build your own flash drive

[Zap]

I saw something that seems very interesting...

SANS DIGITAL CR2T compactstor compact flash CF to 2.5" SATA spanning / mirroring Enclosure

This appears to be an enclosure that can hold two Compact Flash cards and has a form factor of a 2.5" SATA notebook drive. Thus, you can make your own flash drives. Now, I wonder how fast this would be compared to commercially available solid state notebook drives? It certainly kicks some price butt though!

64GB solid state drives starting at $900

32GB solid state drives starting at $500

Build your own:

Sans Digital CR2T adaptor $90
16GB 233X Compact Flash memory $68
32GB 233X Compact Flash memory $140

233X sounds fast to me, since the cheapest ones listed were 40X. How fast are these really?

So, to do a 32GB solid state drive, one adaptor and two 16GB for $226. To do a 64GB solid state drive, one adaptor and two 32GB for $370. Still a bit pricey, but a fraction of the cost of a normal solid state drive.

 

[myocardia]

I actually thought about trying that with a single CF or SD card, just for fun, until I realized how few writes those cards are good for, along with how slow they write. I've decided to just wait until the price of true SSD's become affordable.

 

[T9D]

You can get a SSD for $299 now that would perform much better. It's on the front page of Anandtech today.