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Distributed Data Storage on a LAN?
AgentSmith2 asks: "I have 8 computers at my house on a LAN. I make backups of important files, but not very often. If I could create a virtual RAID by storing data on multiple disks on my network I could protect myself from the most common form on data failure - a disk crash. I am looking for a solution that will let me mount the distributed storage as a shared drive on my Windows and Linux computers. Then when data is written, it is redundantly stored on all the machines that I have designated as my virtual RAID. And if I loose one of the disks that comprise the raid, the image would automatically reconstruct itself when I add a replacement system to the virtual RAID. Basically, I'm looking to emulate the features of hi-end RAIDS, but with multiple PCs instead of multiple disks within a single RAID subsystem. Is there any existing technologies that will let me do this?"
Man, if Beowulf was alive today he'd so kick Slashdot's ass. Seriously, this dude killed monsters, saved villages and killed a dragon. He has armor that would make any slashdotter cream their jeans when they look at the armor's tag and it says AC -9. Don't even get me started on the weapons.
If you were a medieval ass-kicker, would you want your moniker to be the butt of thousands of canned-jokes that weren't even funny to begin with?
Hmm...that's like a Beowulf cluster of usb thumb drives...
Yeah. Maybe the cheap super-computer idea Beowulf would find cool, but not the jokes and the impossible-to-Beowulf devices.
So those jokes aren't funny and probably won't get you (not you in particular, Pingular) modded up. If you want to talk about networked clusters of non-networkable devices, say:
"That's like a Duke Nukem Forever/Bit Boys graphics card/Mac OS X on a 386 cluster"
No wait, on second thought, that's not funny either.
Why would you want to "loose" one of the disks? Don't you know they're supposed to stay tightly enclosed in their little boxes?
And why do you think that "loosing" the disk would help the image "automatically reconstruct itself?"
Actually, if you did that the disk would carom around the room like a very fast, very lethal Frisbee and you would be too busy trying to survive to worry about where your data went!
Just a thought
Otherwise, your plan sounds peachy.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.