How to use flash memory to boot on?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Charles
  • Start date Start date
C

Charles

Hi,

My OSes take too much time in my opinion to boot (FreeBSD & Windows). I think booting on a flash
memory whould dramatically increase boot delay. Am I right? Do you know another way to do this? Do
you know how to boot in less than 5 sec. for instance (beside the standby mode for Windows)?
Do you know where I could find documentation on the Internet to configure the computer to boot on a
flash memory?
Thanks,
 
Charles said:
My OSes take too much time in my opinion to boot (FreeBSD & Windows). I think booting on a flash
memory whould dramatically increase boot delay. Am I right? Do you know another way to do this? Do
you know how to boot in less than 5 sec. for instance (beside the standby mode for Windows)?
Do you know where I could find documentation on the Internet to configure the computer to boot on a
flash memory?
Click to expand...
You'd be surprised! Compact Flash is actually slower than hard drives. Their
access time is almost instant but transfer rate is only around 3MB/s. My
company builds industrial computers based on Lex mobos that have 3 IDE
interfaces, 3.5", 2.5" and CF. Booting from CF is wonderfully silent but is
no quicker than booting from a hard drive. CF cards suffer from slow write
cycles and have limited life of around 100 000 erase - write cycles and
currently their maximum capacity is 1GB which is insufficient for a
practical installation of Windows or Linux.
 
Wow... Good to know. It should be improved in the next years I hope...
Thanks,

--
Charles.


"Alien Zord" <[email protected]> escreveu na mensagem
| | > My OSes take too much time in my opinion to boot (FreeBSD & Windows). I
| think booting on a flash
| > memory whould dramatically increase boot delay. Am I right? Do you know
| another way to do this? Do
| > you know how to boot in less than 5 sec. for instance (beside the standby
| mode for Windows)?
| > Do you know where I could find documentation on the Internet to configure
| the computer to boot on a
| > flash memory?
| >
| >
| You'd be surprised! Compact Flash is actually slower than hard drives. Their
| access time is almost instant but transfer rate is only around 3MB/s. My
| company builds industrial computers based on Lex mobos that have 3 IDE
| interfaces, 3.5", 2.5" and CF. Booting from CF is wonderfully silent but is
| no quicker than booting from a hard drive. CF cards suffer from slow write
| cycles and have limited life of around 100 000 erase - write cycles and
| currently their maximum capacity is 1GB which is insufficient for a
| practical installation of Windows or Linux.
|
|
 
Charles said:
Wow... Good to know. It should be improved in the next years I hope...
Thanks,
Click to expand...
You're welcome.
I have supplied a few firewall systems to customers running IPcop on 256MB
CF modules but I there I have not enabled the transparent proxy because that
could write more than 1000 times a day to the CF (it records every file from
every web site visited) and thus make the CF only last 3 to 5 months.
Without it the only thing that gets written are the log files and the swap
file so CF cards should last years.

Note: SanDisk already have 10MB/s cards but don't mention life expectancy.
Samsung are coming with 1 million erase cycle lifetimes and 2GB capacity so
yes, there's hope in the future.
 
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