CF card for local disk, video files to network?

[jonm]

I've had an idea about replacing the hard disk in my PVR PC with one of these:

http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=16

fitted with, say, a 4Gb CF card. I thought I could run windows off that,
and then have GBPVR save its video files straight to the server upstairs via a network share.

Has anyone here done something similar?

It's a quest for a silent PVR with no moving parts, and would reduce power consumption too hopefully.

Jon.

[martint123]

I thought there was a finite lifetime with flash? ISTR something to do with erase/write cycles??

[jonm]

Ah. That doesn't sound good. Could be an issue

[amckee]

I thought there was a finite lifetime with flash? ISTR something to do with erase/write cycles??

There is...from what I understand, it can be done and your disk will last awhile though. (Not sure how long) You'd make sure windows doesn't use a page file along with other tweaks to reduce the reads/writes.

Another factor to consider is speed...from what I understand, cards will slow you down. Personally, I'm really itching for a Gigabyte I-RAM. Here's a link for it. Only problem is it's a lot more expensive than a CF card + adapter

[AlexHeylin]

I have a vague plan to do something similar using a 4GB Memory Stick Pro Duo in a USB2 convertor. Any real life experience of doing this would be very useful.

[Squid]

I thought there was a finite lifetime with flash? ISTR something to do with erase/write cycles??

Dell is selling a 32 gB flash hard drive in one of the new laptops. I wonder how they are dealing with the similar problems.

Squid

[nia]

A plain laptop drive in stead of the suggested flash will be inexpensive and next to noiseless - you can probably make it totally inaudible very easily. And you can make one run on more or less any new or old mobo straight off the normal HDD-interface.

I like the concept of a flash based PC though. Laptops are even starting to be sold here in Denmark based on flash disks (but alas - quite expensive).

But a quiet 2,5" drive will buy you a solution until the flash disk market matures - both technologically and from a price point of view...

Just my 2 c

/Niels

[RangerBob]

Dell is selling a 32 gB flash hard drive in one of the new laptops. I wonder how they are dealing with the similar problems.

Squid

We're using them here at work.

The answer is that the write cycle endurance is still sub 1 million times (but getting better), but the wear levelling algorithms that these devices use, means that with 32GB to wear level across, it takes ages for each cell to reach these limits.

Compact Flash uses the same algorithms, but back when a large CF card was 512Mb you could thrash a drive into the limits pretty quickly (been there, done that), what with Windows page files and the like.

With 32GB you could be trying to rewrite the same file on the drive continuously, and thanks to the wear levelling , I think (remembering from the PR fluff) it would still be on the order of years to start hitting the minimal limits.

We were thinking about using CF drives instead of these SSD drives (when we were looking, the cheapest 16GB 2.5" SSD was a couple of grand!), the killer with compact flash is it has an abysmally slow read/write speed. We contemplated raid 0 or some other arrangement to try to speed them up, but ultimately now you can buy 32GB Samsung SSD's for under £300 now.

They are pretty good for what we need them for (shock endurance), but I was hoping on a bigger power saving and faster transfer speeds. They're still more efficient and a bit faster, but not enough to justify in a desktop environment.

If its speed you are looking for, may I also suggest I-ram cards; they'll boot windows XP in around 8 seconds! Not cheap though, and don't turn the power off for more than 16 hours, they lose their memory! Been trying to liberate one from work for a while now, no such luck!

[camdecoster]

I recently got a CF-to-IDE adapter and was thinking of putting my old ipod mini microdrive in as my boot drive. This page has some tips on how to speed things up, http://mason.gmu.edu/~sfiorito/eXPinstall.htm. I was wondering if anyone went forward with their plans and tried this out? How did things go? Would a microdrive be too slow? Could I install GB-PVR on the microdrive and save all the recordings to an IDE drive? Any help would be appreciated.