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Toaster RAID Returns, Better Than Ever

1:40 AM - 02/04/2009 by Dave Goeke

The idea for RAID 5 in a toaster came up when I was working at ApplianceWare in Fremont, Calif., back in 2001, when terms like "information appliance" were all the rage. Since then, the company’s main product has continued to be a slimmed-down Linux distribution that lets you turn a computer into a file server. 

I had an old retro-toaster at the time and we were doing compatibility tests with various system boards. For fun, I stuffed a small system board into an old toaster. This gave the marketing teams something more interesting than a 1U whitebox to use at trade shows and sales presentations. It also made for some good laughs when visiting customers.

The first toaster RAID used a 5.25" AMI motherboard with two on-board SCSI adapters. The system had three 3.5" SCSI drives, each of which sported an impressive 8 GB capacity. The whole system, including the 250 W power supply, fit into an old 1970s vintage General Electric four-slice toaster.

The SCSI drives made one heck of a racket. The CPU was a Pentium MMX and there was a whopping 128 MB of memory on board. ApplianceWare and AMI custom-designed the motherboard.

Toaster RAID #1 was a bit heavy and bulky and admittedly not my finest piece of artwork. So Toaster RAID #2, which was half the size, was built soon after Toaster RAID #1 during the summer of 2001. The motherboard was another non-standard form factor, measuring about 6" by 8". The CPU clock speed was 200 MHz and there were 32 MB of memory in the SODIMM (laptop-style) form factor. Storage consisted of a pair of mirrored 8 GB 5,400 RPM parallel IDE drives.

From left to right, Toaster RAIDs #2, #3, and #4.

  • #2–September 2001, 8 GB mirrored, 200 MHz processor, 100 Mb Ethernet
  • #3–December 2005, 20 GB mirrored, same 200 MHz processor, 100 Mb Ethernet
  • #4–January 2009, 1,280 GB RAID 5, 2.4 GHz dual-core processor, 1 Gb Ethernet.

Toaster RAID #3 was built in late 2005 with the same system board as Toaster RAID #2, but with a pair of mirrored 20 GB 3.5" parallel IDE hard drives. At that time two drives were all that would fit in a small toaster and that was with an external laptop style power supply (see photo).

  • From left to right this picture shows an exposed view the same three Toaster RAID systems; #2 (Sept. 2001), #3 (Dec. 2005), and #4 (Jan. 2009).
Talkback
Anonymous 02/04/2009 8:11 AM
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I thought the idea in fitting a NAS into a toaster is that you plugged the disks through the bread slots!

NateDawg80126 02/04/2009 8:15 AM
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"Is that Patrick Swayze!?" -Moses as he looked across the Red Sea.

boostercorp 02/04/2009 11:40 AM
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ytoledano3 :
I thought the idea in fitting a NAS into a toaster is that you plugged the disks through the bread slots!


yeah it would ve been nice if you could just shove in two hot plug & play drives in there.

Anonymous 02/04/2009 7:28 PM
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gives a whole new meaning to "hot swappable" ;)

Astara 02/04/2009 11:44 PM
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boostercorp :
yeah it would ve been nice if you could just shove in two hot plug & play drives in there.


Imagine a backup-product like the various 'one-touch' backup offerings -- but in this case, you just push a drive into the toaster slot -- it begins the backup process, when done, it can eject** the drive. That sounds very sweet.

**-raise drive, not physically throw it out of the toaster! :-)

Shadow703793 02/04/2009 11:57 PM
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Quote :Using the small 2.5" drives, there is easily room for eight to 12 drives.

Then why not use some of the 640/750GB or 1.5/2TB drives?

Any ways cool mod.

ph3412b07 02/05/2009 12:26 PM
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ghetto-fab :D

Anonymous 02/05/2009 1:11 PM
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arkadi 02/05/2009 1:41 PM
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Grate job, looks perfect mate.

bustapr 02/05/2009 6:30 PM
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wouldve been cooler to put in a dvd drive in the bread slots.

Anonymous 02/09/2009 7:22 PM
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How's this hold up in a heavy sea? Data corrupt, read errors as you pound to weather could be a problem. Also where's the view of the light show, I wanted to see those led's flashing and shining thru the bread slots. A hollow-graphic hula girl shining a-top the slots would be a motivational feature. Ideas for toaster RAID 2012

studiopronto 02/17/2009 10:59 PM
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Maybe you could connect it wirelessly to your network and "hide" it in your kitchen.

boostercorp 02/18/2009 9:02 PM
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studiopronto :
Maybe you could connect it wirelessly to your network and "hide" it in your kitchen.



hmmm and then your girlfriend get's a craving for some toasted bread ...
all kinds of crumbs and sh** inside your raid

annihilator-x- 02/19/2009 12:55 PM
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Seems like a perfect place to hide all the p0rn, innocent looking toaster.

anamaniac 05/22/2009 2:12 AM
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studiopronto :
Maybe you could connect it wirelessly to your network and "hide" it in your kitchen.



Sounds like an amazing way to hide something.
Possibly make it so 1 of the slots work, and insulate the computer from the heat? Forcing a shutdown if the toaster is actually used. All wireless of course. :)

boostercorp :
hmmm and then your girlfriend get's a craving for some toasted bread ...all kinds of crumbs and sh** inside your raid



Ha. My brother used to put waffles in our VCR, and yet it still lived. A protected compuer would be fine.

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