Creating dynamic disks from usb thumb drive (windows xp)

[redwraith94]

Hey all,

I have another hairbrained topic question.

I was trying to find a way to make a raid 5 array from usb thumb drives. I came across software called virtuaraid from redsky studio, but they went out of business, I think. I cannot get their software anywhere.

I know that software raid is natively supported in windows xp (with a couple of unsupported hacks.):

http://www.tomshardware.com/2004/11/19/using_windowsxp_to_make_raid_5_happen/

But, in order to make a disk dynamic, it has to be non-removable. There is a registry hack for firewire devices to let windows see them as fixed disks:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\dmadmin\Parameters

Then setting the following key: EnableDynamicConversionFor1394

to 1 allows firewire devices to be turned into dynamic disks.

From some other articles I found out that you can take an ide, sata drive, and after hooking them up normally making a dynamic raid array out of them, then after putting them into individual usb enclosures they will still function properly.


Anyway, after reading this (short) article:

http://www.usbhacks.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=30&sid=e7eb3684dd2236c62bf94f51be1e5bf3

and

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=69211&st=0


I tried downloading the hitachi fixed disk driver from here:

http://www.xpefiles.com/viewtopic.php?t=92


I used this driver on a 256 mb kingston, and it installed fine (no blue screens, even after reboot), and it works fine; transfers data as it should too.

In the above link there is just the one inf file, and after modifying it appropriately it does appear as a basic disk, (both in diskmgmt.msc, and diskpart.exe) but the option to convert to a dynamic disk is greyed out in diskmgmt.msc, and diskpart.exe gives the following error:

"The selected disk cannot be upgraded to dynamic.
Please select a valid basic disk to convert."

I think what I need to do is somehow include the cfadisk.c file, from the above download, but although I can tell it has something to do with the c (or c++) programming language, I am at a loss as to how to actually include it.

This is the header from the cfadisk.c file (13kb):

/*
* cfadisk.c - CompactFlash fixed disk filter driver
*
* Copyright (c) Hitachi Global Storage Technologies 2003. All rights reserved.
*
* This driver filters IOCTL_STORAGE_QUERY_PROPERTY so that Windows XP can
* correctly handle CompactFlash device as a fixed disk.
*

This is a little beyond me, but I think I am close to being able to do this, anyone have some suggestions?

TIA, Redwraith94

 

[GMBaz]

I folloed the instructions you provided and was also able to switch the driver wiht out any problems (and on the first try). My flash drive shows up under Hard Disk Drives in my computer. I also was unable to switch it to a dynamic drive. I disabled "quick removal" but that did not help. Does anyone have any sugestions? I would realy love to be able to make a raid array out of flash drives. Or maybe some company can make a hardware raid solusion. I saw one for SD cards but is was very expensive.

 

[redwraith94]

The hardware raid sounds very interesting, could you post a link?

Also I am still not able to turn either my kingston flash drive, or my crucial flash drive into a dynamic disk, what brand is yours?

 

[GMBaz]

I tried it with 2 different SanDisk flash drives. I was the harware rade for SD on engadget but it cost about $1200. Sorry I dont have a link

 

[GMBaz]

Iv been trying this with Compact Flash Cards. IDE-to-CF adapters. I should be able to get it to work. THe problem is that the adapter is a huge bottle neck. the best i can get is 18x form a 120x SanDisk Extreme III. Aparently this is caused by the card not supporting DMA. Im going to try again.

 

[redwraith94]

Iv been trying this with Compact Flash Cards. IDE-to-CF adapters. I should be able to get it to work. THe problem is that the adapter is a huge bottle neck. the best i can get is 18x form a 120x SanDisk Extreme III. Aparently this is caused by the card not supporting DMA. Im going to try again.

18x? Man that is slow, what is the throughput on a cf card normally? I never bought anything that used one of those.

 

[redwraith94]

Ok, as an aside, I found a piece of software that supports raid 1 (mirrored) arrays, to any type of disk, including network drives.

http://www.techsoftpl.com/backup/index.htm

I dunno if it is any good, and I don't really have a desire to try it, unless they come out with a version that supports raid 5, still it is interesting though.

 

[mcoleg]

raid from thumb drives is a good idea...

i was wondering about it myself.

here's a couple of links i collected:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=330027&highlight=#330027

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

http://www.usboot.org/tiki-index.php?page=Home

 

[GMBaz]

I have finally had success. The slow 18x speed issue was due to the CF-to-IDE card not supporting DMA. I got some 4 GB "150x" "Samsung oem" compact flash cards from ebay. Turns out they are 60x junk. I was ripped off.
I decided to use them for this experiment anyway. I just got a dual CF-to-IDE card from ebay. These cards support DMA. I tested them with the “150x” cards. With this adapter I can now get 10.5 MB/s. Using USB CF card readers I was only getting 8.9 MB/s. So apparently this new card even out performs USB adapters.
Windows still registers these cards as removable even thou I am using the adapter. I decided to use the modified hitachi driver as explained on USBHacks. ( I had previously used the driver with a USB card reader. Windows no longer registered it as removable would not allow me to make a dynamic disk.) I used the same driver and this time windows allowed me to make the 2 4gb cards dynamic. After some playing I got the cards set up as an spanned volume. Im not sure if this is truly striped or just showing the drive as 1 volume. HD Tune still shows the two cards as separate and I can runn it on each by its self. Sisoft shows no major improvement in speed.

I have posted screen shots at http://www.njcbf.com/spanned.htm

I am going to play some more and I will update you.

 

[GMBaz]

OK, I just created a striped volume. Tried HD Tool kit it still sees the cards individualy. So does SiSoft Sandra. Flash Memory Tool Kit does not see it at all. I added the screen cap of the striped colume form disk manager but I dont have any benchmarks to see if it is faster. Copying files does not seem to be faster.

 

[mcoleg]

good going GMBaz. keep us posted.

redwraith, here's the link to d/l virtuaraid:

http://soft.cnews.ru/?a=26&i=6363&download=VirtuaRAID_2.4

the translation breaks the d/l somehow but it's the link with the red dot

 

[redwraith94]

Heck yes, this awesome!

I didn't think about using cf cards, I like it Nice job GMBaz.

Thanks for the dl linky mcoleg, I actually went so far as to email the registered email address listed on the whois database for redsky-studio.com (some guy in South Dakota) I have been looking for that file for ages, how did you find it? Everytime I search it is just broken links, and warez.

 

[GMBaz]

Im trying now with the sandisk extreme III cards. Connected to the on board IDE im only getting 2.6 MB/s again. I connected to a extrenal drive enclosure and im up to 7.0 MB/s, still a lot slower then it should be. HD Tune shows the disks in the raid support UDMA Mode 2 (Ultra ATA/33). For the Sandisk it showed UDMA Mode 5. I dont know why it was so high but running so slow. Connected to the USB HD enclosure it does not show any info at all.
The other problem Im running across is that the BIOS showes the cards as IDE HDs at the top of the boot order. but no matter how many times I put them in the bottom of the HD boot order every time i save changes they are back at the top after the reboot. The computer trys to boot from them. I have to switch them in the bios to IDE removable. Perhaps if I could get them to stay as IDE hard drives I would not need to change the driver. I think ill try to upgrade my bios. That may help. Any other ideas? please feel free to through them out.

 

[mcoleg]

GMBaz, if you force it in bios as a hard drive, couldn't you also change udma mode there in hard drives config. tub?

also, have you given a thought of using cf on sata?

i got an adapter but i have to re-build my test putter before i'd try it myself.

what is your system anywho?


redwraith, i searched for the actual file name, just like in the d/l link. it's an old trick i learned from the olden pre-google day .


note to self: search for atcfwchg

 

[redwraith94]

All this stuff makes me wish that I knew how to decompile a driver, in order to write my own 'filter driver' for any usb thumb drives that I bought. I messed around with C++ a little bit (thanks frodo), but I don't have a clue where to start. Let me know if you guys think of anything.