Booting OS from CF

[Dorkenstein]

Any of you do this? Any advantage/perks to it? Thanks.

 

[996GT2]

Well, I'm considering it since I recently got a new Zen Vision M. The HDD in my old Dell was a 5GB Seagate ST-1, which has the CF form factor. I've tried booting from USB in the past, and this is pretty much the same thing (if your card reader is USB)...it's better than booting from LiveCD because you can make changes and save files easily without losing them on the next boot up.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Dorkenstein
Any of you do this? Any advantage/perks to it? Thanks.

If your motherboard/BIOS can boot from USB drives, it's easy to do.

Unless your OS is designed for it (using virtual RAM disks for scratch space, etc.), it's generally not a great idea. Flash drives have a limited (but usually pretty large) number of write cycles before they start to have problems... running an off-the-shelf desktop OS off a flash drive will kill it much more quickly than normal use would, even with write leveling. But, I mean, you're talking months to years instead of years to decades.

 

[Dorkenstein]

Well I was going to get the CF to SATA gizmo from Addonics and slap a big flash card in it. Would it have any practical use or should I use it in a firewall box or something? Thanks.

 

[Seekermeister]

The only advantage that I know of is that it would allow you to use a nonowned computer with the system setup as you would prefer. But then, I've never done it, so there may be other pros or cons.

 

[Seekermeister]

As a side note, I noticed where that Corsair has a 16GB drive, but it costs $299. I'm wondering if it has the same number of life cycles as the smaller ones. If so, that would be a pretty expensive drive.