For those of you that aren’t familiar with the concept of RAID (Redundent Array Of Inexpensive Disks) it is a way of running multiple computer hard disks at once to speed-up or back-up data. You know, normally you would use some SATA disks, or even those cheap 7,200rpm ones that everyone has in their computer.
But this guy has other ideas. Using a 4-way USB hub he has created a quad RAID array (3.9Gb total). The full story can be found here, with some great photos.
Ok, I know, the it’s not very fast, or large, but it’s the basis of something that could potentially revolutionise home computing. Say we had four 1Gb Compact Flash cards, each on it’s own USB 2.0 port, RAID’d to boot an operating system such as Linux or BSD, with an additional SATA disk for file storage, then things would be a heck of a lot quicker than they are from a standard hard disk.
And, I hear companies are already trying this out, we could dramaticly reduce the size of laptops (mine is a slow 5,400rpm disk, which you really feel dragging) or media centre PC’s without losing any performance.
If I had a bit of money I would give it a go.
