What :

The USB FDD raid was constructed using the following components:

1. One Bondi Blue iMAC 500 MhZ ( It was upgraded with a SONNET Harmoni G3 ) running OS X 10.2.4

2. Five standard Y-E DATA 1X USB Floppy Disk Drives

3. Five random floppies laying around

4. One Generic USB 4 port hub

Why?

Why not? I had just set up my 2 firewire drives and thought, "Can I RAID USB Floppy DRIVES"? I used to work for a company that made USB devices, including a USB floppy drive. I got 5 of them rounded up for this very important scientific feat.

How

When I first tried to do this I looked at my DELL running Windows XP, but unfortunately it does not allow USB FDD RAIDs. HOW LAME!!!! So, I turned to my favorite OS, Apple OS X. Here is how I did this low-hi tech marvel.

Step 1 - Connected the 5 USB Drives ( about 1 minute)

4 of the drives connected to the generic powered USB hub ( must be powered ) this hub is connected to the extra keyboard USB port on my iMac. The 5th drive connected to the iMac's second USB port.

Step 2 - Prepare the Media ( about 10 minutes )

I don't really even know if I really needed to format the disks, but I thought it would not hurt to start fresh and clean. I formated each floppy diskette using a Mac OS tool called Disk Tool giving each diskette a MS DOS format type and labled each one 1 through 5 for cleanliness.

Step 3 - Build the RAID ( about 6 minutes )

The RAID is built using disk utility. Mac OS X has two built in choices in their software based RAID. MIRROR and STRIPE. I thought I was going for speed more than security here, so I went with the STRIPE. If you want to know if it is RAID 0 or RAID 4 or RAID 5, you are asking the wrong guy, I build floppy disk drive RAIDs none of that fancy shmancy stuff. All I know is that my FDD raid rules! Well, anyway, you drag each volume over to the RAID making thing and then click CREATE. After a very entertaining display of USB FDD flashing lights, whirling drives, and an interesting rhythm of spinning technology sounds, my RAID was complete. At first I thought it was screwed up, but it just took a while for the various units to meld themselves into a single super duper kalimazooper floppy drive. Upon completion. I had a new SINGLE 4.22 MB floppy disk drive called UNTITLED. Don't ask me where the other MBs when, I dont know, and I am frankly pretty suprised I got this far at this point. I guess this is the RAID spliting the parity over each drive a bit, so I lose a drive? I cleverly renamed it to "floppy raid" denoting it's newly deserved status. But something was missing, so I figured it needed it's own ICON. I made a new one with a cool RAID bug spray logo on it. This is supposed to connate the punk rock and alternative nature of my wacky USB FDD antics.

Step 4 - Use the RAID. ( turbo lightning speed !! )

Now I know this is now just a 4.22 MB drive (acutally it is 3.9MB of usable disk space when mounted). I also understand that carrying 5 USB floppy drives around is not exactly portable, but there is something special and amazing about the speed of this floppy cluster. It is really cool when you access the drives the way they flash each light and spin in no particular order that I can discern. It is of course faster than a standard single drive. I was able to transfer "DEVO Uncontrolable Urge.mp3" which is 3.6 MB in 32 seconds. Which is pretty good I think.

 

CONCLUSION:

I would have connected more units together, but I ran out of USB ports. For USB FDD RAID II, I would like to use the much faster Y-E DATA 2X speed USB Floppy Drives and get more hubs and go for the ultimate USB FDD RAID with 125 USB FDDs ( I need the other 2 available USB channels for mouse and keyboard) drives hooked to my trusty little bondi blue iMac. I highly recommend that everyone uses OS X and tries to build their own Floppy disk drive RAIDS. Hmmmm, I have a bunch of memory card readers here too. Maybe I should make a compact flash RAID now!!!

UPDATE:

So I have not yet figured out how to make a monstorous beowulf floppy.....yet,  but I have now made a new FDD RAID using Y-E DATA 2X speed USB Floppy Drives . Now this thing is really SWEET! It is like going from an AMC Gremlin to a Ferarri! It was able to transfer the same awesome DEVO song in just 16 seconds! KICK ASS!!!

I have also made a SONY Memory Stick RAID as well using 4 memory stick readers.

It works just fine I used 4 16MB memory stick cards, but does not have the same luster and appeal of the USB FDD RAID. I need to expand the FDD RAID to have 127 USB devices and be the fastest and best USB FDD RAID in the world!!!