d0gZpAw

Hi all, I posted this question in Silent Computing really for lack of a more specific category, but at least this is relevant.

I currently have an old Thinkpad 570 and I replaced the 2GB 4200rpm drive with a Transcend 133x 8GB CF card, and using a CF>IDE44 adapter I get about 22MB/s read sustained in U-DMA2 mode, however, the write rate is pretty low, and drops quite frequently, so running Windows sometimes seems laggy and unresponsive, whereas, other times it seems it responds unbelievably fast, like when there are no background tasks hitting the CF card for writes.

Getting frustrated with this, I ordered a Samsung M60 80GB 5400rpm drive for the laptop instead, but quickly found out that it somehow conflicts with the cd-rom drive in the Ultrabay, so whenever it is docked with the base, it takes far too long to detect the HD and CD on their respective channels than I am prepared to wait for. Using a jumper on the hard drive makes no difference, since both devices have their own channel.. primary master for hard drive, and secondary master for slave. After getting the OS installed and undocking from the base, it seems to work fine, but I would rather not have this issue when using the base, which I often do for charging the batteries.

Since the 5400rpm hard drive only increased my maximum sustained reads to 27MB/s (and not silent), I figure that isn't much of an improvement, so I'm wondering what speed Compact Flash I would need to be able to sustain at least 20-22MB/s write rate. I've noticed Transcend's 233x rated Compact Flash claims 40MB/s read AND write rates, but how does this translate in real life? I'm sure I could max the intel i/o's read bandwidth with 233x CF card, but how would I fare as far as write bandwidth? I really don't want to buy 300x CF, because it's a large jump in price for no real benefits where my laptop is concerned.

Anyone else out there using Compact Flash cards as SSD via an adapter in any setup?

DuckieHo

Check the CF read/write on small files (under 100KB). You are just benchmarking sequential or burst read/write. You'll see the CF gets killled. In addition, CF will wear out much faster than SSD or hard drives.

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