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| I would like to use a compact flash as a hard drive in a bartop cabinet, but... |
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| newmanfamilyvlogs:
That price for the SSD sounds like quite a ripoff.. I linked to a 16gb Kingston SSD earlier for around $55. At least this would support wear leveling and be much faster than the CF. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139428 The SATA->IDE Adapter I've bought a bunch of is around $18 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812240012 Obviously you've already got the other hardware, so it's not a big deal, but I'm really surprised to hear that price on the SSDs. The 128gb SSDs I've been buy at work have only been running around $230 Anyway, great to hear EWF is working. (: |
| milkit:
im confused as to why you'd need a 1tb 2.5 segate drive vs a 16gb Cf card... Why 1tb? get a smaller 2.5 drive.. you dont need 1tb! I mentioned hyperspin before bc u said you needed win xp to run it.. i really would say drop the flash card idea and get a real HD. |
| jukingeo:
--- Quote from: cotmm68030 on June 20, 2011, 05:43:07 am ---That price for the SSD sounds like quite a ripoff.. I linked to a 16gb Kingston SSD earlier for around $55. At least this would support wear leveling and be much faster than the CF. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139428 --- End quote --- Ahhh, so they DO have them smaller with a smaller price! I was looking on Amazon, perhaps that could be the reason I came across the more expensive ones. Now this thing with the 'wear leveling' is that automatic or do you need something special (like a program) that does it? --- Quote ---The SATA->IDE Adapter I've bought a bunch of is around $18 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812240012 Obviously you've already got the other hardware, so it's not a big deal, but I'm really surprised to hear that price on the SSDs. The 128gb SSDs I've been buy at work have only been running around $230 --- End quote --- Yeah, that is a 128gig drive and a nice ridiculous price attached to it too. Too expensive and I don't need it. Basically in terms of of the OS, programs and data, I would be looking on the order of about 4gig. That is it. Even my jukebox library of MP3's on my main computer clocks in at about 10gig. So a 16gig drive would be more than enough for most stand alone applications. --- Quote ---Anyway, great to hear EWF is working. (: --- End quote --- Yeah, so far it 'looks' like it is working fine. While I am still looking for a monitor program, I was told (in several places) that there is probably no need to, with the EWF on, there should be NO write activity to the drive. So that is good news. But what is makes it even more cool is that it has that funny side effect in which it actually lets my Jukebox program perform BETTER on a RAM deprived machine. I am going to have to try a larger catalog as I only have about 30 songs loaded in at the moment. --- Quote from: milkit on June 20, 2011, 09:04:45 am ---im confused as to why you'd need a 1tb 2.5 segate drive vs a 16gb Cf card... Why 1tb? get a smaller 2.5 drive.. you dont need 1tb! I mentioned hyperspin before bc u said you needed win xp to run it.. --- End quote --- Precisely! I DON'T need a 1t drive. I was being sarcastic in my post. As for Hyperspin, yeah, I was stretching the idea of running it on the 16gig Compact Flash, but I think that might be 'pushing' it too far. It probably will not work on my Compaq Eve test bed. However, one thing I didn't mention as of yet is that I have a couple Intel motherboards to use for my projects: http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Dual-Core-Mini-ITX-Motherboard-BOXD525MW/dp/B0041RSC94/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1308621064&sr=8-1 These motherboards do not have a fan for the CPU. So no fan, SSD hard drive, get it? NO NOISE! Thusfar I don't really have a need for an absolutely dead quiet computer, but after my tests on the Compaq with Compact Flash, it is pretty eerie to NOT hear the rev up and whirring of the hard drive. --- Quote ---i really would say drop the flash card idea and get a real HD. --- End quote --- What would be the point of that. Anyone can do that. I wanted to do something 'different' this time and I had the hardware to do it. I wanted to see what I could do on an OS level and if it was possible to still use Windows XP. For my applications the performance exceeded my expectations with using an inexpensive flash card. But now that I have answered that question, I am curious if I could do this with Linux too. Like I said, it is a 'project' and I now believe it is entirely possible to have a low capacity ssd drive made from an inexpensive to moderately priced Compact Flash card and an IDE or SATA adapter. But it is true, with that Newegg link that cotmm68030 posted, it does seem that there are moderately priced SSD's that could do the job too. I would need to get some kind of IDE/SATA USB bay for ghosting operations though as one of the requirements of this project would be to duplicate the setup once in place. Thanx, Geo |
| MonMotha:
--- Quote from: jukingeo on June 20, 2011, 10:04:24 pm ---But now that I have answered that question, I am curious if I could do this with Linux too. --- End quote --- Look up aufs. It appears to be a successor to/rewrite of unionfs. Basically, in your initrd/initramfs, you mount the / partition read-only in an alternate location, create a ramdisk, put a filesystem on it, mount that read-write, then mount them on top of each other using aufs with the result being writable (copy-on-write), with the writable storage being backed by RAM. That then becomes your new / partition once the system pivots out of the initrd and starts init. You're essentially doing what EWF appears to do on Windows. It is in fact even possible to replicate the "thaw and commit" behavior with some scripts. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/aufsRootFileSystemOnUsbFlash may have some useful info, but it's a bit dated. http://www.cianer.com/linux/81-read-only-root-partition-with-aufs is an article that may be more up to date. Note that those instructions use a tmpfs rather than fixed size ramdisk with "real" filesystem for the writable filesystem. You can do this, and there are some advantages, especially on RAM starved systems, but there are some problems that can rarely occur and are difficult to diagonose. For extremely compact systems, which are common in embedded devices, you can sometimes just cram the entire system into the initrd/initramfs. This has a lot of downsides, but it's pretty darned simple. You're not going to be able to cram a standard Ubuntu build into an initrd/initramfs realistically, though. |
| nox771:
--- Quote from: jukingeo on June 20, 2011, 10:04:24 pm ---Now this thing with the 'wear leveling' is that automatic or do you need something special (like a program) that does it? --- End quote --- It is automatic, I believe most modern flash devices will have some variety of it - Wear Leveling --- Quote ---These motherboards do not have a fan for the CPU. So no fan, SSD hard drive, get it? NO NOISE! Thusfar I don't really have a need for an absolutely dead quiet computer, but after my tests on the Compaq with Compact Flash, it is pretty eerie to NOT hear the rev up and whirring of the hard drive. --- End quote --- IMO that alone is a good enough reason not to want a HD. However for those suggesting it, what is the motivation for an actual HD? Barring CHDs or some such, running classic games is hardly an I/O intensive operation, doesn't MAME entirely load the ROM set into memory? If so, I don't see a performance need there at all unless a flash based setup is seriously detrimental to boot times. |
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