From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Ewan Grantham Subject: Re: USB raid5? Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 07:51:54 -0600 Message-ID: <6d5bedd8041130055139423510@mail.gmail.com> References: <41AC11CF.2050102@pobox.com> Reply-To: Ewan Grantham Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <41AC11CF.2050102@pobox.com> Sender: linux-raid-owner@vger.kernel.org To: mjstumpf@pobox.com Cc: linux-raid@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-raid.ids On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 00:23:11 -0600, Michael Stumpf wrote: > In the interminable battle with physical arrangement & rack space, has > anyone tried arrays of "external" usb 2.0 or firewire connected drives? > > Are there limitations to size, or to bandwidth that aren't obvious, that > make this a non desirable solution? Am currently running a RAID-5 array that has two internal drives and two external firewire drives. Bandwidth is good enough for doing hour long plus video captures with no dropped frames, and to playback video and audio with no drops or stutters. USB 2 appears to offer similar bandwidth, but at the expense of more CPU overhead - which may or may not be an issue depending on your configuration. In either case, you're more likely going to have a problem getting your Linux system to recognize the external drive than in using it as part of an array. YMMV, IANAL, etc.