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Is RAID possible on an Android phone?

I know the benefits of running RAID on an Android device, if even possible, wouldn't be much. However, it is possible to add additional SD cards to most top and even low tier Android devices. Is it possible for these two cards, the internal and external SD card, to be configured into a RAID array such as RAID 0?

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Dude. What.

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It would require a lot of external hardware as there is no internal raid controller on any android device.

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NO. Just NO.

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What external hardware would be needed besides a RAID controller? Are you saying that with sufficient external hardware, this could be possible?

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What external hardware would be needed besides a RAID controller? Are you saying that with sufficient external hardware, this could be possible?

If you need a raid controller for your phone, you might as well just carry around a USB 3.0 portable SSD...

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You've got me a bit bewildered here. Where did you learn about all the benefits of running raid 0 sd cards on your phone?

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You've got me a bit bewildered here. Where did you learn about all the benefits of running raid 0 sd cards on your phone?

 

Assuming that the benefits of RAID 0 on a phone would be the same as on a computer. So faster read and write speeds which aren't really necessary for most application of Android devices.

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What external hardware would be needed besides a RAID controller? Are you saying that with sufficient external hardware, this could be possible?

RAID doesn't need a hardware solution. Windows has raid. Then you have flexraid, these are pure software. However, you would only be able to raid removable storage, the internal phone storage is necessary for booting the OS and there is no way to link most internal drives to another due to custom connectors that the drives run off. So, running RAID would require multiple micro sd cards, so a small amount of modding will be required to have multiple sd cards.

As for RAID software, as far as I'm aware, no software currently exists that allow for the RAID of storage on android devices, mostly due to the fact that modding will be required to have enough drives to allow for a RAID configuration. Although, that is only as far as I'm aware. Google may prove me wrong.

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If you need a raid controller for your phone, you might as well just carry around a USB 3.0 portable SSD...

 

I realize that no one would probably ever need this but has it ever been attempted before? I love it when things are done not for the need of it but because we are humans and we can. I just want to know if it would actually be possible. 

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RAID doesn't need a hardware solution. Windows has raid. Then you have flexraid, these are pure software. However, you would only be able to raid removable storage, the internal phone storage is necessary for booting the OS and there is no way to link most internal drives to another due to custom connectors that the drives run off. So, running RAID would require multiple micro sd cards, so a small amount of modding will be required to have multiple sd cards.

As for RAID software, as far as I'm aware, no software currently exists that allow for the RAID of storage on android devices, mostly due to the fact that modding will be required to have enough drives to allow for a RAID configuration. Although, that is only as far as I'm aware. Google may prove me wrong.

 

Thanks pretty awesome to know. Thanks. Perhaps someone will actually do this then just for the heck of it.

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RAID doesn't need a hardware solution. Windows has raid.

Windows 8 has RAID. Windows 7 does not.

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Windows 8 has RAID. Windows 7 does not.

Windows 7 does have RAID. It offers support for RAID 1 and RAID 5. Go to disk management, right click on whichever disk and click new RAID volume or something like that

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Windows 7 does have RAID. It offers support for RAID 1 and RAID 5. Go to disk management, right click on whichever disk and click new RAID volume or something like that

No option of any sort comes up for me.

"It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brain falls out." - Carl Sagan.

"I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you" - Edward I. Koch

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No option of any sort comes up for me.

Well, in that case you are trying to RAID a disk that has stuff on it. Has to be an unallocated partition

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  • 6 months later...

Hi,

 

Having a look at the answers you got....had me made an account and reply back ......

 

Yes. It is very much possible in theory. If somebody would have taken the 5 min needed to google some info  rather speaking from story books .......anyway .

 

There are 3 main classes  of RAID: 

1. Hardware RAID -  a dedicated hardware controller that does all the magic

2. Fake/SATA/BIOS  RAID - basically software RAID with higher bandwidth access to CPU and Memory. Normally BIOS handles the settings helps by vendor software (like Intel Rapid Storage )

3. Software RAID - basically  a software that does the math. 

 

PS: The last 2 RAID classes are supported on all Windows releases  since XP at least.

 

Now, obliviously  we are talking here about Software raid......

You need a android kernel capable of this. I am not sure android kernels knows this out of the box but most probable can be added. (look for mdraid in case you want to see what its possible with the Linux implementation )

Once you have that it's possible to partition as you like your volumes and use them in a software  raid (mirror, strip etc ) configuration. 

I would really enjoy the extra IO throughput myself ;) but the reality is .... we are year(s) behind seeing this kind of things in the android world in a working usable state.

A lot of work needs to be done in order to add this kind of support in a custom build kernel for a specific device.

 

Or something like that ... :)

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  • 3 years later...

I'm going to try this on a Xperia E3. Things i'll try:

- set a RAID flag on partition /dev/block/mmcblk0p24 (/data) to work together with /dev/block/mmcblk1p2 (/sd-ext), also with raid flag;

- properly setup fstab to do the magic;

- compile kernel with raid support.

 

Some things more ,when I realize it, will be needed.

I apreciate anyone who want to help.

 

I'm jpzex on XDA-Developers.

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  • 3 years later...
On 10/6/2013 at 9:40 AM, Jephrey said:

I know the benefits of running RAID on an Android device, if even possible, wouldn't be much. However, it is possible to add additional SD cards to most top and even low tier Android devices. Is it possible for these two cards, the internal and external SD card, to be configured into a RAID array such as RAID 0?

Well, you're certainly ahead of your time. Xiaomi did indeed reveal their Black Shark 4 Pro gaming phone last week with an SSD Raid Array solution as their ROM. As you can see, it is indeed a good bit faster than your average UFS 3.1 Flash storage smartphones. Those only get up to read and write speeds of 1400-1700 MB/s and 650-750 MB/s while the image below shows the speed of the SSD solution on the Back Shark 4 Pro. 

Why-is-Xiaomi-installing-an-SSD-in-its-new-smartphones.png

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2 hours ago, Boiledcabbages said:

Well, you're certainly ahead of your time. Xiaomi did indeed reveal their Black Shark 4 Pro gaming phone last week with an SSD Raid Array solution as their ROM. As you can see, it is indeed a good bit faster than your average UFS 3.1 Flash storage smartphones. Those only get up to read and write speeds of 1400-1700 MB/s and 650-750 MB/s while the image below shows the speed of the SSD solution on the Back Shark 4 Pro. 

Why-is-Xiaomi-installing-an-SSD-in-its-new-smartphones.png

One of those moments when resurrecting an old thread is genuinely useful.

 

Mind you, that's a RAID using built-in storage, but I think the OP's vision of using an SD card for an array was somewhat naive to start with — the mismatch in speeds would be so large that there wouldn't be much of a benefit. The question is whether or not RAIDs will become popular, or if brands will just focus on faster conventional storage.

 

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