iPod Shuffle RAID

ricercar writes "So, what do you do when you and some friends are all getting iPod Shuffles? You make a RAID array out of them, of course! The original intent was to actually install OS X on the RAID and boot from that, but the OS X (Panther, 10.3.5) Installer wouldn't allow it."

Comments

Linux

[demonic-halo]

The next step is to install linux on it.

Of course I have no idea what one can do with a linux iPod shuffle.

Re:Linux

[bonch]

You could use it as a portable music player.

Oh.

Re:Linux

[BaseLineNL]

Of course I have no idea what one can do with a linux iPod shuffle.

You can impress the ladies with it.

If you could install it

[TheKidWho]

What would the boot times be like?

Wait, anyone know of any flash hard drives for PCs/Macs that work via SATA? This would be interesting to do, almost instant boot.

Re:If you could install it

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, hard-drives actually have faster transfer rates than most flash memory.

Re:If you could install it

[bigtallmofo]

I tried this a number of years ago. In fact, there's an CF->IDE interface board that is very inexpensive that I purchased. Turned out that CF was much slower than my hard drive.

Might be interesting to try it again with today's professional flash memory, but with readily available CF memory from about 3 years ago, I was able to install a Windows OS on it but it was slower than my hard drive.

If you really want something like this, there are memory drives that use actual battery-backed up RAM (take your pick of varities) that are as you would expect lightning quick. Last I checked though Bitmicro's Site, they were very expensive.

Re:If you could install it

[OrangeTide]

most CF cards don't do DMA. That's part of the speed problem right there. Also flash is fast to seek, but slow to stream reads and really slow to stream writes.

Some of the newer cards do support better transfer modes. These are usually cards marked as 44x or 40x or whatever CF. And they usually cost $10 more.

Re:If you could install it

[kv9]

tiny IDE/CF interface recommended (and sold) by DSL

Re:If you could install it

[b1t r0t]

Um, you don't have DMA on flash media because you address it just like RAM.

Um, actually you don't. Linear flash went out of style years ago, as any Newton owner can tell you. With the exception of flash cards for older Cisco gear, all flash cards these days use an ATA interface. Anything that uses a non-PCMCIA slot (CF, MMC, SD, XD, SonyStick) is 100% ATA.

Re:If you could install it

[pslam]

Um, you don't have DMA on flash media because you address it just like RAM. It's just slower and non-volitile.

This is just confusion caused by the x86-centric world's definition of "DMA".

NAND flash natively cannot be randomally accessed like ordinaly memory. It's treated more like a hard drive - you read entire sectors at a time (528 byte in this case), and erase/rewrite entire pages at a time (128KB for type II).

On the other hand, NOR flash is designed to be randomly readable like ordinary external memory, but writes still require an entire page erase/rewrite. But NOR is typically only used for boot ROMs in PCs and some embedded devices. They're small - up to about 4MB, whereas NAND flash is anything up to 512MB in a single chip. Any CF FLASH card you buy will be NAND (or MLC, which is similar) based.

CF cards supposedly don't have "DMA" because they don't support IDE DMA or UDMA modes. That limits them to PIO modes, which maxes at around 16MB/sec. For some hair brained reason, the x86 IDE interface infers this as meaning that the CPU must also access in PIO mode, and doesn't provide a DMA interface from the CF to memory, which is another speed impact. On most modern embedded devices I've used, even if the CF card doesn't support DMA, you are still presented with a DMA interface to access the card in PIO mode! It's just x86 which does it wrong.

In fact, CF can support DMA. You get DMA support on some of the 4GB/5GB hard CF type II hard disks - it's just not standardised (or documented...)

RAID Array?

[CrankyFool]

I don't think I could afford that without going to the ATM Machine and using my PIN Number to withdraw more money!

Re:RAID Array?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe I'd get this if I RTFA'd the article...

Re:RAID Array?

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations! You are the most stupid person on Slashdot! Which is really quite an achievement!

Re:RAID Array?

[Bin_jammin]

It's the new official description, issued from the Department of Redundancy Department

Re:RAID Array?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, for totally failing to get the joke, just like you.

Re:RAID Array?

[mapmaker]

Second Place!

Re:RAID Array?

[pepsee]

"RAID array" makes perfect sense. The extra "array" makes for redundancy.

Awesome Hack!

[ackthpt]

This, however underscores the difference between geeks and non-geeks:

"So, what do you do when you and some friends are all getting iPod Shuffles? You make a RAID array out of them, of course!

Among non-geeks such inspiration usually begins with acohol and ends with an entry in the Darwin Awards.

Re:Awesome Hack!

[lakiolen]

I'd like to see whatever it is that would get one into the Darwin Awards using the Shuffle.

Being a nerd and all....

Re:Awesome Hack!

[TheKidWho]

Warning: Do not eat iPod shuffle!

I await for the first person to eat one!

Re:Awesome Hack!

[geoffspear]

I'm guessing the idea of a RAID of iPod Shuffles began with alcohol too.

It's probably unlikely to end with a Darwin Awards entry, though, unless there's a mjor design flaw.

A RAID of 40GB iPods would be orders of magnitude more useful, but if you've got that kind of money you'd be better off buying an Xserve RAID; you can get a 1 TB unit for the price you'd pay for a 600GB iPod RAID, without the rats nest of firewire cables (not to mention the really slow performance).

Re:Awesome Hack!

[ackthpt]

I'm guessing the idea of a RAID of iPod Shuffles began with alcohol too.

In my experience it's hard NOT to ruin delicate fiddly hardware and NOT to mangle code or scripts when under the influence. It's also somewhat less rewarding, should I pull it off.

A RAID of 40GB iPods would be orders of magnitude more useful, but if you've got that kind of money you'd be better off buying an Xserve RAID; you can get a 1 TB unit for the price you'd pay for a 600GB iPod RAID, without the rats nest of firewire cables (not to mention the really slow performance).

I can see it now ... Darwin Award entry:

He got into jogging for his health, but found the running tedius and therefore got an iPod. That was pretty good, but then he considered the advantages of hauling around a 1 TB server and all the speakers and all the batteries necessary for Full Dolby Surround. In the end, he tripped and his liver was crushed by the whole apparatus.

Re:Awesome Hack!

[Ironsides]

Like here?

Re:Awesome Hack!

[Bilestoad]

Among geeks the only insipration you need is "because it was there!". Witness cheap RAID on Mac that works, driven by a Mac mini:

"The Mac mini Maxi"
http://www.appletalk.com.au/articles/index.php?a rt icle=4433

No one cares

[Anonymous Coward]

So? You can make a raid array out of anything

Re:No one cares

[magarity]

Sure you can make a RAID array out of anything but making one out of storage devices on a CPU-intensive polled bus is exceptionally ludicrous.

Re:No one cares

[MexicanMenace]

Can you make a raid array out of me, Greg?

Re:No one cares

[operagost]

I once made a RAID array out of Chinese guys working abacuses. The clacking drove me nuts, but boy howdy was I glad when one caught fire and the rest kept my SQL server going without missing a beat.

Re:No one cares

[jthayden]

So? You can make a raid array out of anything

Not out of expensive disks

Steps to success

[iluvcapra]

1. Read joke on slashdot
2. Implement joke on slashdot
3. ???
4. PROFIT!!!

Look...

[Realistic_Dragon]

...if someone did it with floppy drives OF COURSE they would try it with iPods. How could steve be proved wrong about the inferiority of the floppy drive as a mass storage device?
<br><br>
<a href="http://ohlssonvox.8k.com/fdd_raid.htm">Link. </a>

hackaday.com

[Unreal7000]

This and other hacks can be found at hackaday.com

A Thumb Drive Raid Array

[MankyD]

I really don't want to be a troll, but this seems rather inane to me. They made a RAID array from a bunch of thumb drives - so what? If they had installed OSX on it, then maybe, but for now, can't we limit slashdot to innovative and never-before-seen things?

Spoiled kids these days...

[ackthpt]

What would the boot times be like?

Wait, anyone know of any flash hard drives for PCs/Macs that work via SATA? This would be interesting to do, almost instant boot.

I remember doing random file access on a DEC TU16 (9 track reel to reel tape drive) That was a trip. Slow, but cool to watch.

Re:Spoiled kids these days...

[operagost]

Tape? Hmph! Back in my day, we used punch cards! I was the junior operator, so they made me shuffle them. My forearms looked like Popeye's by the time I got promoted to lead assistant over-junior peon. No to mention the ferocious paper cuts! But no one was faster, no siree. I got 30 bytes a second on the read I/Os. Writes were a little slower though, because I had to punch the holes with a dull pencil.

Re:Spoiled kids these days...

[nuggetman]

Yeah? Well back in my day we didn't even have punch cards, we just had plain ole cards.

Re:Spoiled kids these days...

[EvilTwinSkippy]

You had cards?

Damn you had it easy. We just had punches back in my day. Our fists would get bloody entering in the simplest of instructions. And then, after every operation, we had to punch everything in again to check it.

Re:Spoiled kids these days...

[mrisaacs]

You had punches? Back in my day we applied the charges to the core manually. One finger in the socket...timing was everything! What's left of my hair still stands on end...

Re:Spoiled kids these days...

[jacksonj04]

Sockets? You had actual sockets? What I would have given for a socket, we had to drop spanners across the bus bars!

If anybody goes "Spanners? You had spanners?" then I'm gonna lynch them.

Re:Spoiled kids these days...

[cosmic_0x526179]

Oh J.C.!

My first DP job was console operator on a Univac 9400 (IBM 360/30 clone). One night something went fubar on one of the channel adapters. I called for service and a sleepy-assed tech showed up about 2am. He loaded up his usual diagnostic tape and tried to boot the box (big iron, flashing lights and push-buttons all over the front). No dice. The channel was so fucked up he could not ever get his tape to boot. So, we kinda stared at each other for a few mins. I went into the other office and grabbed the Univac processor reference and started scribbling instructions and hex on a pad of paper. After a while, I went back in and started loading them via the push buttons on the front. Not all that much mind you, just enough to get the box to initiate an IO and store a CSW somewhere so we could see what kind of error the channel was returning. Strange night, but it actually worked. And he was able to diagnose the problem. They never did see fit to hire me as a programmer there... oh well ;)

Re:Spoiled kids these days...

[Further82]

You had a cell? Back in my day all matter and energy in the universe was compressed into a point smaller than those tiny transistors you punk kids use as a sorry excuse for a switch! You can imagine it was pretty tough to program in that cramped enviornment, infact, that thing you people have misnamed the Big Bang was actully Lepton slacking off, he spun left when he was supposed to spin right, the whole thing crashed, that bastard.

Re:Spoiled kids these days...

[Anonymous Coward]

You had matter and energy? I had to create it...

--God

Re:Spoiled kids these days...

[Servo]

You had a universe? Back in my day there was nothing. You had to be God to come up with matter and energy just to log in to the system first. Ever wonder why there are so many different variations on string theory? God used a buggy copy of Fortran to write those functions and never bothered to fix it since "the old way was good enough".

Injustice

[DisasterDoctor]

That is unfair. The Apple Store is sold out of them for weeks, and I can't buy one for my wife for Valentine's Day, and these guys have so many they are making a RAID with them.

Where is the justice? :-)

Re:Injustice

[nuggetman]

No, in soviet russia, ipod shuffle makes beowulf cluster of you!

Re:Injustice

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha ha! No, seriously, I (almost) feel your pain. I was in the same boat 24 hours ago. Had my mind made up I was getting the wife a 1 GB shuffle for V-day. Knew I'd waited way too long, as the initial buying rush had sucked up every shuffle in the known universe.

But this was one time I'm actually glad I live in the hellhole called southern California. 9 Apple Stores within an hour's drive, and 2 more within 100 miles. I started calling them one by one... "No, we're all out and we don't know when we'll get more in. We're not doing a waiting list because the supply is so scarce." Ditto. Ditto, ditto, "we have 512 MB but not 1 GB," ditto. Then the glorious answer I was waiting for... "We have both in stock. We'll hold one for you for 2 hours." Yes!!

It took me damn near 2 hours to fight traffic and get down there, but I got it. None on the shelves, but mine (er, my wife's) was waiting in the back for me. Thank you Apple Store South Coast Plaza! :)

So, like, if you have a lot of Apple Stores around you, keep calling. Or call other stores - I heard CompUSA has had some briefly, maybe Micro Center, Best Buy, etc. You never know!

Re:Injustice

[radish]

Get an ipod mini from Bestbuy, fill up 3/4s of it with random stuff, stick tape over the screen and attack the wheel with a sharp implement. Should be about equivalent.

The best feature

[gUmbi]

And the best part is that every file request is randomized! You'll rediscover the data you already own and haven't worked with in years!

who will the RIAA bust...

[jxyama]

if one shuffle goes "corrupt" and music from one shuffle gets "recreated" on another? ;)

Very James Bond

[Idimmu Xul]

doing this with 2 normal usb key drives, a raid array with the striped data on them, you could save all kinds of secret stuff on them which would be useless unless you had both drives!

It could replace those security systems where 2 people have a key and there are 2 locks which must be opened at the same time for it to work.. just have 2 usb keys stripped, with a pgp key on them, which must be then inserted in to the security system at the same time for it to work or something

i dunno, im just spouting things!

Re:Very James Bond

[Ziviyr]

You fail at security.

Alot of sensitive stuff can fit in 8K, and RAID does not magically encrypt stuff.

Re:Very James Bond

[micromoog]

You fail at imagination. The OP never said anything about using some existing solution with 8k blocks. Neither did he say it wouldn't be encrypted.

Re:Very James Bond

[iJames]

Actually I think it's a very clever idea. Not for a conventional RAID implementation, sure, but it'd be very simple to write an encoder/decoder that would stripe at a word level (or byte, or bit) and spread data across two flash drives for security. Now the information's only retrievable if two people agree to cooperate. Add a third drive with parity data, and you've got error resilience and a "democratic" security system where any two out of three people can retrieve the information.

Granted, I can't see an application for this that couldn't be managed simply by having two people encrypt the information with separate keys. But it's about as cheap as you could get with a hardware solution, and it does have a spyish sort of coolness to it.

Re:Very James Bond

[David Leppik]

Striping the data makes it hard to use, but not particularly hard to decypher, if someone is just interested in the gyst of the message. In fact, with a few heuristics (e.g. assume that the most important data is alphanumeric text) it may be possible to pull out a whole lot.

With two key drives (or two disks of any kind) it's possible to do perfect (uncrackable) encryption pretty easily using a one-time pad. You fill one key drive with random bits (the pad). The second drive contains the XOR of your data with the pad. (XOR=eXclusive OR, a fundamental binary operator.) With both key drives, you can read your data. With only one, you just get random bits.

A nice thing about the one-time pad is that it is easy to extend. Add another pad, and you just XOR against another pad. Then you require all three to read the data. The only disadvantage to a one-time pad is that it requires the secure transmission of the pad, which must be at least as large as the secret message. The Amazon.coms of the world can't afford to mail you a CD-ROM of random bits just so you can order online from them.

iApache

[mushupork]

Site's been slashdotted...or the damn battery died again!

RAID?

[null etc.]

Thanks to the RIAA, I want to avoid anything having to do with digital music players and "raids".

Re:redundant redundant and again, redundant

[ultramk]

ok... I'm not usually a fan of moderation meta-humor, but this is a gem!

Whoever moderated this post "Redundant" is an evil, evil person...

m-

Gave up because the installer wouldn't let them?

[DoctorPhish]

That's hardly the right attitude from a supposed hacker.
When Solaris 10 wouldn't allow installation on my Ultra1, I hex-edited the ISO, reburned, and installed anyways (and that only took me one evening).
It's SOFTware for crying out loud! Show some initiative!

Yeah

[sulli]

But this guy ate his iPod shuffle.

Cluster Computing For Better Sound?

[zoomba]

Now that we can do a RAID Array, I want to see someone turn it into a beowulf cluster. Imagine the sound processing power we could harness by chaining 400 iPods together! Music listening would never be the same again!

Ooh, ooh! I know! Setup an Uber iPod (uPod) add in wireless (wiPod? because!). If we got normal iPods with built-in wireless in the future, we could have one hell of a distributed computing network :) Either that or a really expensive geek tracking system

Useless tech implementations rock :)

Re:Cluster Computing For Better Sound?

[b1t r0t]

They're already about the size of a piano key, so just paint a couple dozen of them black and presto! An iShuffle synth!

OS X would work...

[useosx]

They just need to follow this hint

Re:Instead of OS X...

[punkass]

can I mod you "not hugged enough as a kid"?

Re:Write life of flash again?

[jnd3]

Most NOR-flash is rated for at least 100,000 erase cycles. And some of the newer AMD flash devices have a minimum 1,000,000 erase cycle guarantee per sector. Even erasing the entire flash 100 times a day would give you about 27 years of life.

Mirrordot

[ats-tech]

http://mirrordot.org/stories/b810b5b7bf18eb8d82adf 1137dae0587/index.html

Mirrordot Mirror

[tijmentiming]

http://mirrordot.com/stories/b810b5b7bf18eb8d82adf 1137dae0587/index.html

Btw, Why not automatically create a mirror on mirrordot and link it here? Why do we need a nerd to search for the mirrordot link if we have enough nerds to fix a small problem like this?

As seen on Pinky & The Brain

[JLavezzo]

Brain: Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Pinky?

Pinky: Yeah, Brain, but if we could get that many iPod Shuffles and set them up as a RAID device would we still be able to listen to music on them?

Brain: stares blankly at Pinky

So *that's* why they're so hard to find!

[javaxman]

Someone's been buying them all up to make these silly-ass RAID arrays!

Here I thought they were just really popular...

continues

[JLavezzo]

Brain: Pinky, have you been reading Slashdot again?

Re:Must be

[Golias]

The "Slashdotted news story about a low-end system must be hosted on said system" joke is now officailly played out.

I look forward to never seeing it again, just as we never hear "All Your Base" jokes anymore.

Oh wait.

Crap.

To install OS X on the RAID

[Gropo]

Try installing 10.0 or 10.1 and updating. I was unable to install Jaguar or Panther on my 3G after formatting it, but following the above procedure gave me a bootable system.

Word to the wise: running your iPod drive that hot, that frequently causes your battery to lose its longevity pretty severely. I regret having done it last year.

It's obvious what their problem was ...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Shuffles kept returning the boot blocks in a random order!

Shuffle OS

[Anonymous Coward]

Think, soon you might load multiple OS on the RAID and have it shuffle which one boots?

Damn it! Windows95 again!

Re:Instead of OS X...

[biglig2]

Yeah, man, we don't want to hear about insane and pointless misuse of hardware unless Linux is involved!

Heh, OK, let's get round that by thinking of a use for this... in fact I know a good one.

RAID 5 your very sensitive data onto say 5 shuffles. Then unplug them and all five people take one each.

You then can't access the data on those sticks unless you are quorate - 4 or more people needed to mount the volume.

Hmmm, I was trying to think of an example of what to put on this and all I could think of was terrorist plans. Does this make it a bad idea?

iPod Shuffles to be carried at Circuit City

[HeighYew]

http://www.betanews.com/article/Circuit_City_to_Ca rry_iPod_Shuffle/1107889065Link to a BetaNews story about it...
No, I've never linked before. :\

Not the coolest RAID

[b1t r0t]

The coolest RAID ever was the five USB floppy RAID. Using a Devo MP3 as a test file increased the coolness factor.

Oh, and you can't boot OS X from a USB RAID. I'm pretty sure you can boot from an IDE RAID (I mean an OS X software RAID, not a hardware RAID where the computer never sees the individual drives), and maybe even from a Firewire RAID, but USB is right out.

Re:Gave up because the installer wouldn't let them

[Broiler]

Did we quit after the Germans Bombed Pearl harbor?
Hell no...

Bwahahaha!

[ggvaidya]

And lo, for the Darkness which feeds on Slashdot arose in wrath, and spake thus: "Mention an ancient near-dead Slashdot 'joke', do you, boy? Feel the force of the Slashdot as it falls upon thee!"

And then the Darkness descended, and a storm of nerds fell upon the thread, and tore it hither and thither with their teeth and keyboards and mice, and the jokes made were of a putridness hitherto unknown even in the dark ASCII-porn and GNAA-filled underbelly of Slashdot.

Yea, and verily was there a gnashing of teeth and a banging of heads as Natalie Portman, petrified and covered in hot grits, reminded YOU that all your old Korean ladies were now belong to us ... in Japan! And all, as one, welcomed their new Slashdot overlords - except in Nebraska, where a million Slashdot editors cried out in torment, and were silenced.

And lo, for in this time of despair a glimmer of hope appeared, as finally was revealed the Secret Concealed from all since time immemorial, the unknown last-but-one step in the great Slashdot Business Plan. The answer was found to be simp...

ATH+++
NO CARRIER

Secure storage?

[b00m3rang]

You could create a striped RAID array, copy your sensitive encrypted information to it, and you each go on your way with one of the units.

Not until you reassemble and say, "Wonder Twin Powers, Activate!" will the data be accessible again (a la Ford Fairlane).

Could happen.

Re:Instead of OS X...

[chill]

I now have this vision of 4 scruffy terrorists in a room, three iPods hooked in to the array and the 4th guy listening to some U2 track and going "what? What'd I do?"

-Charles

Wow...

[jmcmunn]

I'm seriously not trying to troll or anything, but I remember when I used to hear Kevin Rose (of the Screensavers) talk about stuff he read on Slashdot. Now I read stuff on Slashdot that Kevin Rose talked about last week. No longer is it "news for nerds" it is more like "news nerds have already heard". Sad, truly sad.

On a happy note, congrats to Kevin Rose for doing a better job of sharing the news with me.

Re:Instead of OS X...

[jacobcaz]

• Hmmm, I was trying to think of an example of what to put on this and all I could think of was terrorist plans. Does this make it a bad idea?

How about corporate secrets? You know, like how the Coca Cola formula is supposed to be stashed in several bank vaults in Atlanta?

If you have 1/5th of the data (plus parity) you can even duplicate your iPod Shuffle as needed to keep the data intact.

Just make sure that 4 out of your 5 all fly on the same plane or travel in the same car (or really, attend the same conference) with their share of the data.

You can also scale it up and down (4 drives needing 3 or 25 drives needing 24).

The only downside with RAID5 is that you can only lose 1 device, so with larger numbers you need a higher and higher majority of your group to unlock the data.

Another idea is to RAID the data and form a tontine using iPod Shuffles. It worked for Abe Simpson.

Re:Instead of OS X...

[natrius]

But wouldn't they want to know how to assemble an atomic bomb?

What were they smoking?

[tekcsound]

As a rabid Apple whore, I still have to wonder what the hell they were thinking when they developed this things: (Jobs) How can we make our iPods cheaper? (Engrs) Well, we've already taken out everything but the screen. (Jobs) Then take it out too! (Engrs) But how will they select their songs? (Jobs) Who cares? We'll have PR come up with a snappy name and tell everyone it's COOL. Those Cupertino boys, I swear.