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.


[img]http://www.pcadapter.cn

I've done just that. I have a 8GB CF card in an IDE adapter as my boot drive for MOS. It works well, but I dont notice a huge diffrence to tell you the truth.

I remember of a similar thread in a.org. Someone in there said that the only disadvantage to this, is that the number of times that you can write on the same "sector" of a CF is limited. After a certain amount of rewrites it becomes a bad sector.
Another one is that a CF is a little more expensive than a HD of the same capacity. But as you said, they are becoming cheaper.


[ Edited by AmigaMancer on 2007/8/30 4:32 ]

I really wonder where this common "Flash is faster than HD" myth comes from...

Sure, spin-up is "much faster" (since there isn't any) and seek time is also faster, BUT actually writing or reading data is usually a bit slower. Not that significantly for an average user, but definitely "not faster"

Also, 8-16GB is way too small for many users (myself included), but I guess that it still might be enough for some users, or thin client systems, which mount The Big Drive over network connection.

Also, many filesystems tend to write certain data (edb, directory structure etc.) at always exactly same position on the disk (different from files themselves, which just are "written where there is space"). This combined with the limited write cycles can make those more important parts of the disk fail first.

[ Edited by Jupp3 on 2007/8/30 12:42 ]

Modern CF hae some "walking" mechanism inside, which swaps the programmed cells, even in case you allways write to the same block.

the problem of CF is the slow speed on writing and reading .. the later often caused by problems with dma.

Nevertheless for MorphOs CF is very interesting.. but for Vista you can forget it .. just like Vista

As Judas said, modern CF Cards are more intelligent. Theroretically there is a limit of several 100.000 write accesses per cell. So after ten year of regular usage as harddisk replacement you might put it into trashcan. But normal harddisks mostly don't live any longer.

When I got my Peg more than three years ago I tried to start to use a CF-Card as HD replacement for the first time. But it didn't work for me.
While Linux/PPC and AmigaOS Classic seem to work with most CF->IDE-Adapters MOS seems to be very specific. I couldn't find an CD-Adapter/CF Combo that is recognized by MOS at all and is available in the Union.
There are several threads at MZ already with this topic.

Maybe Acill could tell us, which CF-Adapter and which CF-Card he uses ?

yes,the price at present is a little more expensive,but the price of CF card down year after year,so I think the price will more cheaper in future years.As I know,CF to IDE adapter is very cheap in our country.

Edit: Forget it. I was just thinking loud...


[ Edited by AmigaMancer on 2007/9/4 7:06 ]

Hi
If you look at this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompactFlash
you can read about the new CF 4.0 standard that supports IDE Ultra DMA
133 133MB/s.
I'm not sure if u can buy this drives yet, but if you can it's enough
speed for us:)

But I can't open your attached website http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompactFlash
, can you attach one photo again?

[ Edited by eagleliu on 2007/9/13 10:38 ]

To Kempaboy

Hi,your link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompactFlash still can't be opened,I really interested in this products,can you send me photo?

Quote:

The link works perfectly.
You can try go to www.wikipedia.org, select english, and then search
for compactflash.

I was just wondering, by what logic could a CF card be used as a CHEAP harddisk?

I mean... Sure, you can't buy new hard disks in sizes comparable to (=as low as) the sizes of the cheap compact flash cards, those are the HD sizes you get for free from anyone, if you just ask.
And when going upto the "lowest size new HD", the matching compact flash card (with an adaptor) is way more expensive.

But your website still can't opened,I don't know why.Can you advise the manufacturer website to me?

Could you guys please tell me what the brands / references of your CFs and CF->IDE adapters are ?

Here, tried a 2 GB Transcend "133x", but, I didn't manage to get it recognized by MOS (SCSIConfig cannot figure out its specs). Of course I did remove the MBR. Strange thing is that, the OF sees a Fat32 partition.

I also did try to install an amiga partition table under gparted/linux. Did not help :)

cheers,
mahen

[ Edited by mahen on 2007/12/20 19:01 ]

Up ! ;)

Can't anyone give me references of CFs that work properly on Pegasos with CF->IDE adapters ? :)

Didn't manage to get my Transcend 133* to work. I have some slower ones that do work on my A1200 with the same kind of adapters :)

cheers

The brand of IDE-CF adapter is SINTECH, they are professional manufacturer of cf to ide adapter,their website:www.cf-ide-adapter.com .For CF card, we often use SANDISk.

[ Edited by eagleliu on 2008/1/31 22:55 ]

[ Edited by eagleliu on 2008/1/31 22:59 ]

@eagleliu:
Thanx for the information.
Did you actually use it succesfully with MorphOS ?

As you seem to work for that country, you might be able to tell me, if these adapters are distributed in the Union and if so under which product name. A search through online shops here for the term "sintech" didn't deliver any offers.

if you want to buy,you can logo the website and find Eshop to buy directly.It is very easy to order.

So that's a no? You haven't tried them with Pegasos or MorphOS?

Thanks

I can't find any link to buy some samples , please give a link to eshop so I can buy it , thanks

I am using a 8 GB CF card and a card reader. Total price: 36 Euro (without shipping).

The result is a amazing. Massive increase of the boot speed and application launch speed. The entire system feels much faster.

I installed the entire system and all applications on flash. I used around 50% of the card.

The best thing is there is no fragmentation, so if you update files there won't be any speed loss. My harddrive is only used to store media data and other stuff.

My oppinion is that using a faster (more expensive) card will increase this amazing speed even more. 30 Euro for my card or 130 Euro for a little more speed boost. Not worth it. I'll wait until prices go down and update to faster and bigger cards.

Geit


[ Edited by geit on 2008/6/8 17:27 ]

@geit
What 8 GB CF card and card reader do you use? model and name please.

Well, the card reader type doesn't matter at all, as its just an passive element without any electronics. Fake features like "supports booting" or "DMA capable" can be ignored as the Adapter only converts IDE to CF connector. Important is to buy an "angled" version. There are versions where a plug is in line with the reader. These versions are also known as "direct plug", "vertical version" or "main board plug version". Don't buy those, as you will loose the opportunity to connect a secondary IDE device like a CDROM. Angled versions have the same connector as used on hard drives.

http://www.geit.de/tmp/cf2ide_1.jpg
http://www.geit.de/tmp/cf2ide_2.jpg

The compact flash card is just no name card. Just make sure you get a version supporting DMA. The faster the better, but even the slowest will increase your system speed massive.

Just pick the best combination of price and size that fits your needs.

Geit

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Of course, it's like a hard disk with amost zero seek time. Different thing is writing. Writing flash memory is very slow compared to reading, but again, it's very fast compared to a disk drive, of course. Better read a lot and write as less as possible: Perfect for storing programs, bad for documents.

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The benefit of using small operating system and applications!

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That's a very good choice. Computers should separate "important things", like programs and configurations, from user stuff, that is better kept in massive volumes.

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Indeed there's fragmentation. It's the same filesystem down there, only that, having almost zero seek time, fragmentation has very little effect.

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If the controller's software allows for it. What's more interesting, is that modern flash cards (the cards have certain abilities, I'm not talking about the controller) have clever ways of reusing cells, so they are picked as fresh as possible when writing. No more burning of the same cells again and again, which renderes them unusable after some thousands of operations.
And that's below the filesystem level, of course. Naturally, you can't predict in which exact cells your data will be written, but you normally never care for that.