Headlines - RAIDON reveals do-it-yourself SSD solution

[HEXUS]

SSDs are dropping in price, but they're still too expensive for most users. So, how about a DIY CompactFlash-based solution instead?

Read more.

[Nelviticus]

That seems entirely pointless - you can buy a Compact Flash to IDE adapter for about a fiver. Want RAID? Buy two!

[Funkstar]

Does this enclosure mask the fact that many CF cards (*cough* SanDisk *cough*) cannot have Windows installed on them as they appear as removable devices?

That is the problem with pretty much all the cheap CF->IDE adapters

[directhex]

ehm... why can't windows install to removable disks? my data disk shows as removable to windows, and i've seen it offer to install to usb mp3 players before

[Funkstar]

There are details under the CompactFlash cards section of this ThinkWiki article.

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Compact_Flash_boot_drive

[Budding]

Don't CF cards have a limited number of read and write cycles? Doesn't that then mean that your HD will die on you after a month or so, since Windows pagefile will exhaust those cycles in no time?

[Funkstar]

From that article i linked to:

A often mentioned disadvantage of flash-based storage is the limited number of write cycles (typically 100,000 for the current generation Single-Level Cell (SLC) NAND, the type usually used in the faster CF cards). This should not however be as much of an issue because...
• The 100,000 write cycles applies to each address block separately in the card, not to the card as a whole
• The flash controller automatically distribute write operations evenly (wear leveling), so that the number of writes to each address block is kept low

Therefore, it should take years of typical real world usage to render a current flash memory card based on SLC NAND unusable

[Breezey]

Don't CF cards have a limited number of read and write cycles? Doesn't that then mean that your HD will die on you after a month or so, since Windows pagefile will exhaust those cycles in no time?

yes they do, making his utterly pointless, SDD drives dont have this problem

[koocha]

I'd like to know more about this. I've got loads of CF cards laying around. If it's cheap enough I'll get it just to have a play with

[Lanky123]

If you want something cheap to have a play with...

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.711

[TAKTAK]

yes they do, making his utterly pointless, SDD drives dont have this problem

well... yes... they do....

NAND flash drives currently have a write life of around 1000000 writes per block.... (the drives do, do wear leveling to distribute the wear accross the disk instead of one sector getting all of the writes etc...)

so yes... SSD's do have "that problem", hence why people installing XP onto eeePC's end up either disabling the pagefile or setting the pagefile to use an SD card

[koocha]

If you want something cheap to have a play with...

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.711

That is quite cheap...lol

[DJWillis]

If you want something cheap to have a play with...

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.711

This RAIDON unit seems to give you a nice case but very little else. Even the RAID aspects have been done before.

Devices like this have been about cheaply for many years. I have a solid state XBOX media centre that is setup using a device similar to the DealExtreme one that has been running for years and kiosk PC's and the like commonly use CF cards. The Compact Flash slot is after all in essence a mini ATA setup for the data side anyway. I have even seen bridge chips for putting MMC/SD cards onto IDE/SATA. That is a very cheap way to do this .

[jamadaia]

if its priced very sensibly (should be as it isn't much to it), then would definitely consider this. If just for convenience (just pop in place of a normal 2.5" laptop drive space) and the SATA/IDE flexibility.