefit you could have gained.

I must say though, that I almost purchased 2 USB3 20GiB sticks to do the same exact thing, as even Win7 Pro should allow RAID0 with USB. The read speed available on some of the USB3 sticks now-a-days have gone beyond mechanical drive read speed. 2 in RAID0 would approach about 1/2 SSD read speeds, without SSD price (just barely though).

[rishidev]

nice one habbajabba.....very useful.
mpegger u are right.
flash drives are extremely unreliable once you do funny things....
got 2 16 gb corsair voyager usb 2.0, a 32 gb transcend class 10 sdhc, 32 gb sandisk. So basically all are new. i have older ones but will not use them.

yes you cant use a hub for reliability....it gets too hot and crap keeps happening as bandwidth and power cant be pumped thru a single port.

if im fortunate enough i might be successful.
Im just trying to make the RAID0 successful and reliable as much as possible.
got the drives in raid with mdadm and did a read benchmark with disk utility.
78mb read max/ 45mb min.....latency @ 4ms...sick!!!

just need for it to boot an os and work stably--i hope it doesnt crap out on me

i have 2 usb 3.0 ports mobo but no devices...means more power on usb 2.0 devices ....

Now when time permits i shall fire them up......

Thank you all for your recommendations.

[Mpegger]

Since you said in your OP you collected the sticks over the years, I assumed you meant sticks smaller then 8GiB.

Even if you have no USB3 sticks, the ports are still useful with USB2 sticks. I have some OCZ 4GiB sticks, that run faster on the USB3 ports then on the USB2 ports. It's not a huge difference, but it seems that the sticks reach their maximum speed on the USB3 ports (multiple test with nearly identical results) then on the USB2 ports (speed varies abit too much).