Using Compact flash (CF) as an SSD

On a Vaio TX I installed a "64GB Transcend Extreme Speed 400x Ultra DMA" compact flash (CF). And just for fun I threw Windows 7 at it as well.

Here are the results.


CrystalDiskMarks score

Needless to say given, the wretched scores for 4K writes: Lots of hesitation.

Windows experience scores on the 1.3GHz single core were
Processor: 2.5
RAM: 4.1
Graphics/Gaming: 1.0
Hard drive: 1.9 - 5.5 (varied quite a bit over several trials)

 

Not all CF cards are equal.

Most of them are made for selling to photographers, where raw sequential write speed is what matters the most, followed by sequential read speed.
However, some are tuned for embedded device use, and have far better random access speeds and small write speeds, at the expense of sequential read/write. Those are pretty much like using an SSD.

But if you go buy the card with the highest NNNx speed, you can be fairly certain that it's of the former type, not the latter. Because to reach the high NNNx sequential speed it's advertised with, random access speed has been sacrificed.

 

Next task: try raiding them .

 

Prior to doing this experiment I tried to find out which would be best for small write speeds. I didn't find much hard evidence to help me decide so instead I just went with the old "whatever was on sale" approach.

Well, this one is getting returned in any case but Arth, if you or someone else knows of a specific CF that may give better results, I would be very interested in trying it out.

 

I actually did try to look into that using 4 micro sd cards in a RAID 0 compact flash holder. See this thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/481771-compact-flash-raid-0-a.html

Unfortunately, that unit does not seem to be available. It was announced in June 09 but then it looks like no one imported it, that I could tell.

I see the CR-7100 (which holds one micro-sd card) everywhere, but not the CR-7200.

There are raid approaches one can take, with CF, for 2.5" standard laptop drive form factor. However, 1.8" is a whole lot more restrictive.

 

Well, the Sandisk "Extreme III", "Extreme IV" and "Extreme Pro" marked cards are pretty good. But when a 64 GB Sandisk Extreme Pro costs $650 MSRP, it's not really worth it unless you have a very specific need.
Ritek (RIData) SLC cards are also pretty good.

 

Yea $650 is pricey, considering that the fall back position is a 1.8" pata ide ssd.
The "Photofast G4 Monster" is $600 in 128GB and $400 in 64GB. And from what I have read is quite speedy.

Product Listing Photofast 1.8 128GB V4 Micro-ATA SSD

The Runcore pro iv is $260 in a 64GB.
RunCore Pro IV 1.8" PATA IDE Solid State Drive SSD Compatible with but not limited to the Lenovo IBM ThinkPad X40 and X41 Detail Page

I also just found this link, which is pretty cool:

Mtron Mobi 3000 SSD Review