compact flash as harddrive?

[batteriesnotincluded]

Anyone know how well these things works as harddrives?

I have a new laptop that takes a 1.8" hdd, which has the same interface as a standard CF card...

Just curious as to how/if they run as harddrives for systems.

 

[naro]

CF cards have limited write cycles. so if you want to install it on your laptop, you'll have to disable pagefile

 

[Lazn_Work]

Sure it would work just fine. However in most cases it will be much slower.

CF (or any current flash drives) have super fast seek times, but even the best ones pale in comparison to the slowest hard drives currently on the market when comparing transfer rates.

 

[batteriesnotincluded]

pagefiles are typically disabled anyway. Sometimes I leave them on my systems with < 1gb RAM (this one would have 512mb), but typically, I'm not doing anything that necessitates a page file.

this system in particular would be used in a car, or for typing stuff at school. an 8gb CF card would be more than adequate for my needs(I could get by on a 4gb, but I'd prefer the extra space, as it'd allow me to install GPS software as well). I doubt there would be substantial savings on battery life, as the display is probably the biggest user of power, and I don't really need the ruggedizing a solid state drive would offer me...but it's a nice thought (and I could take my 30gb and make it into a portable hdd)

transfer of data isn't that big of an issue after I get everything installed.

 

[batteriesnotincluded]

It's taking my computer 3+ hours to do a backup for the same amount of data that takes less than 40 minutes on my 5400rpm hdd.

would CF at least be faster than that? I don't really notice speed problems when I'm using it, but when I try and use Acronis to do a backup of the system, it just takes forever.

 

[Lazn_Work]

What speeds are you getting now? CF only works as hard drives in PIO mode, this means the fastest CF card (133x) gets about 20mb/s transfer rate.

 

[hjreggel]

Hi,

CF 3.0 already supported UDMA-4 and defined PIO-5 and PIO-6 in addition to PIO 0-4 (and the more or less useless MDMA-3+4 in addition to MDMA 0-2).

CF 4.0 added UDMA-5 and UDMA-6, so there's no limit through the CF standard, only the card and flash manufacturers are a little behind.

SanDisk already offer the Extreme IV cards with UDMA-4 and up to 40MB/s read. Lexar announced 300x cards with claimed 45MB/s. But these are only "consumer grade" cards, usually with 100,000 write cycles. The "industrial grade" cards are rated 1,000,000 write cycles, but these are hard to find at "current" speeds.

Hans-Jürgen

 

[hjreggel]

Hi,

I almost forgot to take a loook at the initial posting...

I have a new laptop that takes a 1.8" hdd, which has the same interface as a standard CF card...

Well, if it's a 1.8" harddisk with connectors that *look* like CF, then it's a Toshiba harddisk with 50-pin ATA interface. That's not CF comatible, it's similar to the 50-pin interface of 2.5" harddisks, mostly known as 44-pin ATA interface if you ignore the 2 missing pins and the 4 pins for master/slave (Pins A-F).

Hans-Jürgen

 

[Lazn_Work]

Hi,

CF 3.0 already supported UDMA-4 and defined PIO-5 and PIO-6 in addition to PIO 0-4 (and the more or less useless MDMA-3+4 in addition to MDMA 0-2).

CF 4.0 added UDMA-5 and UDMA-6, so there's no limit through the CF standard, only the card and flash manufacturers are a little behind.

SanDisk already offer the Extreme IV cards with UDMA-4 and up to 40MB/s read. Lexar announced 300x cards with claimed 45MB/s. But these are only "consumer grade" cards, usually with 100,000 write cycles. The "industrial grade" cards are rated 1,000,000 write cycles, but these are hard to find at "current" speeds.

Hans-Jürgen

Cool, I didn't know this.

 

[batteriesnotincluded]

Hi,

I almost forgot to take a loook at the initial posting...



Well, if it's a 1.8" harddisk with connectors that *look* like CF, then it's a Toshiba harddisk with 50-pin ATA interface. That's not CF comatible, it's similar to the 50-pin interface of 2.5" harddisks, mostly known as 44-pin ATA interface if you ignore the 2 missing pins and the 4 pins for master/slave (Pins A-F).

Hans-Jürgen

ah.

I had it lined up next to a CF card, and it looked like all the pins lined up, other than 2 plastic studs that go into a hdd.

given that the laptop and hdd in question are a Toshiba, I think I might as well give up on this idea; however, it does support PCMCIA hdds, in which case I could keep the CF card in the PCMCIA/CF Adapter I have, and dual boot.