Your next drive will be solid

[Nerfherder]

I also thought that if it is on IDE it will be seen as a normal hard drive. But it seems the guys at SanDisk had an ace up their sleeve and after 8 hours of cursing and stuffing about in the registery it finally dawned on me that somehow windows is detecting that this drive is removable, and it only happend when I use SanDisk - not when I use dodgy brands like Adata (which I do like actually).

Then it was only a matter of time before I laid hands on the bit setting tool for SanDisk CF cards Now I have XP running on a 4GB CF card and it is pretty fast.

That sucks a bit... i'm not looking for a higher grade sloution.

16 gig would be great though as the current drive is 20 gig.

 

[Rouxenator]

I found that many CF brands are not reliable enough and will intermittently fail to boot, etc. Using high-grade CF's fixed this.

Roux, your experience?

I can fully agree with that. I did a little "stress testing" on a cheap 4GB Adata Speedy CF card. I bought it in May for R200 (cheapest 4GB at the time) and used it in a P2 266Mhz PC that ran BOINC on it 24/7.

I defragged the drive daily and changed the swap file size every week or so and then did a PageDefrag on it. At the start of this month (after about 4 months of usage) it hanged during a PageDefrag and when it rebooted it would hang while loading.

I popped it into another PC via a USB reader and did a LLF on it, then back into the P2 PC and tried to re-install XP, bombed while copying install files. After that I could not pick up the card in any device, not even an old Canon S1 IS camera (which handles 8GB elcheapo cards like a dream).

So in short, when you want to use flash memory to build your own SSD - got for the big names like SanDisk and Kingston.

 

[Rouxenator]

True, but I found some just not booting at all, Kingston and Transend I could not work with at all. XPE sorts the write back issues and increases the life of your card.

Maybe there will be tools for those cards as well? All it is a small program that changes the ID bits of drive. Windows knowns what bits to look for when it tries to determine the drive type.

That sucks a bit... i'm not looking for a higher grade sloution.

16 gig would be great though as the current drive is 20 gig.

Perhaps try the Kingston 133x 16GB option ? Should cost below R600 if you take an adapter with it.

 

[DDV TECH]

I can fully agree with that. I did a little "stress testing" on a cheap 4GB Adata Speedy CF card. I bought it in May for R200 (cheapest 4GB at the time) and used it in a P2 266Mhz PC that ran BOINC on it 24/7.

I defragged the drive daily and changed the swap file size every week or so and then did a PageDefrag on it. At the start of this month (after about 4 months of usage) it hanged during a PageDefrag and when it rebooted it would hang while loading.

I popped it into another PC via a USB reader and did a LLF on it, then back into the P2 PC and tried to re-install XP, bombed while copying install files. After that I could not pick up the card in any device, not even an old Canon S1 IS camera (which handles 8GB elcheapo cards like a dream).

So in short, when you want to use flash memory to build your own SSD - got for the big names like SanDisk and Kingston.

Thanks, I'm sure I will be in touch again for that app

V3G what brand do you use?

 

[Nerfherder]

It sounds like a good option..... How easy is it to get to SA ?

If you have a link to a good seller can you post it please.

 

[Rouxenator]

It sounds like a good option..... How easy is it to get to SA ?

If you have a link to a good seller can you post it please.

For any type of flash memory use this guy : stores.ebay.com/flashman852
Sometimes you get the stuff in less than a week which it pretty good considering it comes in from Hong Kong.

 

[Nerfherder]

Thanks !

Just a question... why don't you use USB flash ? Is it slower or is there no interface that supports it ?

 

[Rouxenator]

Thanks !

Just a question... why don't you use USB flash ? Is it slower or is there no interface that supports it ?

Many reasons, firstly CF cards are cheap and they can "talk" IDE natively, USB readers have controllers in them to translate it into serial.

Also, many of the old systems in which I install these drives cannot boot from USB. I even used a CF card in a 386 at some stage and you will never get USB in a 386. Also, very few computers have USB ports inside the case. The CF adapters I buy plug directly into the IDE port on the motherboard so they safe space and look nice. They also support two card per adapter (master/slave).

 

[DDV TECH]

I have a feeling you will like some of the toys I have, when you ever come to the strand, let me know.