Raid 0 external hard drives?

[dejacky1]

Is it possible to run two or more external USB 2.0 hard drives in a RAID 0 configuration? I'd like to connect some faster external drive solutions to a laptop.

[Midknyte]

you would really trust a RAID0 array for data? if so, maxtor makes a RAID0 capable enclosure.

http://www.maxtorsolutions.com/en/catalog/OTIII_Turbo/

[dejacky1]

what i meant was, is it possible to plug 2 identical external usb hard drives into two SEPERATE usb 2.0 ports on a laptop and use them in RAID 0 configuration? like a "cheap person's external raid 0?"

[Steve R Jones]

Nope. Your lappy would need to have a USB Raid Controller...and can't say that I've ever seen one.....Then there's the issue that most USB devices aren't seen till Windows boots up....

[Midknyte]

RAID0 over USB2 would be slow even if you could get it to work. You're barking up the wrong tree.

[dejacky1]

Thanks for your recommendations. Can I just use the 1394 (Firewire 400) port of the laptop to connect the RME FireFace? How many MB/s bandwidth does recording 8-10 tracks of 24bit/88.2khz simultaneously use? If 1394a provides enough bandwidth, I'm hoping I can just use an eSATA express card to connect to some nice RAID 0 eSATA hard drive(s) enclosure capable of ~100-170MB/S . What do you all think?

[Midknyte]

I'm not familiar with the Fireface, so you'll probably have to check the user manual. I would guess you can connect fine with firewire, but you'd have to look up the bandwidth specs.
http://www.rme-audio.com/english/download/manuals.htm

why would you need RAID0 if you're encoding off of firewire? FW is limited to 400Mbps (50MBps) theoretically. You could get an eSATA enclosure with a single drive in that case.