CF card as cheap harddisk isn't dream

eagleliu · Post by **eagleliu** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 6:57 am

Hi, friends,as CF card capacity is bigger and bigger,now 16GB CF is normal,but the price of CF card becomes more cheaper day after day.Why don't we put one CF to IDE adapter in the computer,then we can install operation systerm in CF card as harddisk,it is very fast ,small power,little voice.I suggest you can use the following CF to IDE adapter.

image from http://www.pcadapter.cn

VanWaGuy · Post by **VanWaGuy** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 7:31 am

Hi, and what is particular about that one? The topic certainly is not new to this site.

eagleliu · Post by **eagleliu** » Wed Sep 05, 2007 7:42 pm

This adapter can put in PC case,then insert CF card from back outside of PC case .

Eunos · Post by **Eunos** » Thu Sep 06, 2007 6:03 pm

If someone makes software to spread the write cycles over the whole drive it could work for a main OS drive. Otherwise it would be wiser to wait for proper flash hard drives to become more affordable, which is happening currently.

mellon · Post by **mellon** » Thu Sep 06, 2007 10:37 pm

Eunos wrote:If someone makes software to spread the write cycles over the whole drive it could work for a main OS drive. Otherwise it would be wiser to wait for proper flash hard drives to become more affordable, which is happening currently.

There is absolutely no need for special software on the OS side of the system for spreading the writes. Wear leveling is performed on the CF card itself as the OS and drivers do not have direct access to the flash memory blocks. This wear leveling is already done on all decent quality flash drives that are meant to be used in computer systems.

Felger Carbon · Post by **Felger Carbon** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 12:56 am

On my second attempt, I got a Transcend 2G CF card (latest version) to work with a new Syba card. The Syba card I purchased almost a year earlier didn't work for some reason.

Once Windows had booted, it worked OK. It came already FDISKed and FORMATted - do not attempt to do this from DOS as you might with a standard hard disk. It's all one partition and "FAT" - FAT16 or FAT32 or whatever unspecified - or is "FAT" the floppy standard? No matter, it works.

Now the bad news. Your disks are evaluated in DOS before posting and the actual Windows boot begins. DOS does not trust the CF card as an IDE device and requires an additional ~3 minutes every time you boot.

I now use Corsair Voyager USB drives (flash) in backups, which was my intended use of the CF card. The boot problem is so annoying, the fact that writes were slow, and small-file writes were very slow, is beside the point.

VanWaGuy · Post by **VanWaGuy** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 2:13 am

I thought when someones first post started out hi friends, it looked like a sales pitch, and that is why I asked what was special about this particular adapter that was being pushed.

Frankly, the rear mount is of no interest to me. My typical systems have one IDE cable for optical drive(s) and one for hard drives. If I was building a system, and was sure I would never need a hard drive, then maybe this one would be OK, but I would rather have either an internal one mounted where the hard rives go, or better yet, cut a slot in a drive slot cover and set it up so it could load from the front. Rear mounted, it would be too far away from the hard drive slots if I ever wanted a combination of hard drive plus CF.

Of course, I was ignoring the claim of "very fast", as Felger has hit on.

qviri · Post by **qviri** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 4:45 am

This is advertising. I am not sure if it qualifies as spam due to how well-targeted it is.

Konnetikut · Post by **Konnetikut** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 5:03 pm

Yep advertising...check out his other posts.

Copper · Post by **Copper** » Sun Sep 09, 2007 6:09 am

Compact Flash isn't the best SSD solution. It's painfully slow. Affordable, but slow.

austinbike · Post by **austinbike** » Sun Sep 09, 2007 9:19 am

Flash? I just put in a 2.5" NB HD that draws ~1-2 watts, is close to silent and has 80GB of storage.

The tradeoff for this is too great to make it useable when there are better alternatives out there.

austinbike · Post by **austinbike** » Sun Sep 09, 2007 9:21 am

Oh, yeah, and the cost of the NB drive was $60, that is somewhere between the cost of a 4GB and an 8GB card.

Seems like trying to get my OS to work with 8GB would be a lot of headaches. The incremental benefit is so small that this discussion is almost moot.

eagleliu · Post by **eagleliu** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 7:14 pm

Copper wrote:Compact Flash isn't the best SSD solution. It's painfully slow. Affordable, but slow.

Perhaps you bought the CF card speed is very slow.If you use high speed CF card,it can start OS very quickly .

VanWaGuy · Post by **VanWaGuy** » Thu Sep 13, 2007 5:20 pm

and what of it's write speed?

Felger Carbon · Post by **Felger Carbon** » Fri Sep 14, 2007 7:23 am

VanWaGuy wrote:and what of it's write speed?

Write speeds for large numbers of small files are unbelievably slow. Write speeds for large files are merely slow.

autoboy · Post by **autoboy** » Fri Sep 14, 2007 11:08 am

I used CF in an embeded DOS comptuer on a vibration testbed. The entire computer was passive and vibration free. It worked well with DOS and Linux but I'm not sure how well it would have handled Windows

Felger Carbon · Post by **Felger Carbon** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:39 pm

autoboy wrote:I used CF in an embeded DOS comptuer on a vibration testbed. The entire computer was passive and vibration free. It worked well with DOS and Linux but I'm not sure how well it would have handled Windows

How long did it take to boot Dos? And Linux?

eagleliu · Post by **eagleliu** » Sun Nov 04, 2007 5:21 am

autoboy wrote:I used CF in an embeded DOS comptuer on a vibration testbed. The entire computer was passive and vibration free. It worked well with DOS and Linux but I'm not sure how well it would have handled Windows

I think it will be same speed in windows, but windows is too big,not suitable be installed in the CF card unless you can find CF card 40GB or more.

CF card as cheap harddisk isn't dream

do you use CF ide adapter before

CF card as cheap harddisk isn't dream

cf to ide adapter: back panel

CF card is not slow

CF card as cheap harddisk isn't dream now