Internal flash memory card reader with a SATA interface

[manno]

Hi I'm looking for a completely internal compact flash drive that has a SATA interface preferably, though I can settle for an IDE if that's all that's available does anyone know where I can find one?

-manno

 

[Roguestar]

These internal card readers usually connect to internal USB headers. Do you not have any free? I have never seen one that connects via PATA or SATA.

 

[manno]

I found one actualy, what I want to do is take 4 really fast flash cards and RAID 0 them, anyone know anything about this subject?

http://www.acscontrol.com/Merchant2/mer...-SATAToCFA&Category_Code=COMPACT_FLASH

 

[corkyg]

That is a very interesting concept. If it works, I'd try it and get rid of my USB C/F reader/writer. The speed increase would be significant.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: corkyg
That is a very interesting concept. If it works, I'd try it and get rid of my USB C/F reader/writer. The speed increase would be significant.

STR on most flash is only 20-30MBps -- well under the bandwidth of USB2.0. If you're just trying to copy files on/off, going through SATA won't make it much faster.

An adapter like the one linked above (they make IDE ones too) lets you use a CF card like a solid-state hard drive. However, you'll burn through the write cycles fairly fast if you try to use one for your swapfile or as scratch space, and STR isn't that great (though seek time should be quite good). RAID0 will get around the second problem but not the first.

 

[manno]

Matthias, yeah I'm not going to use it for the swap file. I've seen benches on ram based swap-files, and it turned out you were just as well off putting more ram in rather than going through the trouble of making a RAM-Drive.

I plan on RAID 0'ing 4 of them, and putting BF2(the game) on there, maybe the OS minus the swap file as well. I'm steering away from USB because it's limited to 66MB/s and I doubt that's per port, I'm fairly sure that's across the whole bus, unlike SATA, where the bandwith is per link.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: manno
Matthias, yeah I'm not going to use it for the swap file. I've seen benches on ram based swap-files, and it turned out you were just as well off putting more ram in rather than going through the trouble of making a RAM-Drive.

I plan on RAID 0'ing 4 of them, and putting BF2(the game) on there, maybe the OS minus the swap file as well. I'm steering away from USB because it's limited to 66MB/s and I doubt that's per port, I'm fairly sure that's across the whole bus, unlike SATA, where the bandwith is per link.

The total bandwidth available with USB2 depends on the controller. If it's a controller directly connected to the NB via PCIe, it could potentially be able to drive multiple devices at 400+Mbps at once. Over PCI, not so much.

But SATA/IDE will probably perform better if you want to RAID them.

 

[manno]

The problem is that USB2.0 on a good day with clear skys, and the wind blowing in the right direction is maxed out at 400Mb/s not 400MB/s. It would only deliver 400/8 MB/s == 50 MB/s that's why I want to go with SATA. And again I'm also concerned with the of read/write cycle lifetime flash memory has, and I wanted to know how long I could expect a set-up like this to last realistically.

Thanks!
-manno

 

[Roguestar]

Anecdotal evidence I've read suggests recent flash drives are good into the millions of rewrites, but if you're using them as a swap file who knows how soon you'd reach that barrier...?