Compactflash

Post by **Sparkfist** » Fri Feb 04, 2005 9:28 pm

Has anyone here mess around with using a Compactflash card as a hard drive. I'm thinking of getting an adapter to use one with linux in my laptop I was wondering if there is anything I should be aware of.

This is where I'm getting it from. http://www.pcengines.ch/cflash.htm

P.S. I saw on pricegrabber.com that the new 8gb cards at about $825, just incase somone was looking to spill money in to making the Xbox portable and lighter.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sat Feb 05, 2005 12:01 am

Flash memory has limited finite write cycles, so dont expect to use it with an operating system that requires virtual memory. That'll toast the card in short order. If you do want to use it under Linux, turn off VM or move it to another volume. Also, use one of the filesystems specifically designed for flash cards, like jffs2.

sam · Post by **sam** » Sat Feb 05, 2005 12:21 am

Who are you and how do you know all this.

Post by **Sparkfist** » Sat Feb 05, 2005 3:34 am

Anonymous wrote:Flash memory has limited finite write cycles, so dont expect to use it with an operating system that requires virtual memory. That'll toast the card in short order. If you do want to use it under Linux, turn off VM or move it to another volume. Also, use one of the filesystems specifically designed for flash cards, like jffs2.

Ok thanks I've run around Damnsmalllinux.org and linuxquestions.org's forums trying to find info about how to do it. Thanks for the tip about limited write I wasnt sure if it had that or not.

Guess I'll be getting something like a USB adapter for that laptop then so I can save stuff to that instead of the CF.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sat Feb 05, 2005 1:44 pm

If you just want small, well, IBM/Hitachi Microdrives work quite nicely in those CF->IDE adapters too.

Post by **Sparkfist** » Sat Feb 05, 2005 3:04 pm

Yeah well money's something dear to me, more so because I have limited funds (seems to be a trend around here). If its more than sya $40-50 I'll pass.

I also talked to my teacher as class today and he said as its a live distro I'm using all I really have to do is copy the boot file and really any of the apps I want to it. He thinks it should be simple enough, though he's never done anything like what I want to do. It also seems that when it comes to doing this anywhere people are not as frequent to give too much detail or follow up with if they got it working or not.

Anyways I'm just going to put it on a 64mb card, then get a usb PCMCIA card and use my usb thumb drive to save files, with 128mb toting around really just/only text files I'll have pleanty of room.

P.S. I'll be sure to follow up with how I did it in this thread to anyone courious about how I did it or wanting to do it as well.

Post by **SpongeBuell** » Sat Feb 05, 2005 4:04 pm

ya know, you may not have the write limitations if your CF is a microdrive one, not solid state.

Post by **Sparkfist** » Sat Feb 05, 2005 4:32 pm

Well to see what I could find, pricewise about the Microdrives I went to pricegrabber.com. The cheapest I found was a 340mb one for $51.xx shipped. As tempting as it is to buy I think I can make due just saving everything to an external souce, atleast util I can afford a Mircodrive. But that wont be until I get a job this spring/summer. Remember, I'm trying to make due with what I have at hand, and with as little expence as possible.

SgtBowhack · Post by **SgtBowhack** » Sat Feb 05, 2005 6:20 pm

This is apparently the post my computer doesn't want you to see (various things have screwed up twice during writing it).
In short...
I agree with the idea of using a CF drive and a thumb drive as your drives. I think that's a good way to go about things. You may also want to go with a second CF card and a CF card reader, so you can just swap cards should something happen or you have money for a yet larger one.
Microdrives are all well and good but suffer from the same problems hard drives do - they can die at any time. I'd say regular CF is safer (and cheaper in smaller sizes!)

Edit: Ordering direct from them means shipping from Switzerland. Not too cheap. Plus that $10 price for the items is a lie. But! There is some hope. If you need that specific design, you can get it from http://siliconkit.dnsalias.com/cart/tcfdp.html for $21 shipped for 1, or less if you buy more (or get someone like me to go in on it with you)

Even ordering 10 from these guys ($136 shipped) is less than direct from PCEngines.

Edit #2: I don't know why I didn't check eBay but they have them way cheaper. $11 shipped ($10.50 for each additional). Just type "CF IDE" and a bunch come up. They even have ones that take 2 CF cards and map them to one IDE channel... but not sure if they map them both to master or slave or if one is master and one is slave. It's got a jumper but it isn't exactly clear how it's used. Anyway, just thought you might like to know

(Edit 2.5: "The CFADPTHD has 2 CF sockets, one connected as master and one connected as slave. Master and slave can be swapped with a on card jumper." - taken from a description of a similar device)

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sat Feb 05, 2005 11:44 pm

Yeah, the microdrive will take as many writes as any hard drive will. The write issue is inherent to all flash memory, so USB flash drives are also affected by it. I would say that at minimum you'd want a 256mb CF card to run Linux decently. DamnSmallLinux is a good distro for this sort of thing, definitely.

Pricewatch lists 256mb CF for $19, so dont get anything smaller.

SgtBowhack · Post by **SgtBowhack** » Sat Feb 05, 2005 11:55 pm

Yeah, I was just looking at DSL. I'm wondering if I can run a MythTV box with 512MB and no virtual memory. Then I'd probably put it on a 256MB CF card. Otherwise I'll just use a small hard drive for the OS and virtual memory partitions.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sun Feb 06, 2005 12:32 am

MythTV and the libraries are kinda large, alltogether. Get a hard drive. You dont need a fast one, 5400rpm units are fine for simple video recording/playback. Keep the OS partition separate from wherever you decide to put the output files, and you'll do fine. 512mb ram is more than enough, you could probably do it with 256 easily. I dont think DSL is a good distro for MythTV, it probably lacks too many libraries and other things to handle it well. Fedora Core supposedly works good with it, and you can config the installation very well with its installer.

Post by **Sparkfist** » Sun Feb 06, 2005 8:32 am

SgtBowHack, in responce to Edit 3. I know but they all seem to come form either China or England I was hoping to find a supplier that was in the States.

To your question about hardware requirements.

I personally dont know what mythtv is so I'm not sure if it is supported, all I'm sure of is that DSL focuses mainly on i386 machines (or higher).

SgtBowhack · Post by **SgtBowhack** » Sun Feb 06, 2005 3:40 pm

Sparkfist: Unless you're in a rush, there's not too much difference. I've ordered from China and haven't had any problems with stuff like this. Plus they have very nice feedback ratings, so I think it's probably OK

MythTV is a PVR application (something like TiVo) for Linux. You can use a remote and as many TV tuners as you have space/power for, and do various wacky stuff with it

Like, if you have a REALLY powerful computer, you can record a bunch of programs on it at once. It's also a front-end for various other apps.

I've decided to try my luck at Linux from Scratch when I've got time. It makes for a really optimized system with low space, lowest processor usage, etc. (all of these things are important when building a PC for strictly media).

Guest: Yeah, I kinda noticed that

I have a 40GB hard drive that I was planning on using just for the media (recording and stuff only- I can grab MP3s over a network share). That would be dumped off of the system every few nights onto my main PC, so I think 40GB would be more than enough. I'm thinking what I'll do is put the main OS and all that junk on a 6GB hard drive I have that is dying (bad data in one spot that I partitioned in such a way that nothing touches it), back up the necessary partitions and then restore them on the 40GB if something should happen (and then consider getting a new HD). I'm not all that concerned with ultimate performance, but I'm willing to do what I can to get what I can

Post by **Sparkfist** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 10:24 am

I didnt look at the link you had before SgtBowHack but I found the same sight and they have the adapter I want http://siliconkit.dnsalias.com/cart/tcf44.html

So I'll most likey but one from them.... unless your buying so then I might go in with you on that. But the total for what I want is $26 shipped. So hopefully by March I'll have DSL running on my Laptop.