Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Chaining USB drives

engadget.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 23 posts

Re: Chaining USB drives

#11

Post by DanBC »

ars wrote: post #9
renownedmedia wrote: post #2

What a simple/awesome idea... I'm surprised nobody else has thought of this before!

No one has thought of it before because it's not that useful. If I want to plug multiple drives in, I just do. There is no reason I need to plug them into each other. Whoever made it probably imagined that the drives would share a filesystem (i.e. one drive letter for all of them) - but did not think it through since doing that is too complicated to be practical.

Some computers don't have many USB ports - the one in the article photo only has two.

I agree that it's not very useful. There's probably a complicated way to achieve something similar using a proper hub, a bunch of sticks, and software. But most people are fine with a bunch of sticks for different things - "my live boot OS", "my music", "my photos", "all my other stuff".

More useful would be a USB stick that came with stickers to describe content - cute little camera icons or music stuff. Or at least a strip that the user can write on (with a pen, not file system) on the case.

As others have said - it is pretty though.

Re: Chaining USB drives

#12

Post by miahi »

dangero wrote: post #4
dangrossman wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For it to work, each of the drives would have to be both a mass storage device and a USB hub. Can USB hubs be this small? If each segment has to be 3 inches long to accomodate the dual functionality, a foot long chain of USB drives sticking out the side of your laptop is a bit less elegant than the concept.

There's also the problem of power. I doubt these devices could be usb spec compliant since what is essentially happening here is an endless chain of bus powered usb hubs. It is pretty though.

It's not even the first time it was "dreamed" by some designer, with no technical consideration. You cannot actually do that in a standard way. Dan has a nice article on this: http://dansdata.blogsome.com/2010/03/23/for-suitably-small-v...

Re: Chaining USB drives

#13

Post by miahi »

DanBC wrote: post #11
ars wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one has thought of it before because it's not that useful. If I want to plug multiple drives in, I just do. There is no reason I need to plug them into each other. Whoever made it probably imagined that the drives would share a filesystem (i.e. one drive letter for all of them) - but did not think it through since doing that is too complicated to be practical.

Some computers don't have many USB ports - the one in the article photo only has two. I agree that it's not very useful. There's probably a complicated way to achieve something similar using a proper hub, a bunch of sticks, and software. But most people are fine with a bunch of sticks for different things - "my live boot OS", "my music", "my photos", "all my other stuff". More useful would be a USB stick that came wi…

A long time ago (when they weren't dirt cheap) USB sticks came with labels. For some reason the new ones don't. Probably because I don't know anyone that has more than one big USB stick. Why would you need 4 USB sticks? They are slow enough to make them unusable for large data.

Re: Chaining USB drives

#14

Post by D_Drake »

I don't see this as useful. Using USB drives to share pictures with friends was never popular, and with social networking is utterly dead. Sharing of larger files is already marginalized by the likes of dropbox and upload sites, and becoming more so over time.

USB flash drives aren't used for everything anymore. I don't know anyone who regularly uses one and would find it acceptable for the only thing holding 3/4 of the drive to their person to be the static friction of one USB plug, which is the only thing holding one of these combo drives together. If you're using a flash drive for a file today, chances are the file is too essential or too sensitive to depend on one of those plugs never coming undone, over a multi-year daily use lifespan.

Re: Chaining USB drives

#15

Post by potatolicious »

A solution looking for a problem. My regular machine is a MBP, so I'm no stranger to the "damn I wish I had more USB ports" problem.

But I have never, ever, ever, thought "dammit! If only I could plug more USB memory sticks into this infernal machine!"

In fact, the only time I'm ever using a USB stick is to sneaknet some files to someone else (because in the year 2011 we have yet to figure out quick, painless filesharing with people you're physically near by. though Dropbox is starting to get ubiquitous enough...), and that hardly requires more than one USB port.

Re: Chaining USB drives

#16

Post by rbanffy »

dangero wrote: post #4
dangrossman wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For it to work, each of the drives would have to be both a mass storage device and a USB hub. Can USB hubs be this small? If each segment has to be 3 inches long to accomodate the dual functionality, a foot long chain of USB drives sticking out the side of your laptop is a bit less elegant than the concept.

There's also the problem of power. I doubt these devices could be usb spec compliant since what is essentially happening here is an endless chain of bus powered usb hubs. It is pretty though.

Unless you want to attach a hard drive to the end of the line, power should be no big problem. I can't imagine the power requirements of a USB hub being that big.

Re: Chaining USB drives

#17

Post by scq »

andrewflnr wrote: post #8

How would files on different segments be presented to the OS? Would the directories on each disk be merged together into one root directory, would each one get its own directory, or something else? To make the "just pull out the one with the vacation photos on it" use-case work, you would have to be able to see and control which segment a given file is on.

> Would the directories on each disk be merged together into one root directory, would each one get its own directory, or something else?

Due to the way most modern filesystems (including all filesystems that windows supports) work, the only clean way to implement this is to have each segment appear as a separate drive. The operating system only sees the drive as a block-level device, so the drive doesn't know anything about folders or files. It just sees binary data.

You could implement a virtual block-level device on the device, and read files from that to write to each segment, but that would be a major performace hit, and push the cost up significantly as each segment would need a processor and a few megabytes of ram.

The only other way I can think of would be a custom driver.

Re: Chaining USB drives

#18

Post by scq »

potatolicious wrote: post #15

A solution looking for a problem. My regular machine is a MBP, so I'm no stranger to the "damn I wish I had more USB ports" problem. But I have never, ever, ever , thought "dammit! If only I could plug more USB memory sticks into this infernal machine!" In fact, the only time I'm ever using a USB stick is to sneaknet some files to someone else (because in the year 2011 we have yet to figure out quick, painless filesh…

Like most things on Yanko Design, the design comes first, then they try to think of a use for it.

Re: Chaining USB drives

#19

Post by nialo »

potatolicious wrote: post #15

A solution looking for a problem. My regular machine is a MBP, so I'm no stranger to the "damn I wish I had more USB ports" problem. But I have never, ever, ever , thought "dammit! If only I could plug more USB memory sticks into this infernal machine!" In fact, the only time I'm ever using a USB stick is to sneaknet some files to someone else (because in the year 2011 we have yet to figure out quick, painless filesh…

Complete tangent, but:

You can share files with Dropbox without the reciever having a n account, and as far as I can tell without installing software on either computer. Just login to dropbox.com, upload, and move the file to a public folder.

I really wish I understood why people don't do this generally, it's quite painless if you have an account already.

Post reply on HN