Five-Disk Floppy RAID: 4MB of Blistering Fast Storage (2009)

I clicked the link after reading just the first 4 words of the title. I didn't see the year it was written until I had closed the link - perhaps it was added after the initial submission.

After reading the article through I was struck by the tone. It was a breath of fresh air - so optimistic and enthusiastic and not in the least bit self-important or unduly serious. It made me excited to read more!

When I saw the '(2009)' flag I suddenly felt a pang of grief. Whatever happened to that infectious, enthusiastic incarnation of wired magazine?

Re: Five-Disk Floppy RAID: 4MB of Blistering Fast Storage (2009)

#5

Post by eby » Thu, Dec 07, 2023, 4:49 AM UTC

Finally, a use for that drawer full of 1 GB USB drives!

Re: Five-Disk Floppy RAID: 4MB of Blistering Fast Storage (2009)

#6

Post by par » Thu, Dec 07, 2023, 4:58 AM UTC

Really miss stuff like this from back in the early computing days. One time we used MS Backup to copy Warcraft 1 from my friends computer to my own. Took like 80 floppy disks!

Re: Five-Disk Floppy RAID: 4MB of Blistering Fast Storage (2009)

#7

Post by eru » Thu, Dec 07, 2023, 5:01 AM UTC

par wrote: post #6

Really miss stuff like this from back in the early computing days. One time we used MS Backup to copy Warcraft 1 from my friends computer to my own. Took like 80 floppy disks!

That sounds like you copied the CD version via a floppy disk?

It would have probably been faster to put your friends hard disk into your computer for a few minutes and copy directly from disk to disk?

Re: Five-Disk Floppy RAID: 4MB of Blistering Fast Storage (2009)

#8

Post by mock-possum » Thu, Dec 07, 2023, 5:01 AM UTC

eru wrote: post #7

par wrote: post #6

Really miss stuff like this from back in the early computing days. One time we used MS Backup to copy Warcraft 1 from my friends computer to my own. Took like 80 floppy disks!

That sounds like you copied the CD version via a floppy disk? It would have probably been faster to put your friends hard disk into your computer for a few minutes and copy directly from disk to disk?

Disk2Disk

It’s the computer version of frottage

Re: Five-Disk Floppy RAID: 4MB of Blistering Fast Storage (2009)

#9

Post by o11c » Thu, Dec 07, 2023, 5:20 AM UTC

eby wrote: post #5

Finally, a use for that drawer full of 1 GB USB drives!

Beware that bad sectors probably exist on those, and modern filesystems (which falsely assume the hardware will do automagical remapping) make it hard to run `badblocks`.

From the fsck man pages, only ext2, ext3, ext4, and reiserfs support it. I hope that `btrfs-convert` deals with it correctly, but you must not ever run `btrfs balance` or delete the backup (it won't waste space if it was a fresh FS). And if further bad blocks develop you'll have to redo this all from scratch.

Re: Five-Disk Floppy RAID: 4MB of Blistering Fast Storage (2009)

#10

Post by riscy » Thu, Dec 07, 2023, 5:37 AM UTC

I was really hoping for a video with sound. I’d love to hear a cacophony of floppy drives saving that .mp3 !