• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Compact Flash to IDE adapters from eBay

They're passive adapters. IE, they don't involve any fancy circuitry that can be skimped on, just rearranging wires. So it would be pretty hard to mess them up. Do post results of whatever you're doing :) (I'm guessing SSD?).
 
444 said:
They're passive adapters. IE, they don't involve any fancy circuitry that can be skimped on, just rearranging wires. So it would be pretty hard to mess them up. Do post results of whatever you're doing :) (I'm guessing SSD?).
Click to expand...

Well i'm going to be putting together a NAS box later this year (don't know when, exactly) but in general i'd just like to try it out. I have a crappy, old, and clicking IDE drive that I wouldn't mind replacing right now.
 
Actually, now that I think about it, what would be the best use for flash in a Windows environment? Should I try installing Windows directly on it? Or maybe use it to install things that don't do many writes (games)? Maybe something else?
 
The repeated writes issue is the reason I haven't done anything with this yet...I know it's been improved, but I don't really know to what degree. On the other hand, flash is getting cheap enough that having to replace them every couple years isn't a horrible prospect.

Basically, install whatever you want sped up. But remember that flash << RAM the same way that HDD << flash. It could be murder on load times. Wonder what size flash drive is the cheapest per GB right now...with these adapters as cheap as they are, there's no reason not to get several 2xCF controllers and software RAID a slew together. Hmm. :D (150X cards seem to be a tad over $10 per GB shipped regardless of size)

Note: find a way to have everything on the flash routinely backed up to HDD...just in case...preferably on a rotating basis in case some bits fail so it doesn't just copy the bad data over the good. Or keep the master on the HDD and re-image the flash occasionally.
 
I hope to have my hardware installed by this weekend.

I'm getting my 8 gb CF card for $92.99, or $11.62/gb, from Newegg. The is a 266x CF card.

Once I have Windows XP loaded, I'll do some benchmarks, and post them.
.
 
Holy crap, hadn't noticed they come in 266x yet. :eek:

Thanks, any quantitative results you can post (as well as your subjective impression vs. HDD) would be appreciated.

Normally the benefit with flash is that (like memory) there's no appreciable seek time as you can just retrieve data by address. 266x translates to 40MB/s read-write...approaching realistic hard drive transfer rates there. For comparison:

250_transfer.png
 
ashmedai said:
with these adapters as cheap as they are, there's no reason not to get several 2xCF controllers and software RAID a slew together.
Click to expand...

Interesting, i hadn't thought of that. Unfortunately I only have two IDE ports available and one's taken by my burner. Would these dual adapters work? What kind of performance would I be looking at?
 
_leech_ said:
Interesting, i hadn't thought of that. Unfortunately I only have two IDE ports available and one's taken by my burner. Would these dual adapters work? What kind of performance would I be looking at?
Click to expand...

I think they count as separate IDE devices (although they only have one shared plug) because I read something about one being Master and the other Slave (hmm...), so if you don't have two device slots free on that controller you might want to look at a PCI controller. Remember, #ports < #devices controllable usually (two is normal for onboard controllers, some can go higher but also take different cables). However, then you run into the usual problem with IDE RAID...it sucks because the Master & Slave devices on a given controller have to take turns! So, I was looking more for ones that come in SATA. That, and who wants ugly IDE cables when alternatives exist...:p
 
Well I got the SATA CF Hard drive adapter and installed a 2 gb CF (60x) card I had into it.

I installed it into my laptop and loaded Windows XP Media.Center Edition. It was slow. Surprisingly, I got it all on the 2gb CF. There isn't much left for any updates. I ran XPLite, which removed some files, giving me more space.

It works, though slowly, but not that bad, surprisingly.

I hope to get my 8 gb (266x) CF card today and load Windows XP Media Center Edition on it and then run some benchmarks, as well as see how long my laptop battery lasts running it.
.
 
Well I got my 8 gb CF today.

The 266x is a lot faster faster than the 60x, that's for sure.

Anyway, I got Windows XP Media Center Edition fully loaded w/no problems, and room to spare.

Benchmarks:

HD Tach 3.0.4.0

Burst Speed = 43.8 mb/sec
Access = 0.5 ms
Average Read = 40.3 mb/sec

Sandra Lite

Read Performance = 42 mb/sec
Random Access = 1 ms

Any other benchmarks that someone wants me to run?

This CF seems to be working pretty good. It's not super fast of course, but very tolerable.

Oh, and I've been running on battery for an hour and half, and counting.

Hardware: An Alienware m5550 laptop w/a 2.0 GHz Core Duo cpu, 2 gb DDR2, and a Nvidia GO 7600 video.

Update: The laptop was still running after approximately two plus hrs, when I fell asleep. I'm lucky to normally get an hr or so, w/a regular HD installed. So there is an improvement using CF as a HD, at least w/my laptop. I realise that this is a general test, and not very accurate. All the battery saving features were also shut off.

Oh by the way, there's no measureable heat being giving off, that I can feel. It takes energy to create the heat, so that is a sure indication of an energy saving feature of the CF as a HD.

If anyone can suggest a sure test for tesing battery life, I'll try it.

http://www.addonics.com/support/user...e/adsahdcf.pdf CF to SATA adapter for $35.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820211164 8 gb (266x speed) Compact Flash for $92.99. A 16 gb is now available, but it's only a 40x. :(
.
 
Running a OS on a flash card will kill it pretty damn quick, with the system using it for swap and all. Limited writes, remember?
 
c.d.e said:
Running a OS on a flash card will kill it pretty damn quick, with the system using it for swap and all. Limited writes, remember?
Click to expand...

Durability -Minimum 10,000 insertion/removal cycles

MTBF > 1,000,000 hours
.
 
GoHack said:
Durability -Minimum 10,000 insertion/removal cycles

MTBF > 1,000,000 hours
.
Click to expand...

Insertion/removal cycles refers to taking the card, putting it into a reader/camera, and then removing it; MTBF is MEAN time before failure--that is, AVERAGE time before failure. Your use of the card is certainly anything but average. However, I'm not one of those people who say "OMFG, ur gonna kill ur lappy".

I would anticipate you getting a pretty decent run out of the card, but I (and I'm sure a lot of other people) would like to know when this thing does crap out.
 
_leech_ said:
I need a couple of Compact Flash to IDE adapters and eBay's the cheapest place I can find them. Anyone have any experience buying these from eBay? Is it worth the risk or should i just spend $15/each at some online store?
Click to expand...
I got mine for really cheap, guy was in china shipped it over to me. I used it for my m0n0wall installation, worked perfectly, couldn't be happier. I was really surprised at how well it worked for me.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top