3 ms·

What a simple/awesome idea... I'm surprised nobody else has thought of this before!

dangrossman 15y ago
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.
- dangero 15y ago
  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. It is pretty though.
  - miahi 15y ago
    It's not even the first time it was "dreamed" by some designer, with no technical consideration. You cannot actually do that in a standard way. Dan has a nice article on this: http://dansdata.blogsome.com/2010/03/23/for-suitably-small-values-of-infinite/ http://dansdata.blogsome.com/2010/03/23/for-suitably-small-v...
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    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.
- shabble 15y ago
  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. [1] http://www.smsc.com/index.php?tid=295&pid=23&cid=&tab=1 http://www.smsc.com/index.php?tid=295&pid=23&cid=&#3...
dekz 15y ago
I remember seeing something similar to this before. After a quick google search, turns out it's by the same people actually[1]. [1]: http://www.yankodesign.com/2010/03/22/running-out-of-usb-ports/ http://www.yankodesign.com/2010/03/22/running-out-of-usb-por...
ars 15y ago
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.
- DanBC 15y ago
  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. As others have said - it is pretty though.
  - miahi 15y ago
    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.

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.

dangero 15y ago
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. It is pretty though.
- miahi 15y ago
  It's not even the first time it was "dreamed" by some designer, with no technical consideration. You cannot actually do that in a standard way. Dan has a nice article on this: http://dansdata.blogsome.com/2010/03/23/for-suitably-small-values-of-infinite/ http://dansdata.blogsome.com/2010/03/23/for-suitably-small-v...
- rbanffy 15y ago
  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.
shabble 15y ago
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. [1] http://www.smsc.com/index.php?tid=295&pid=23&cid=&tab=1 http://www.smsc.com/index.php?tid=295&pid=23&cid=&#3...

dekz 15y ago

I remember seeing something similar to this before. After a quick google search, turns out it's by the same people actually[1]. [1]: http://www.yankodesign.com/2010/03/22/running-out-of-usb-ports/ http://www.yankodesign.com/2010/03/22/running-out-of-usb-por...

ars 15y ago

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.

DanBC 15y ago
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. As others have said - it is pretty though.
- miahi 15y ago
  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.