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<TITLE>A flashy little raid...</TITLE>
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<P><B><FONT FACE="Courier New">Over the weekend, I "inadvertently" stumbled onto a fairly good deal at Fry's...</FONT></B>
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<P><B><FONT FACE="Courier New"> Multi-packs of 4GB "thumb drives" at (effective) prices of < $10 apiece.</FONT></B>
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<P><B><FONT FACE="Courier New">I say inadvertently because I didn't go to fry's to get them in the first place -- I just happened to be by the aisle where they were sold and a couple of guys were frantically looking for 4-packs of Kingston 4GB drives - I asked them if they were on sale or something, and he said, "yeah, $27.99", so I quietly walked over to an end-cap where I had seen a kingston 4-pack "discarded" a little earlier and nabbed it.</FONT></B></P>
<P><B><FONT FACE="Courier New">Then I saw the sign for PNY 5-packs of 4GB drives -- $49.99 - $10 rebate...</FONT></B>
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<P><B><FONT FACE="Courier New">So...</FONT></B>
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<P><B><FONT FACE="Courier New">The Kingston 4-pack ended up being about 28 dollars [$7 each]</FONT></B>
<BR><B><FONT FACE="Courier New">The PNY 5-pack was $50 and a $10 mail-in rebate [effective $40, or $8 each]</FONT></B>
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<P><B><FONT FACE="Courier New">And for another $10, I bought an un-powered 4-port USB 2.0 mini-hub</FONT></B>
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<P><B><FONT FACE="Courier New">Now I'm setting it up as a raid-5 "device"... (for this, the 5-pack ends up being 4 + a spare...)</FONT></B>
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<P><B><FONT FACE="Courier New">I *might* even be able to give a 5-minute talk about this at the beginning of the next meeting...</FONT></B>
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