Non-volatile RAM disk!

ghowarth · **Posted:** Sun Jun 08, 2003 5:28 pm

Read a review here ... sadly hasn't been released yet!

DryFire · **Posted:** Sun Jun 08, 2003 5:52 pm

and what if your battery dies?

ghowarth · **Posted:** Sun Jun 08, 2003 6:00 pm

Well if you want a silent pc, chances are you want to leave it running for a long time - so who gives a stuff about any battery?

fmah · **Posted:** Sun Jun 08, 2003 6:12 pm

That was what I was thinking. Would be good if they just had sockets you could fill.

Actually they had these a while back for the Apple II. This was good since back in the day, floppy was what most people had. I do not recall if the battery backup versions made it to market or not.

efcoins · **Posted:** Mon Jun 09, 2003 1:30 am

Are you sure it has not been released ?
The review that you linked to is over a year old.

ghowarth · **Posted:** Mon Jun 09, 2003 2:58 am

I hadn't noticed that the article was April last year, and not this year. I googled around a bit but sadly couldn't find any further info about it.

KenAF · **Joined:** Sat May 17, 2003 4:32 pm **Posts:** 114

There are several other products like this in the $400-$600 price range, but they all require a connection to a power outlet to maintain your data (if the power goes out and you don't have a UPS, all your data is gone). I haven't seen any sub-$1000 products that include a battery.

I think these products might do well as a fast drive for cache, temp, and swap files, but I don't think you'd want to store your documents on one.

davidbradley · **Joined:** Tue Mar 11, 2003 9:59 am **Posts:** 2

KenAF wrote:

There are several other products like this in the $400-$600 price range, but they all require a connection to a power outlet to maintain your data (if the power goes out and you don't have a UPS, all your data is gone).

I've been looking for something like this to use as a Photoshop scratch disk where speed is important but volatility doesn't matter. If there are products like this in the $400 - $600 range I haven't been able to find them and would love to know about them. Could you share some links and/or names? Thanks.

Rusty075 · **Posted:** Mon Jun 09, 2003 8:49 am

There's also the BitMicro flash-based disks. They're non-volitile, bootable, and either IDE or SCSI complaint. They're also quite expensive.

KenAF · **Joined:** Sat May 17, 2003 4:32 pm **Posts:** 114

Quote:

I've been looking for something like this to use as a Photoshop scratch disk where speed is important but volatility doesn't matter. If there are products like this in the $400 - $600 range I haven't been able to find them and would love to know about them. Could you share some links and/or names? Thanks.

Check out the Cenatek Rocket Drive. I think they've raised their price, but it's still $599 for the 1Gb model, $699 for the 2Gb model, and $899 for the 4Gb model. You must add your own memory to this board, but RAM is cheap these days.

You can find a review right here.

Rusty075 · **Posted:** Tue Jun 10, 2003 8:46 am

Mike reviewed the Cenatek Rocket Drive here at SPRC back in November.

efcoins · **Posted:** Tue Jun 10, 2003 9:09 am

Rusty075 wrote:

Mike reviewed the Cenatek Rocket Drive here at SPRC back in November.

True, but the cheapest Rocket drive (1GByte) is $1200

KenAF · **Joined:** Sat May 17, 2003 4:32 pm **Posts:** 114

efcoines,

The Rocket drive is only $1200 if you buy it from them with the RAM preinstalled. It's about $700-800 if you install your own memory in the DIMM slots on the board.

pingu666 · **Posted:** Tue Jun 10, 2003 10:29 am

for ps just get a fat wodge of ram, tho speed/cost wise u only going to be able to have 512dimms
get a dual/quad opteron, a maxtrox gfx card and enuff ram to choke a horse and ya sorted

davidbradley · **Joined:** Tue Mar 11, 2003 9:59 am **Posts:** 2

pingu666 wrote:

for ps just get a fat wodge of ram, tho speed/cost wise u only going to be able to have 512dimms
get a dual/quad opteron, a maxtrox gfx card and enuff ram to choke a horse and ya sorted

Photoshop can only address 2 GB of RAM even on systems that have more. I edit files that are 600MB - 1.1GB in size, and the speed of the PS scratch disk is usually the limiting factor in how much work I can get done in a day. I've currently using a 2-disk RAID0 array that does 115MB/sec, but I'd like to double that bandwidth eventually, hence my interest in fast disks.

MikeC · **Posted:** Tue Jun 10, 2003 11:01 am

davidbradley wrote:

pingu666 wrote:

for ps just get a fat wodge of ram, tho speed/cost wise u only going to be able to have 512dimms
get a dual/quad opteron, a maxtrox gfx card and enuff ram to choke a horse and ya sorted

Photoshop can only address 2 GB of RAM even on systems that have more. I edit files that are 600MB - 1.1GB in size, and the speed of the PS scratch disk is usually the limiting factor in how much work I can get done in a day. I've currently using a 2-disk RAID0 array that does 115MB/sec, but I'd like to double that bandwidth eventually, hence my interest in fast disks.

Yours is an ideal application for the Cenatek Rocket Drive. The difference in speed I saw with large files and complex Photoshop operations was very dramatic. Check the review. It's not $600 tho, and the speed is limited by the PCI bus -- 133, which not much of a boost over your RAID0 speed. That 115MB/sec -- is it sustained R/W? If so, it seems amazingly fast!

You might be better off with a high end SSD like http://www.bitmicro.com/products_edisk_35_scsiw.php but pricing is somewhere up in the stratosphere.

Non-volatile RAM disk!

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