Has any one tried....

Has any one tried SOLID STATE Hard Drives or RAM DRIVES or Compact Flash? (I've seen it in 1/2/3/6 gb etc at not too wild prices)

I was reading around... I am setting up a new computer, and I found out about SOLID STATE Hard Drives... and I have to agree with what others have said...we need a speed boost in this department...2/3GHz CPUs and DDR 500 is great, but that HDD lets the side down everytime.

I know SOLID STATE Hard Drives are really expensive, but the are very stable! DROOL FACTOR = 10/10
Has anyone been fortunate enough to actually try one of these?
When I become a Millionaire I will have to buy a few of these!

I don't know too much about (Windows) RAM DRIVE I know it exists, and that you can use it to speed things up....but I have never tried it. (Any pointers would be greately appreciated)
Has anyone used it to speed things up?
What kind of boost did you get?
What do you put in there and what happens when you shut down, I'm assuming it gets written to HDD as you shut down.
(which I guess means a longer shut down and Boot)

I know there are the PCI RAM DRIVES, but I don't think they are so good due to the limitation of speed on the PCI bus and extra power needed. (ie. not much faster than a spinning HDD)


Now this last one (that I know of) Compact Flash is the one that is of most interest to me right now...

I'm going to rant and rave a bit... through around a few ideas I've been thinking about... it may spark up some ideas for you, and we can all share our ideas... and get better results.

Here goes...
Its easier to get hold of... for testing.
Its cheaper than Solid state (as far as I know 1GB ~£170/ 2GB ~£390/ 3GB ~£910) at least thats what I have heard, and has a few interesting options!

I know you can get CF to IDE adapters which would allow you to run your OS of a eg. a 2GB CF for the speed boost that it would give you, you could then use a "standard" HDD (the spinning type) for your data...
WHY?...
Because...
1) I havent seen 200GB Compact Flash around have you?
2) most of the time we are waiting for the OS or an app to load...they usually have lots of small files and large files so take time to load up...
while my data eg. word file is usually quite small and could come off a HDD in a flash! (Using seperate controllers - giving unristricted speed to the CF)
(thinking about that I would end up waiting for my data!... may have to find a way around that.)


Now the good things with CF...

No need to defrag, its lightning fast compared to spining disks, and less likely to die on you...
The other good thing I have heard about is that you can modify the system to shut down and boot up instantly, as CF unlike ram is non volatile ... don't know too much about this but i have heard that it can be done! So it works like a PDA!

A lot of "Black Boxes" (eg routers) use a CF with linux embeded, and it boots straight into a running system, you can make changes to the routers config and it is not lost when you power down.


I would love to hear form anyone who has any ideas... or who has experimented with any of the ideas/ technologies I have mentioned above.

Try to keep them serious/ do-able with current tecnology... No SCI-FI please.

Well from my experiances CF isn't all that fast at all. I mean take a look at digital camera's and that. You can use it as storage and such but running a OS off it seems unlikly because of the slow transfer rates from even the harddrive to the CF. Yes the harddrive wouldn't be a bottleneck with this if it can copy a 60meg file quicker then it could write it to the flash card.

The touble with CF in a camera is the camera itself. If you take a GOOD CF card and use it in a usb2 or firewire reader you get a huge speed increase.

But there's another problem with CF cards. They have a rewrite limit for their bits and bytes. It's something near a milliion writes but you might still have trouble. Esp if you put your swapfile on the CF card. And that would be the best place for it.

Hmmmm intresting now I didn't know that part. Well that would of helped out when I tried selling Digital stuff when I worked at Best Buy to know that card readers helped out in more then one way or another.

Now using a CF Card for a swap file has got me intrested here. I mean spending a few bucks to get a cheap card and reader to get a nice boost in preformance that could last a while would be a nice information to know.

Edit: But the rewrite limit would be a concern.

We use solid state drives at work, in panel PCs that are installed underground and need a s few moving parts as possible. Havent actually done any speed tests on them, but they dont seem all that much faster than a normal drive. Win2k probably boots around 5 secs faster than it used to on my own system when I had it installed. Opening applications wasnt really noticeably faster, and since all the PC did was run windows and some diagnostics/test software for the equipment it was connected to I didnt really have much chance to do much more with it. However, we first started fitting them around 9 months ago, and recently weve been getting them sent back suffering from heat problems. Granted, theyre in the sort of environment that youd never really recreate in your own home (deep underground in a mine, covered in coal dust, and sealed in a 2" thick steel casing with a load of high voltage switching equipment), but even so, that just shows that they are prone to overheating. Id say, considering the price, theyre really not worth it for a home setup.

I use CF cards in my laptop, they are pretty slow. Especially when writing.

Besides, everyone wants storage and not speed. If speed was more important, you all would be buying scsi.

No if money was no objective then web be all buying SCSI. Thats about the only thing SCSI lacks is high capacity harddrives for an affordible price. We are talking about 70+ Gigs here.

well the only way solid state drives will ever be worthwhile is when they are $100 per GB.
sound expensive? yeh it sure is but ya better believe to buy one now is $1000 per gb.
they are coming down tho.
they will also need pci express or be integrated into the mobos chipset like intel does with sata
pci buss just isnt enough for these drives at the moment thats why i think _slh_ is seeing the solid state drives at his work not much faster.
2 raptors in raid0 is all a pci buss can handle and nothing more.

many issues still abound but be aware this is where storage is headed.

I have used CF card in a camera and via USB(1) card raeder, and there is a vast difference in speed!

I haven't personally used the CF>IDE converter and will have to look up the sites where I have seen it and try to get some data, as to how fast it is.

BUT from what I know this enables you to go as fast as the IDE interface/CF card can handle ... speaking of which ... some cards are faster than others.

I am looking into RAMDrives (using current RAM) and am planning to do some testing soon ... will post my results.
WHY? ... Cause its FREE!

I will then look into the CF>IDE converter ... borrow my Dads CF card when he is not looking ... and test that Swap file stuff!
(IF I'm as smart as I think/hope ... thats the same as "Virtual Memory" right? ... in MS-Win98)

I'm one of the few people who have actually used SCSI and about the only good thing is the hot swapping.
I would have have to agree if SCSI perfomance was better and its price was raesonable it would make sense! ... But its not ... and it doesn't ... you cant get a 250/300GB drive ... and if you can it will cost you the EARTH and then some ... and for such a small performance hike!
SATA is already faster ... and its still in its dipers!

I'm one of the few people who have actually used SCSI and about the only good thing is the hot swapping.

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Also more drives per controller is nice. And the drives being able to talk at the same time is nice. And the performance is nice.

Also more drives per controller is nice. And the drives being able to talk at the same time is nice. And the performance is nice.

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True...but the performance is not that much better... not compared to the cost...actually, nothing is! They are just too expensive for what they are.

For some people the cost is worth it. I don't mind buying scsi stuff for my computer. It seems most of the time people don't mind paying a little extra for performance. Having a subsystem with less hassles is an added bonus.