@yahoo.co.uk" <
[email protected]>
wrote:
Put two cards in a RAID0 for OS.
Put third card as pagefile, temp files for OS, browser temp
files, application scratch space if needed.
this is excellent advice, thanks
I notice some high end (DMI supporting) compact flash to IDE adaptors
have slots for master and slave. So I can put 3, even 4 in, if 2 IDE
connectors.
of course, USB slots are more freely available and more numerous.
Since I am not booting an OS for the 3rd card. Would a USB flash drive
be OK for the "third card" ?
I guess the RAID is expensive if RAIDing 2 fast cards.. so I might do
your other suggestion of 2 cards not RAIDed, but with OSnApps on the
faster one.
In this case, the partitioning, rather, I mean, separate modules,
would be for preservation of data..
Actually, if I was RAIDing, wouldn't I need 4 cards not 3 ?
2 for the OSnApps. 1 for scratch. One for Data.
Your suggestion missed out the data one.
BTW, out of interest, it sounds like you've done this before.. Whta
was your reason.. I know you don't have a problem with fan noise, so
that's not it.
Aren't these even more expensive? Perhaps I'm not clear on
what you meant above about "8GB_ solid stateflashdrives
are a bit expensive", at first I had assumed you meant an
8GB CF card but now I think you mean an 8GB SSD instead.
CF cards are fine..
You're right, the IDE Flash modules are more expensive.. a bit more.
http://linitx.com/viewcategory.php?catid=126&pp=126
I think maybe the marketting is such that you have smaller capacity
ones called IDE Flash Modules, that prob aren't 2.5" or 3.5". And
Bigger, capacity and size, are solid disk drives. All flash drives
though, and all solid state.
I was just looking at the IDE Flash modules because they tend to have
better write endurance. But the high end CF cards, sometimes marketted
as industrial, have write endurance to match them. like 1-4 million.
I'll look at CF cards now.
I notice there are SD cards too.. still Flash. Alot cheaper than CF. I
guess they prob don't do UDMA.
Their endurance probably isn't much if any better than a CF
card using SLC chips... there are only so many chips out
there they might use.
WinXP is only an OS, we still dont' know the use of the
system and even if you said "browse internet" it can vary a
lot from one person to the next how much writing that is.
You can also set up a ramdrive, there are some out there
that support at least 1GB (I dont' recall the max but I know
1GB is possible because I have 1GB set up with one). IIRC
the one I used was mentioned and d/l linked here:
http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/05/27/free-ramdisk-for-windows-vis...
this is fantastic..
On a related note, I also found this..
Gigabyte iRAM - It's A physical RAM disk
PCI Card, takes RAM modules.. And it seems, actually stores the data..
(dunno how it does that, without losing it)
Somebody posted that he can boot windows xp in 5 seconds with it!!!
It wouldn't have the write endurance problem either.
A bit expensive, but not bad.. One of these cards, and alot of RAM
lying about, could go a long way.
They claim limited support, just Gigabyte motherboards that use one of
a bunch of certain supported southbridges..
I haven't spoken to anybody that has one,
But I have heard , from those that don't have one, that it should
work on any motherboard with a PCI slot.. Because it is essentially a
SATA drive, that just gets its 3.3V of power from PCI, and transfers
data through a connected SATA cable.
If you were setting it up in a worst case scenario with only
one card, no ramdrive, not disabling pagefile, etc - I dont'
think anyone can really tell you because everyone seems to
think about their optimizations when they do it. I don't
remember finding anyone who has actually worn theirs out
yet, so if you were to use all possible optimizations
including 3 cards w/SLC chips of good excess capacity, a
ramdrive, and have a vaguely typical XP use, in theory you
could get a minimum of a few dozen years out of this config.
I'd consider it more a question of whether you can disable
virtual memory, whether there is enough main system memory
available including consideration of whether your particular
apps reserve a lot which can vary quite a bit. On one
system I'd disabled virtual memory on, it ran fine like that
for whatever I wanted to do, until I kept getting a
mysterious crash in gaming. Finally after fiddling with
drivers and checking overheating/etc I finally turned
virtual memory back on and it clearly resolved the problem.
Also, how much you actually use virtual memory (regardless
of how much of it is allocated, since allocation <> actually
writing that much data to it) makes quite a difference. You
might have 500MB used as shown in Task Manager but
practically none of that written with data, or you might
have quite a bit written if the system doesn't have much
physical memory. In summary, whether you have pagefile
enabled or not matters a lot less than how much physical
memory you have vs the jobs ran.
ok.. so for win xp. "PF Usage" in task manager..performance, would be
of practical relevance to that - if I wanted to monitor it a bit.
Besides the XPe option. And the windows xp for legacy pcs option you
mentioned.
You mentioned earlier about moving the location of the temporary
folder used by applications.. on a per application basis. I found the
program "Process Monitor"(a combination of those old sysinternals
programs, filemon and regmon). It intercepts all registry changes and
file writes. It's prob clearer though. I can filter by paths
containing C:\ or whatever drive, and thus see all the file writes.
Regarding moving the Windows "Temp" directory.. (I think a good idea
is to have %TMP% and %TEMP% pointing to te same place)..
I find IE writes not just to
c:\docu..\user\Local Settings\"Temporary Internet Files",
but within Local Settings, it also writes to LS\Cookies, and some,
maybe IE too, writes to "LS\Application Data".
It may be better to just move the whole Documents And Settings
directory..
I found one or two links on that.
http://www.tech-recipes.com/windows_tips1409.html
Of course.. it seems with XPe at least, I won't have to work on an
application basis.. Any writes go to HDD gets intercepted and
redirected - it seems - and go to RAM.
It might also be possible to get a write filter like the one on XPe,
onto Win XP Pro. I think I saw it mentioned on this forum
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/mp3car-technical/
I would do as mentioned above, leave virtual memory enabled
but set to use a different CF card than the one upon which
OS is installed.
That would wear out fast..
But
I guess it's important that that should be CF3.0/4.0 So, UDMA too?
'cos Windows would be accessing that alot..
So I guess that doesn't save on price.. It just preserves the card
holding my data.
Possibly. Consider the scenario where you might have 1.5GB
of space taken by the OS (though with XP, that would be a
pretty lean installation) and a 2GB card. Ignoring loss due
to formatting and definitions of a GB varying between binary
and decimal, let's say you have 512MB left empty. Now let's
say you wrote 1GB/day to this drive, it means you wrote
every area twice if the wear leveling was perfect.
Now contrast that with a 4GB card, which would have approx
2560MB free. Writing 1GB/day to this one you have written
to each about 0.4 times. 2/0.4 = 5, the 4GB card would last
5 times as long.
If an area is unusable the OS should mark it as bad if the
controller didn't itself. I don't recall the exact
capabilities of the controller and don't recall ever seeing
any way to get statistics, I don't think Smart is supported.
No, it wears out much slower if more speed is due to being
SLC chipped or wears about same speed if not since you're
still writing same amount per use.
It seems that the ones with good endurance, are transcend, emphase,
innodisk..
where they advertise the endurance.. and ideally, the version of spec.
sandisk - prob because of their end user market- do not advertise it.
So even newegg do not list it in their specification. But I notice the
prices of their CF cards (not their SD cards).. Are the same as the
big names..
Approximately $12.5 per GB. $25 for 2GB. 50 for 4GB ..
funnily enough, sandisk forum don't know
http://communities.sandisk.com/
"or" better
http://communities.sandisk.com/sandisk/ , and their
telephone technical support don't know the write endurance or CF
spec.
I
We don't know how much capacity you need, nor the prices
there. With that budget I would look for at least two 4GB CF
cards.
That would be fine.
Kind of an open end issue, all you can do is look at where
it writes a lot and see if you can designate a different
location of not being able to turn it off.
You may be overly concerned about the write cycle
limitation, even if you used low endflashcards with the
least # of write cycles possible you can still get 16GB or
more offlashmemory for $80... at least in the US they've
dropped to about $60 and up for the slower ones, but I feel
those might be a little too slow for many uses and would
suggest you get at least two 2-4GB cards with SLC chips and
CF4 spec. It might be a little over the budget but IMO the
best thing that comes close in the states would be a couple
of these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820208418
For a little less but half the capacity and a speed
reduction,
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820208296
nice.. I notice they are transcend also.. 266x and 300x. 2GB and 4GB
newegg are very good, showing the spec
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820208418
newegg..418
TS4GCF300 300x 4GB Transcend. $52.99
CompactFlash 4.0 compliant, UDMA 0-5, default 5.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820208296
newegg....296
TS2GCF266 266x 2GB Transcend $24.49
CF 4.0 supports PIO mode 6, UDMA mode 4
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820208297
TS4GCF266 266x 4GB Transcend $44.99
CF 4.0 supports PIO mode 6, UDMA mode 4
amazon sell some cheap transcend. I notice they are SD - secure
digital though. Not CF.
And no doubt no UDMA.
TS4GSDHC6 4GB
10UKP inc PnP (like $20)
TS2GSDC 2GB
5UKP inc PnP (like $10)
If you're sure you don't want to RAID a couple, you might
get one of each to come in around $80, putting OS & apps on
the faster one.
There's also a hack for XP where you can set up a write
filter from XPe so reduce or eliminate writes to the
HDD/CF-as-HDD. Google may find more info on that. Windows
For Legacy PCs seems to be a distant relative inbetween XP
and XPe (more like XPe but with most basic PC user features
enabled?) that might also allow turning off some features
that cause HDD writes, but I expect that if you use decent
SLC chippedflashcards of ample capacity that you won't
have it worn out in a few months of regular use, it should
be a few years at least, if the system isn't totally retired
by then.
yeah.. I guess if using flash, dealing with this on an OS by OS basis,
I may as well.
are there laptops shipped with SSD drives using windows xp with
virtual memory and eating the drives? The average end user would not
have done any of these optimisations to protect the drive.
many thanks
