Yes, and no. The combine throughput of 10 computers with one USB 2.0 harddrive each would be 600MB/s (theoretical). The problem with having all those harddrives on one system is that you start to hit other bottlenecks in the system.
We're working with a combined bandwidth of over 4 Gbps, and each USB controller can only handle 480Mbps. You would need to use 10 host controllers, one per harddisk, to have that much USB bandwidth in a single system. You would also need to make sure that the southbridge or wherever the controllers are connected to the rest of the system can also handle that much bandwidth. If you put 10 pci-e expansion cards in a single system, theoretically you could reach those speeds. Good luck finding a motherboard with 10 pci-e slots.
I'm pretty sure the 480 mbps is per USB bus. Each bus has one host controller. Thus 480mbps is per controller. So no matter how many devices you plug into one controller, the bandswidth is 480mbps. – surfasb – 2011-12-20T09:28:01.630
1Thanks. I was pretty sure, but not completely sure, hence the ambiguity. I've clarified to indicate that you'd need 10 host controllers. – Darth Android – 2011-12-20T15:44:41.167
Then again, I'm not 100 percent sure either. I came to that conclusion based on two things: A usb device can choose from certain kinds of connections that may or may not guarantee bandwidth and all connections in the USB is initiated by the host controller. We'll need someone nerdier like grawity or Moab :) – surfasb – 2011-12-20T17:41:50.280