Booting w/ a flash drive

[Jon Davis]

It would seem that a flash drive with a Serial ATA interface would be the
way to go for installing the operating system. I've been wanting to do that
for years, but the capacities of flash drives have only recently come done
enough to where this is feasible. There are 4GB IDE flash drives available
now for like $400... not bad when you consider how expensive 128MB flash RAM
was five years ago.

Does anyone know of any problems one would run into that I might not have
thought of? For instance, is there a limit as to how many times you can
read/write with flash RAM, or if so is the number smaller than a mechanical
hard drive? Also, I notice that my 128MB USB flash drive is a lot slower
than my hard drive, but I figure that's because of USB 1.1 backwards
compatibility. But is it possible that perhaps flash RAM is significantly
slower than standard RAM? And what about the interface; will mechanical hard
drives' transfer rates ever exceed the bottleneck of the fastest interface
(i.e. Serial ATA, or whatever's faster if anything), and if so what would be
the point of switching to a flash drive?

Might also like to move the swap file over to this drive.

I'd like to hear people's opinions on booting from a flash drive. Might even
like to know about large RAID configs... whether for increasing the capacity
or increasing the speed.

Not much about computer hardware thrills me anymore. Graphics card
technology has accelerated so fast that the fun is gone. But this stuff ...
this stuff is the last lingering concept that still thrills me.

Jon

 

[kony]

It would seem that a flash drive with a Serial ATA interface would be the
way to go for installing the operating system. I've been wanting to do that
for years, but the capacities of flash drives have only recently come done
enough to where this is feasible. There are 4GB IDE flash drives available
now for like $400... not bad when you consider how expensive 128MB flash RAM
was five years ago.

Does anyone know of any problems one would run into that I might not have
thought of? For instance, is there a limit as to how many times you can
read/write with flash RAM, or if so is the number smaller than a mechanical
hard drive?

Yes, that is one of the reasons very few people use flash drives.
Typically they'll withstand 10,000-1,000,000 write cycles. Best use would
be to put a swap file or any other often-accessed files on a ramdrive of
system memory instead of the flash drive.

Also, I notice that my 128MB USB flash drive is a lot slower
than my hard drive, but I figure that's because of USB 1.1 backwards
compatibility. But is it possible that perhaps flash RAM is significantly
slower than standard RAM?

yes, it is much, much slower... another reason why few people use flash
drives. IIRC the peak is still under 10MB/s.

And what about the interface; will mechanical hard
drives' transfer rates ever exceed the bottleneck of the fastest interface
(i.e. Serial ATA, or whatever's faster if anything), and if so what would be
the point of switching to a flash drive?

Well it's a chicken-or-egg situation. IF the interface were much faster,
the drives could be redesigned to transfer from their cache much faster,
and it would be more beneficial to have larger cache. The platter itself
is still slower though.

The point of using a flash drive is elimination of moving parts, for shock
resistance, a smaller system case, or power reduction.

Might also like to move the swap file over to this drive.

That is exactly what you don't want to do.

I'd like to hear people's opinions on booting from a flash drive. Might even
like to know about large RAID configs... whether for increasing the capacity
or increasing the speed.

What is there to have an opinion about so far as booting is concerned?
It's a drive, you boot it, same as any other, but with all the limitations
and benefits of flash memory.

Not much about computer hardware thrills me anymore. Graphics card
technology has accelerated so fast that the fun is gone. But this stuff ...
this stuff is the last lingering concept that still thrills me.

Every now and then I think about running a system from a flash drive, but
done a little differently. My idea was to use MS Drivespace, with the
flash drive holding the partition image file, then when system boots the
first thing that happens is a ramdrive is created, the partition image is
copied over from the flash drive (which is the end of the flash drive's
function in the system), then system boots Windows (probably 98lite) from
the Drivespace volume on the system-memory ramdrive. The key to making
tha work might be to have the ramdrive drivespace volume file copied back
to the flash drive whenever the system is rebooted, so it's good for a few
thousand reboots at least.

 

[Jon Davis]

Okay then. So I retract. There went that longing. whoosh .. LOL .. *sob*

Jon

 

[Edward A. Weissbard]

Jon,

Interesting concept, I like the idea but it looks like consumer technology
is not up to par quite yet, maybe very soon. Thanks for the information
Kony!!

Edward W.
El Paso, TX

 

[Edward A. Weissbard]

One more thing you forgot to mention is that flash drives are made with
SRAM(Static Ramdom Access Memory) which does not need a constant charge to
sustain it's data. It does use transistors as the basis for holding binary
information. Please correct me if i'm wrong.

Thanks,

Edward W.
El paso, Tx