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Bull in a China Shop - E pluribus unum

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Jan. 21st, 2008

03:38 pm - E pluribus unum

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You know what someone needs to invent? A flash storage aggregator. A device that allows you to plug in all your miscellaneous jump drives and organize them as a single logical disk. It would be the size of a small Kleenex box. The top and three sides would be packed with standard USB ports to accept the drives. The other side would have power, 10/100 Ethernet, Firewire, and two more USB slots meant to accept Bluetooth and/or WiFi dongles. The ROM would let the chief user configure basic permissions, RAID-like functionality, hot-swapping, etc.

It would be pretty slow, and it wouldn't be something you'd use for mission critical applications (obviously). But if they were affordable, I think people would buy them.

Something I thought of while pondering all the free jump drives Heather receives as swag. Gotta put those things to work.

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Comments:

[User Picture]
From:[info]pleasantlyevil
Date:January 21st, 2008 10:06 pm (UTC)
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So, let me see if I understand this, since you said RAID: Once a "thumb drive" is in this aggravatoraggregator, the data placed on it will be all part of the combined drive system and pulling it out of the system will not leave you with a drive with usable data, right?

It seems like an interesting idea. I guess the hardest thing is compensating for the fact that some of these drives are faster than others. And convincing people they actually need it. . . ;-)

[User Picture]
From:[info]spoondave
Date:January 22nd, 2008 04:40 am (UTC)
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That would depend on how you had it configured. You could leave all the drives as independent silos, which would reduce the total capacity of your logical drive (e.g., no files written across devices) but allow for hot plugging/swapping, or you could stripe them.

The goal is to facilitate the utilization of resources that might otherwise languish in desk drawers and on spare keyrings. :)
[User Picture]
From:[info]quartzpoet
Date:January 22nd, 2008 02:50 pm (UTC)
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One of the best uses I ever saw for one of those things was as a child safety device.

The guy who posted his story explained that he made one of these things into a pendant that he made his young (< 4 years old) wear whenever they were out and about. He had configured the jumpdrive to autorun a simple file that displayed the name and phone number of the person to contact should someone find this lost child. It also displayed a "secret question" that should be asked of the person who answered the phone, along with the response they should expect.

According to the post I read, it actually worked: The little girl got separated from her parents at an amusement park, and a short while later the guy's cell phone rang when park security called to ask him the secret question.
[User Picture]
From:[info]spoondave
Date:January 22nd, 2008 05:16 pm (UTC)
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Couldn't the same thing be accomplished with a pendant that consisted of a laminated piece of paper? What am I missing?
[User Picture]
From:[info]quartzpoet
Date:January 22nd, 2008 05:23 pm (UTC)
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I didn't say that his idea was the best way to accomplish his goal, just that it was an interesting use of a USB jump drive. :)