Comments on: Virtual Raid 5 internet storage

By: alfred

alfred — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 20:58:02 +0000

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!

By: ethan

ethan — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 20:05:17 +0000

I think bathing it in any really strong oxidizer would work.

By: wonderer

wonderer — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 21:06:00 +0000

@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 fÃ¼r the RAID. an THEN you have 1 Drive wich could be encrypted or could be used for Backup or whatever. Use your Imagination :-)

By: ed3

ed3 — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 20:01:34 +0000

Same thing, but use multiple Gmail accounts via GmailFS??

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 18:40:07 +0000

@19

You don’t need block level to implement a raid 5 system, that is just how it is implemented in most cases. Take vmware or xen disk images, they function as a disk yet are not actually drives.

By: dosman

dosman — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 10:12:11 +0000

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

By: Al_Berto

Al_Berto — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 06:21:37 +0000

Oh, and when you substitute Â«RAID-5Â» with Â«Erasure CodesÂ» you get Wuala: http://wua.la/

By: Al_Berto

Al_Berto — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 06:13:31 +0000

BTDT: http://da.bandsal.at/blog/gmail-raid5/

By: wonderer

wonderer — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 18:09:16 +0000

If you didn`t found anymore under http://www.funpic.de there are 2,5GB Space available for free. That makes (e.g. togehter with tripod or others) with 3 Accounts 5GB of fault tolerant, HighAvailable, secure localy mounted Drivespace.

By: The Fool

The Fool — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 10:10:16 +0000

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?

By: ScrappyLaptop

ScrappyLaptop — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 08:31:56 +0000

hakc = hack, pucture = puncture. Sorry ’bout those, trying to get some last minute EOY requests completed now, so I can enjoy the holiday.

By: ScrappyLaptop

ScrappyLaptop — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 08:26:32 +0000

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.

By: morcheeba

morcheeba — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 06:36:08 +0000

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

By: Wolf

Wolf — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 03:59:18 +0000

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.

By: ex-parrot

ex-parrot — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 03:37:53 +0000

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?