Raid 5 USB Flash Drives?

Jetfighter808 · August 20, 2015

Hi,

Would anyone know how to set up a RAID 5 usb drive set up. My ambition is to set up a usb hub and plug it into my router then plug in either 64GB or 128GB USB's into the back of it. I think RAID 5 would be ideal because there would be some redundancy. I have seen tutorials showing how to set them up in RAID 0 and 1 but not RAID 5.

Ideas?

Thanks!

Altecice · August 20, 2015

I believe it IS possible but a very bad idea. USB's and the connection is not reliable at all. Just out of interest why would you need this size of USB in a router? (I will assume it for NAS) but you would be far better off using a external HDD and having it backed up on your PC.

brandishwar · August 20, 2015

RAID 10 is actually what's recommended over RAID 5. But as @Altecice said, USB isn't reliable for this setup. This will be especially true if the connection is USB 2.0 -- which is quite likely on most routers -- meaning you're not going to have much in the way of throughput. Now if you're on a Fast Ethernet (100Mbps) router or hitting it wirelessly, then that's not going to matter since the network connection will choke it off anyway. I've seen videos before where others have connected up USB drives into a RAID array, but typically to demonstrate the throughput and drive activity with the various RAID options, but not for any kind of production usage.

USB drives are also not intended to be used in the fashion you're putting them through. It's one of the reasons SSDs cost more than USB drives despite using similar technology -- the SSD is designed and tested to withstand the kind of production usages they experience. You may be better off setting up an array using 64GB or 128GB SSDs, or even going with platter drives -- less throughput compared to SSDs but even those will still be choked off on a Gigabit network connection. You'll have higher throughput, and SATA RAID controllers, even lesser expensive ones and the ones built into mainboards, will provide much better capability as well. Or you can put them into a standalone RAID cabinet -- some of which provide NAS options -- if you don't want to set up a separate server.