Disclaimer

The content of this blog is my personal opinion only. Although I am an employee - currently of Nvidia, in the past of other companies such as Iagination Technologies, MIPS, Intellectual Ventures, Intel, AMD, Motorola, and Gould - I reveal this only so that the reader may account for any possible bias I may have towards my employer's products. The statements I make here in no way represent my employer's position, nor am I authorized to speak on behalf of my employer. In fact, this posting may not even represent my personal opinion, since occasionally I play devil's advocate.

See http://docs.google.com/View?id=dcxddbtr_23cg5thdfj for photo credits.

Sunday, January 08, 2012

Thumb drive as a webserver / NAS

I wish that I could find a flash drive that acted as a NAS.

Most USB flash drives are passive storage. Encryption is done by the OS you plug into.  Since I run Windows and various *IXes, and want to access my data from each, depending on a particular OS is a pain.

Booting an OS from the USB flash drive is better - but still not great, since it makes assumptions about the platform you are plugging in to. Typically, that it is a PC.

Flash drives have non-trivial processors in them.  Probably running Linux.  Why not make them a peer?

Issue: network interface.

I don't really want to add a typical Cat 5 ethernet connector - what is that, RJ45, 8P8C plug? - to the flash drive, neither in addition to nor replacing USB.

Q: I am sure there is a standard for networking over USB - but how ubiquitous is it?  I do not recall ever getting the option, when I plug in a USB flash drive, of connecting a webnrowser to a server running on tghe drive.




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