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Low power CF cards for drives

M

mobiux

2[H]4U
Joined
Jul 24, 2000
Messages
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I found these on ebay.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=162&item=5196813544&rd=1

Just wondering if anyone ever used CF cards to load an OS and fold from it.
Would probably use less power than comparable cdrom or hard drives.

I am currently working on setting up my farm, and have some lower end (500mhz) pc's I can add but don't want to spend $200 a month in electricity.
 
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Spectre said:
How many writes is CF rated for?
Click to expand...

I think it's at least a million, but if you were to map your data folder to a network drive, so almost everything is either in ram or on network storage.
 
mobiux said:
I think it's at least a million, but if you were to map your data folder to a network drive, so almost everything is either in ram or on network storage.
Click to expand...

Well it might work then I was just concerned about the write issue for flash if it was going ot be the primary.
 
I'd say PXE or cd boot would be better for this, esp. if you're going to map a network drive anyways. A cd is only going to draw power at boot time, and then once it spins down, it won't be used again until the next boot cycle.

Sure the cf convertor is cheap, and CF is pretty cheap now too. I still think it would be cheaper to boot off cd(or PXE is even better if supported). I have a box now that's 500MHz that I boot off cd. My next plan for it is to remove the video card for some further power savings.
 
Hito Bahadur said:
Best info I have found is about 1M read/write cycles.
Click to expand...

Depends on the age, brand, and the error correction/prevention scheme they use. I've seen numbers between 100K and 1M. And I've tried this - even turning virtual memory/swap drive off, I only got a few months out of a 512 MB CF card running Win98 before it died (and it was idle/off most of the time).

Besides, shipping is $9 on these anyway (that's how they make money, bring you in with a low price and make it up on the shipping). You might be better off with a laptop drive (about $20 shipped from e-bay) and an adaptor (about $6 from e-bay). Only uses about 2-3 watts and can be set to spin down. Do all your data saves across the network and the drive will rarely spin up. Plus it's alot faster than CF.
 
didn't think about the cheap laptop drive, that's probably a better idea.

so on that note, are xp-m's the cheapest, low power cpu's right now?
 
I want to play around with a Flash-based USB drive when I get a chance; it seems like it'd make a good media to put a network bootloader on, since it's cheaper and more reliable than floppies. Can someone with a flash drive and some spare time check out http://rom-o-matic.net/5.4.0/ and see if they can get any of the image formats to boot? If you can, let me know how you got it working via pm, email, or posting. I'll get to it eventually, but 9 to 5 is a big chunk of time.
 
mobiux said:
didn't think about the cheap laptop drive, that's probably a better idea.

so on that note, are xp-m's the cheapest, low power cpu's right now?
Click to expand...

It depends. There are several factors. When you factor in fixed costs such as case (optional), power supply (bigger, more expensive one needed for faster CPUs), mobo, hard drive (I like it for convenience), heat sink and fan(s), and KB/mouse or KVM, for initial cost, and CPU + mobo + accessories for electrical usage, these can dramatically vary your cost per point. Plus electricity rates vary, so these costs can vary. Remember that the mobo and accessories take power, and the PSU isn't 100% efficient.

Mobile XPs (especially 35 watt ones) are getting harder to find. Semprons might be cheaper initially, but you would have to crunch the numbers of power usage of CPU + mobo + accessories vs. speed to see if the increase in power usage makes up for decreased initial costs.
 
Still has a certain "coolness factor" to it...

Yeah... I'm folding on my compact flash drive... from my digital camera... yeah. :p

 
Fenris_Ulf said:
Mobile XPs (especially 35 watt ones) are getting harder to find. Semprons might be cheaper initially, but you would have to crunch the numbers of power usage of CPU + mobo + accessories vs. speed to see if the increase in power usage makes up for decreased initial costs.
Click to expand...

There is a spreadsheet around here that has that info......somewhere.
 
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