SDHC raid

Mariner · Post by **Mariner** » Thu Jun 26, 2008 7:02 am

Spotted on a different forum:

http://www.photofast.tw/eng/SSD_CR9000.html

Ooh, interesting.

lor77 · Post by **lor77** » Thu Jun 26, 2008 10:37 am

Really really interesting reading!!!
Wonder how much it will cost?

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Thu Jun 26, 2008 1:17 pm

6x Class 6 "Veho" 16GB SDHC cards providing 96GB of capacity are Â£200 cheaper than a 64GB Samsung SSD.

If this device costs Â£100 you would be hard pressed to persuade people to buy into this, unless it "realworld" performance is actually good, and it is actually reliable and problem free.

I await a review to make up my mind about this product.

Andy

MoJo · Post by **MoJo** » Thu Jun 26, 2008 5:44 pm

It would be nice if the link was to an actual web site, instead of just a big flash animation.

Still, potentially very interesting.

sandos · Post by **sandos** » Tue Jul 29, 2008 12:15 pm

Unfortunately, atleast cheap usb sticks are terrible performers with random access write times of 100-200 ms! Thats about 10-20x slower than disks. Also, there are these but for CF, I think CF might perform better honestly. Those dont do any RAID though, youd have to do that elsewhere by buying multiple adapters.

MoJo · Post by **MoJo** » Tue Jul 29, 2008 1:07 pm

A RAID card with cache RAM would probably do the trick, but to be honest by the time one came to market and had all the bugs ironed out, SSDs will most likely have become affordable anyway.

Spare Tire · Post by **Spare Tire** » Tue Jul 29, 2008 9:37 pm

I suspect the power consumption will be like there's never an idle state.

ziphnor · Post by **ziphnor** » Tue Jul 29, 2008 11:44 pm

Very interesting, perhaps just the thing for a HTPC that streams video from a server (ie it only needs OS plus a few programs installed).

There are several other products out there offering CF raid, but so far i had only seen 2xCF if a SATA interface is needed:

http://www.lycom.com.tw/ST138.htm
http://www.sansdigital.com/compact-flas ... /cr2t.html

Anyone know what the price is of the Photofast or where its available from?

Elijah86 · Post by **Elijah86** » Wed Jul 30, 2008 9:00 am

I see this the other day looking for 3.5" SBCs. http://www.tri-m.com/products/engineeri ... ature.html

Really cool how you can use miniSD cards.

Dirge · Post by **Dirge** » Fri Aug 01, 2008 4:00 pm

What makes a SSD such as the one mentioned from Samsung special compared to CF / SD or USB flash drives?

kakazza · Post by **kakazza** » Sun Aug 03, 2008 3:54 am

6 SDHCs in a RAID0,... so if one breaks, you lose the data on all of them. AWESOME.

As for the difference between SDHC and SSD: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4258

ziphnor · Post by **ziphnor** » Tue Aug 05, 2008 12:20 am

kakazza wrote:6 SDHCs in a RAID0,... so if one breaks, you lose the data on all of them. AWESOME.

I dont really think that one SDHC failing much earlier than the rest is that likely. Regardless, this might be a very nice storage solution for a HTPC that streams media from a server on a network, in this case only the OS and playback software is installed on the HTPC itself while the valuable media is on a server in a closet or basement.

If a small-form factor I-RAM like device was available allowing maybe 8gb of space i would go with that for building a HTPC, even though it is even more volatile.

As for the difference between SDHC and SSD: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4258

Thats not really a fair comparison. A $3400 SSD vs a single (ie not in RAID as discussed here) SDHC card!

Try and take the results from the above review and multiply them with a factor of 6. In this case the RAID SDHC would beat the SSD on read speed, and get similar write performance (for large block or file sizes or whatever is the unit on the rows in those benchmarks). But it does look like it would perform very poorly wrt write speed for small sizes (ie the row 0.5, where write performance is REALLY bad, the best SDHC yielding 153 vs. 6k for the SSD).

toronado455 · Post by **toronado455** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 2:59 pm

toronado455 · Post by **toronado455** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 3:01 pm

Elijah86 wrote:I see this the other day looking for 3.5" SBCs. http://www.tri-m.com/products/engineeri ... ature.html

Really cool how you can use miniSD cards.

I like that. Has anyone tried it?

How about this?
http://www.gizfever.com/ide-to-sd-mmc-m ... p-241.html
It supposedly supports SDHC.

CTT · Post by **CTT** » Wed Dec 23, 2009 2:20 am

I had a try at using a CF card (supposedly SLC) with an IDE adapter as a makeshift SSD for the OS (WinXP). It didn't really work.
I tried aligning the partition, removing the swap file and all sorts of tricks but in the end it was still stuttering (and yes, it was working in DMA mode - some adapters only support PIO mode).
It might be ok for a home server and even a HTPC, but not for everyday work.

I guess a card's controller is a whole different bread from the one in a SSD; after all cards are meant for storage not intensive I/O.
RAIDing cards will improve sequential transfers but it's of little to no use for small block random operations.

toronado455 · Post by **toronado455** » Wed Dec 23, 2009 12:29 pm

CTT wrote:I had a try at using a CF card (supposedly SLC) with an IDE adapter as a makeshift SSD for the OS (WinXP). It didn't really work.
I tried aligning the partition, removing the swap file and all sorts of tricks but in the end it was still stuttering (and yes, it was working in DMA mode - some adapters only support PIO mode).
It might be ok for a home server and even a HTPC, but not for everyday work.

I guess a card's controller is a whole different bread from the one in a SSD; after all cards are meant for storage not intensive I/O.
RAIDing cards will improve sequential transfers but it's of little to no use for small block random operations.

Yeah, I agree 100% on that. I wouldn't try it with Windows. But I am considering it for use as the boot drive in a NAS box as a cheap, low-power, low-noise alternative to having the OS on a HDD.