Fake SSD with USB sticks (home box)

[kevinthenerd]

Has anyone had any luck running a website database on USB flash drives?

I know, I know. We have hundreds of thousands of dollars of infrastructure at work, and I wouldn't mess with this foolishness there, but this is for a hobby web server I'm developing / playing with at home, and most of the fun is seeing how much I can squeeze out of next to nothing. Hence, I'm not using PCIe, USB 3.0, or anything of a newer technology than what's already in this box that I got for free. Each USB 2.0 bus would top out with three sticks, and the PCI bus itself would probably top out with 5 sticks. Still, comparing performance against my 80GB IDE software RAID1 in there now, do you think I would be disappointed if I blew $40 and maxed out the PCI bus with a USB RAID0?

I'm mainly trying to scope out whether I'd be wasting my time.

I'm going to do a LAOP setup with Ubuntu (Ubuntu Server, Oracle Express 10.2.0, Zend Community) if that matters, and I think I'd use ext2 or ext4 without journaling for performance. In a hobby box with no real cost of downtime, that's what backups are for. ;-)

 

[razel]

A waste of time. It will stutter for seconds when writing. The beyond basic controller in USB drives is what differs it from a full fledged SSD. Think of an SSD as a highly optimized RAID of NAND.

It's not a total loss though, SSDs and USB flash drives can cost about the same per GB, so you can try SSDs in a USB enclosure or simply add a SATA controller card. I have bought several 80GB G1 Intels off ebay selling in the $50-60 range. Have fun.