3. Or raid 1 with a local drive and an internet drive. Real time backup and the best of both worlds.
Posted at 12:25AM on Dec 23rd 2007 by andrew
4. home.arcor.de/webknight23/ don't work anymore
Posted at 6:27AM on Dec 23rd 2007 by Olli
5. please mirror that site...
Posted at 6:49AM on Dec 23rd 2007 by nooby
6. and here are two other mirrors withot Traffic-overtax:
http://mitglied.lycos.de/wonderer4711/
http://mitglied.lycos.de/wonderer0815/
7. Here are some mirrors because of the many Accesses to the site. Sorry, I did not expect, that this could be so interressting!
http://home.arcor.de/webknight42/
http://home.arcor.de/wonderer23/
http://home.arcor.de/wonderer42/
Hope this helps out.
9. For RAID 1 over a network, you can use DRBD : http://www.drbd.org/
10. But why?
In order for a RAID 5 array to work properly at least n-1 disks need to be available. FTP servers that you don't own/control may not always be available and online. If you violate some part of a TOS (too much data transfer, etc) your account could be suspended or removed. If that happens to 2 of your accounts, ALL of your data is effectively lost.
RAID 5 is often used so that you can combine a bunch of similarly sized disks into 1 big disk, and/or for the benefits on the data-reading side where multiple disks are all simultaneously fetching parts of a file.
This seems to negate the read benefits, because the ftp servers are going to be too slow to have any real benefit, and the amount of space you get with any ftp account is so trivial compared to the cost of hard drives, combining 4 50GB ftp accounts into a virtual 150GB drive doesn't seem to have much value.
One use for this that could be HIGHLY valuable though, is in storing various bits of illegal data. If you are saving the data in a true RAID 5 striped fashion, then any 1 account would probably not have enough data to extract incriminating evidence. Multiple accounts would all need to be seized and re-combined into the RAID array in order for "The Authorities" to get any useful data.
Posted at 11:23AM on Dec 23rd 2007 by brk
11. @brk:
"but why?"
Because it's kind of neat? Does there have to be a 'real' reason to do something like this?
Posted at 12:14PM on Dec 23rd 2007 by dirk
12. now that brk mentions it, I'd like to see some sort sort of HDD self destruct system hack.
(I've always thought it would be cool to rig up an HDD with a 20 gauge shotgun shell that would be triggered if a certain cord was removed from the back of the computer without first disabling something, ie, if someone tries to take your computer for evidence while your gone, all they'll end up with is a drive case full platter shards. (thermite could work too, though it would definetly be a fire hazzard)
Posted at 1:40PM on Dec 23rd 2007 by Wolf
13. @brk:
you first mentioned that RAID-5 ist fault tolerant only n-1. Sure. But you could use it as I figured out in the Picture 3 different and independant Accounts OR MORE!
Your objection on the read speed I have also, but my tests speak a other language. It is fast enough for Video Streams (if you have enough bandwidth of course!) ald also for lets say backup some documents. My concept should be for single users and no prof. Workgroups or so ;-)
You can get FTP-Space up to some GB for free, VMWare Server is free, NetDrive is for free, FreeNAS is free. Yes, you can also BUY some stuff (I had a cheap PC based NAS up to a SAN Meldody).
Your last point is one of the main reasons for that. Nor for the illegal, but for security Stuff you want to have outside your office or home or so, so you can have it with you ... over the web...
14. Without a barrel of some kind a shotgun shell wouldn't have enough power to punch thru the flimsy aluminum cover on most hard drives, much less frag the platters. Thermite would the do the job nicely but you would need a large amount of current to ignite it. Getting seriously off-topic here... :-)
Posted at 2:42PM on Dec 23rd 2007 by rob
15. The link don't work for me...
Posted at 2:42PM on Dec 23rd 2007 by Greg
16. rob and wolf, is there anywhere we can discuss this? it sounds like an interesting idea (hypothetically, of course)
Posted at 3:31PM on Dec 23rd 2007 by bgugi
17. wolf -
A shotgun shell would likely destroy the entire innards of your PC in that manner. Probably not exactly the solution you're after :)
A small alarm backup battery inside the computer case hooked to an electromagnet coil that can change intensity and polarity, while keeping the drive spinning, would probably be a more "implementable" solution. And at least then a power failure or someone tripping over a cable wouldn't set off an unexpected explosion inside your computer.
You would need the electromagnet to be powerful and in some sort of state of flux, just a strong, but static, magnetix field alone wouldn't make the drive unrecoverable.
Even better would probably be some sort of modified drive that had a metal scraper destroy the platter surfaces.
Posted at 6:30PM on Dec 23rd 2007 by brk
18. My "But why?" comment is really asking what problem does this solve, or what function does it make better?
It involves a fair bit of complexity and lots of software, for seemingly little gain.
Many things are possible, and make for novel experiments. But if they don't lead to some overall improvements, then the novelty wears off quickly (at least to me).
All I was really asking, is what is the practical real-world application of this? Because if the point is just to get more disk space, it's probably not worth the effort. If the point is to have some distributed fault-tolerant "storage in the sky", then it's pretty neat.
Posted at 6:33PM on Dec 23rd 2007 by brk
19. I don't see how this works... in order to implement a RAID 5 you'd need block-level access to the disks, which FTP isn't giving you. How does the Windows FTP filesystem give you block-level access to an FTP account?
Seeing as you're already running linux in a VM, why not install FUSE under Linux, ftpfs, loop-mount some disk images off FUSE (sometimes possible... depends on FS implementation) then RAID the loop devices?
20. I wonder if anyones actually verified the electromagnet approach? I'd imagine it would be even less practical than the thermite, mainly because it would require a pretty beefy backup battery in case they unplug the computer before it's triggered.
rob-
your probably right about the shotgun shell, though that wouldn't be very hard to test...
As for the thermite, you could use a more volatile pilot mixture to set it off, but the main problem would be keeping the molten slag from melting through the bottom and sides of the case and potentially causing a house fire.
The only commercial self destructing drive I've been able to find is this one
http://www.deadondemand.com/products/enhancedhdd/
which apparently self destructs by flooding the drives internals with an acid mist.
Posted at 7:59PM on Dec 23rd 2007 by Wolf
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1. lufs died a /long/ time ago. fuse is what you should use for user-space filesystems under linux.
Note that this whole idea is fairly badly flawed...
Posted at 11:29PM on Dec 22nd 2007 by ex-parrot