22. hakc = hack, pucture = puncture. Sorry 'bout those, trying to get some last minute EOY requests completed now, so I can enjoy the holiday.
Posted at 12:32AM on Dec 24th 2007 by ScrappyLaptop
23. ex-parrot: The easy way to do block access over FTP is to use 1 file per block. It also looks like the ftp protocol can handle block transfers from a single file natively (not sure if this works for writing) -- see sections 3.4.2 and 3.5 of the spec: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc959
24. This seems like an interesting idea, unfortunately I am having trouble finding free ftp hosts, especially ones that don't have file size limits etc that would make this useless. Anyone have any links handy?
Posted at 2:19AM on Dec 24th 2007 by The Fool
26. BTDT: http://da.bandsal.at/blog/gmail-raid5/
27. Oh, and when you substitute «RAID-5» with «Erasure Codes» you get Wuala: http://wua.la/
Posted at 10:28PM on Dec 25th 2007 by Al_Berto
29. Same thing, but use multiple Gmail accounts via GmailFS??
Posted at 12:01PM on Dec 26th 2007 by ed3
30. As far as using an electromagnet to auto-degauss your hard drive, that would likely fail. I've actually done some testing (see my link) and even a commercial "tape media" degausser doesn't have the power to wipe a hard drive. Commercial hard drive degaussers are very expensive because, essentially, you are purchasing a small MRI machine. The lines of flux must be very intense to even start to affect the tiny bits written on the platters. After my testing the most efficient way I could think of to wipe the drive was to introduce a corrosive element into the cavity that would remove the ferromagnetic material from the platters, aka turpentine or something similar.
http://www.packetsniffers.org/bitbucket/degaussing.html
31. @Exparrot: To get Access to the FTP you need (as in the text mentioned) NetDrive.
The Thing with GMail FS was that under Windoof you get only a Drive "without a Drive Letter" in the network Drive Folder. So netdrive does the job to connect FTP to a localy mapped drive (matt mentioned it well). So you have locally 3 (or more) Drives wich can be used für the RAID. an THEN you have 1 Drive wich could be encrypted or could be used for Backup or whatever. Use your Imagination :-)
32. I think bathing it in any really strong oxidizer would work.
Posted at 5:57PM on Dec 27th 2007 by ethan
33. this is a AWESOME idea but i wish it was simple and could be implemented by a simple 50 gmail accounts mounted using shell extension and then software raid 5 and this would defeat the 10mb limit do to the stripping if im correct right? and you would get 313GB of space (and rising) and the increased transfer speed due to multiple accounts and defeating the bandwidth cap since each account would not be used alot since the bandwidth is shared.
I am very interested in this idea if you have any ideas please comment and tell me what you think!
Posted at 1:04PM on Feb 3rd 2008 by alfred
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21. Although interesting in concept, this is really a bit of an *anti* hakc. A hack is a simple (if a bit rough) solution to a (typically) complex problem, or one that normally requires a complex solution. This spins the definition on its head, using a baroque solution to a relatively simple problem that typically has a relatively simple solution (or range therof). Still interesting, just not a hack in my book.
That said, I could see it being used, as another poster mentioned, in a security context rather than one which takes advantage of the other usual reasons to implement RAID-5, however to do so reliably it would need many more "spindles" as well as many, many extra parity disks per stripe. The alternative would be to do something akin to CD encoding where a massive number of bad bytes can be corrected. This all assumes of course that several of your ftp servers are down for whatever reason at the same time.
Finally, regarding the self-destructing hdd, I'd think that a simple mechanical pucture device would suffice so long as it shattered the platter. Unless you are a truly high-profile prize, no law enforcement agency will spend the $$$ to reconstruct a physically broken platter.
Posted at 12:28AM on Dec 24th 2007 by ScrappyLaptop