Why hasn't someone done this before me?

rrjwilson

New member
SSD drives are the fastest possible but they should be with that sort of price tag. So after reading about the new Samsung units I simply got annoyed because it's too much money for something we can build for half very easily.

Compact Flash cards are the largest format you can get (apart from USB keys which are no use anyway). They run the same as SSD drive but do not just fot on the end of the IDE or SATA connector. The other problem is they are still pretty weeny is terms of size 32Gb is the current highest with SanDisk tempting with a 64Gb one soon.

RAID 0 strips information across many drives to gain information in several pieces to increase transfer rates. So the speed of two drives is better than the speed of one drive.

Now here is the idea. RAID 0 SSD drives for the ultimate in storage. Surely this would create the ultimate in storage performance. So how can you create this ridiculous performance master piece of bodgery.

Compact flash card to SATA adaptors are readily available from loads of shops including the wonderful eBay.

Compact flash cards are available from...everywhere almost (I can even buy them at a local corner shop now).

Most motherboards have on-board RAID controllers for your pleasure. As well as 2 port and 4 port PCIe cards being easily found for just a few coins (£8 and £22 respectively round here).

As long as you can mount all this together then you now have to format the system to take advantage of this benefit. Of course card size is important too. Let's assume you have 4 spare ports (or that is what you want to use).

4x 4Gb = 16Gb - doesn't even make sense 16Gb card is cheaper than 4x 4Gb

4x 8Gb = 32Gb - still not sound investment but its looking better but 32Gb isn't even slightly near a good enough size.

4x 16Gb = 64Gb - Raptor territory now prices look good but are we sure everything will fit :S

4x 32Gb = 128Gb - Now your talking, right size and half the price of a 32Gb Mtron SSD drive

4x 64Gb = 256Gb - Come on SanDisk we want this NOW!!

If I could afford it, I would buy:

CF-SATA adaptor

32Gb CF card

1Tb Samsung F1

Total cost: 4x £6 + 4x £74 + 2x £93 = £506 inc VAT and delivery

Four of CF stuff and two spinpoints (well the other drives stuff has gotta go somewhere ain't it.

What you guys think :D
 
This was done recently, there was a thread on it. Its pretty flawed price wise and CF cards have a limited R/W scope, which would be used up very very quickly when used for an OS
 
It works well, but its not as fast as the Samsung SSD's and such like. Cf cards arn't as rugged as the proper SSD's, and wont last as long.
 
SSDs should not be as fast as the CF in RAID 0 simply because there is WAY more bandwidth as it is more than one drive (ie the reason to go RAID 0). Access time will be no different because they are the same, SSDs are just USB sticks in a 3.5in case and different connector.

The only problem is as you have said the longevity. So what is the average operation time for a CF card?
 
There must be a way to make this thing work. I'm almost tempted to try it with small CF cards just to see its longevitiy. Even if I bought it now though I couldn't set it up for about a month :(

Expensive part is the CF cards so smaller ones would make an ideal test bed. It looks like the average wrtie cycle period is 10,000 so it would probably be used up VERY quickly. No harm in trying though I suppose. How cheap can you find a 4Gb flash card?

Perhaps a continuous benchmark until failure will give us more idea of the longevity.
 
SSD's work in a kind of raid anyway, thats why the bigger capacity drives you get the faster they are.

It MAY work, but for how long, who knows :S
 
Help then I need cheap 4Gb CF cards

I've bought two CF-SATA adaptors from the above source as they look like i can mount them together easily. I have a C2D e6600 and P5N-32 just sat here so I can use that for this. I'll set the RAID 0 and get it running 3DMark06 until it dies or has someone got a good transfer tester i could use?
 
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