For it to work, each of the drives would have to be both a mass storage device and a USB hub. Can USB hubs be this small? If each segment has to be 3 inches long to accomodate the dual functionality, a foot long chain of USB drives sticking out the side of your laptop is a bit less elegant than the concept.
There's also the problem of power. I doubt these devices could be usb spec compliant since what is essentially happening here is an endless chain of bus powered usb hubs.
Unless you want to attach a hard drive to the end of the line, power should be no big problem. I can't imagine the power requirements of a USB hub being that big.
I don't think size would be much of an issue. Random googling finds USB2512[1] which comes in a 6mm x 6mm QFN package. It needs a crystal and a few caps. There's probably an equally tiny flash + USB SoC around to bolt onto it.
The hard part would be the board layout (USB2 requires some line impedance matching, afaik) and the actual packaging.
I reckon you could (conservatively) fit the necessary circuitry into 1 or 2 microSD sized cuboids, maybe one above the plug/socket, and one below. Maybe even less if you eschew some of the spec and only support daisy-chaining your own devices.
No one has thought of it before because it's not that useful.
If I want to plug multiple drives in, I just do. There is no reason I need to plug them into each other.
Whoever made it probably imagined that the drives would share a filesystem (i.e. one drive letter for all of them) - but did not think it through since doing that is too complicated to be practical.
Some computers don't have many USB ports - the one in the article photo only has two.
I agree that it's not very useful. There's probably a complicated way to achieve something similar using a proper hub, a bunch of sticks, and software. But most people are fine with a bunch of sticks for different things - "my live boot OS", "my music", "my photos", "all my other stuff".
More useful would be a USB stick that came with stickers to describe content - cute little camera icons or music stuff. Or at least a strip that the user can write on (with a pen, not file system) on the case.
A long time ago (when they weren't dirt cheap) USB sticks came with labels. For some reason the new ones don't. Probably because I don't know anyone that has more than one big USB stick. Why would you need 4 USB sticks? They are slow enough to make them unusable for large data.
How would files on different segments be presented to the OS? Would the directories on each disk be merged together into one root directory, would each one get its own directory, or something else? To make the "just pull out the one with the vacation photos on it" use-case work, you would have to be able to see and control which segment a given file is on.
> Would the directories on each disk be merged together into one root directory, would each one get its own directory, or something else?
Due to the way most modern filesystems (including all filesystems that windows supports) work, the only clean way to implement this is to have each segment appear as a separate drive. The operating system only sees the drive as a block-level device, so the drive doesn't know anything about folders or files. It just sees binary data.
You could implement a virtual block-level device on the device, and read files from that to write to each segment, but that would be a major performace hit, and push the cost up significantly as each segment would need a processor and a few megabytes of ram.
The only other way I can think of would be a custom driver.
I don't see this as useful. Using USB drives to share pictures with friends was never popular, and with social networking is utterly dead. Sharing of larger files is already marginalized by the likes of dropbox and upload sites, and becoming more so over time.
USB flash drives aren't used for everything anymore. I don't know anyone who regularly uses one and would find it acceptable for the only thing holding 3/4 of the drive to their person to be the static friction of one USB plug, which is the only thing holding one of these combo drives together. If you're using a flash drive for a file today, chances are the file is too essential or too sensitive to depend on one of those plugs never coming undone, over a multi-year daily use lifespan.
A solution looking for a problem. My regular machine is a MBP, so I'm no stranger to the "damn I wish I had more USB ports" problem.
But I have never, ever, ever, thought "dammit! If only I could plug more USB memory sticks into this infernal machine!"
In fact, the only time I'm ever using a USB stick is to sneaknet some files to someone else (because in the year 2011 we have yet to figure out quick, painless filesharing with people you're physically near by. though Dropbox is starting to get ubiquitous enough...), and that hardly requires more than one USB port.
I see a big difference between what they show on their site (space helmets?! NASA will be pleased to know that somebody solved the design problems of their $12M/piece space suit) and what's actually for sale (candle holders, wallets and vases). It's their small world, giving each other design awards for things that we will never see because they are physically impossible.
You can share files with Dropbox without the reciever having a n account, and as far as I can tell without installing software on either computer. Just login to dropbox.com, upload, and move the file to a public folder.
I really wish I understood why people don't do this generally, it's quite painless if you have an account already.
For small files when you're working with someone it's easy. For large files though it's a pain - you have to wait for it to upload from your end, and then for it to down on their end.
This is pretty annoying if they're sitting 10 feet away, and you can get it done faster if you just pull out a USB stick and do it that way.
There really needs to be a solid way to share P2P with someone on the same network.
22 comments
[ 1351 ms ] story [ 248 ms ] threadIt is pretty though.
The hard part would be the board layout (USB2 requires some line impedance matching, afaik) and the actual packaging.
I reckon you could (conservatively) fit the necessary circuitry into 1 or 2 microSD sized cuboids, maybe one above the plug/socket, and one below. Maybe even less if you eschew some of the spec and only support daisy-chaining your own devices.
[1] http://www.smsc.com/index.php?tid=295&pid=23&cid=...
[1]: http://www.yankodesign.com/2010/03/22/running-out-of-usb-por...
If I want to plug multiple drives in, I just do. There is no reason I need to plug them into each other.
Whoever made it probably imagined that the drives would share a filesystem (i.e. one drive letter for all of them) - but did not think it through since doing that is too complicated to be practical.
I agree that it's not very useful. There's probably a complicated way to achieve something similar using a proper hub, a bunch of sticks, and software. But most people are fine with a bunch of sticks for different things - "my live boot OS", "my music", "my photos", "all my other stuff".
More useful would be a USB stick that came with stickers to describe content - cute little camera icons or music stuff. Or at least a strip that the user can write on (with a pen, not file system) on the case.
As others have said - it is pretty though.
Due to the way most modern filesystems (including all filesystems that windows supports) work, the only clean way to implement this is to have each segment appear as a separate drive. The operating system only sees the drive as a block-level device, so the drive doesn't know anything about folders or files. It just sees binary data.
You could implement a virtual block-level device on the device, and read files from that to write to each segment, but that would be a major performace hit, and push the cost up significantly as each segment would need a processor and a few megabytes of ram.
The only other way I can think of would be a custom driver.
USB flash drives aren't used for everything anymore. I don't know anyone who regularly uses one and would find it acceptable for the only thing holding 3/4 of the drive to their person to be the static friction of one USB plug, which is the only thing holding one of these combo drives together. If you're using a flash drive for a file today, chances are the file is too essential or too sensitive to depend on one of those plugs never coming undone, over a multi-year daily use lifespan.
But I have never, ever, ever, thought "dammit! If only I could plug more USB memory sticks into this infernal machine!"
In fact, the only time I'm ever using a USB stick is to sneaknet some files to someone else (because in the year 2011 we have yet to figure out quick, painless filesharing with people you're physically near by. though Dropbox is starting to get ubiquitous enough...), and that hardly requires more than one USB port.
You can share files with Dropbox without the reciever having a n account, and as far as I can tell without installing software on either computer. Just login to dropbox.com, upload, and move the file to a public folder.
I really wish I understood why people don't do this generally, it's quite painless if you have an account already.
This is pretty annoying if they're sitting 10 feet away, and you can get it done faster if you just pull out a USB stick and do it that way.
There really needs to be a solid way to share P2P with someone on the same network.
http://blog.laptopmag.com/usb-stick-contains-dual-core-compu...