IDE compact flash card vs IDE hard drive

[Link19]

Which is faster and how many times can you rewrite on flash memory because I hear flash memory has a finite number of wirte times? I ask becasue I'm thinking about installing a small version of Linux that will fir on an IDE Compact flash card.

Help greatly appreciated.

 

[AIWGuru]

You're in luck. I just so happen to have done some compact flash benches today.
These numbers are from two different cards as labelled. There are "extreme" cards out there which supposedly do 9 megs/sec write and 10MB/sec read but I'd have to see it on my own system to believe it.
Here are my benchies:
file size 224MB

USB 1.1
write:232 = 966KB/sec
read:296 = 757KB/sec

USB 2.0
Write:92 = 2.43MB/sec
Read:80 = 2.8MB/sec


Blacks (rebranded sandisk)
Write:6 = 2.08MB/sec
Read:5 = 2.5MB/sec

Cannon
Write:20 = 625KB/sec
Read:6 = 2.08MB/sec

 

[WackyDan]

IDE drive will win that race. AIWGuru's benchmarks are for USB.... doesn't notate using the PCMCIA adapter which from my understanding is faster than using USB. ( I use PCMCIA with CF now ).

Many of the Newer thin clients use CF to boot to a WIN CE/PE/Linux kernal. Boot is relatively timely, but you need to remember that these are stripped OS'es specifically tailored for a thin client environment. That sounds like it's going down the road you want to be on.....

 

[AIWGuru]

Originally posted by: WackyDan
IDE drive will win that race. AIWGuru's benchmarks are for USB.... doesn't notate using the PCMCIA adapter which from my understanding is faster than using USB. ( I use PCMCIA with CF now ).

Many of the Newer thin clients use CF to boot to a WIN CE/PE/Linux kernal. Boot is relatively timely, but you need to remember that these are stripped OS'es specifically tailored for a thin client environment. That sounds like it's going down the road you want to be on.....

No, my benchmarks are for USB and USB 2.0 high speed. (USB 2.0 HS is 40MB sec and I'm barely pulling 2.8MB/sec through it) In this case, the interface is not the bottleneck. Incidentally, I don't think PCMCIA is taht fast...There would be no difference. Keep in mind that the controller is on the CF card. this is one of its advantages. The fastest advertised CF card is 10MB/sec read and 9MB/sec write but the real world is probably much slower. That's got nothing on even the slowest hard drive.

 

[Ionizer86]

Hard drives have to seek, but their transfer rates are much greater. Flash doesn't seek, but sustained transfers are pretty bad.