Boot from USB Flash Disk

[Bob]

Yes, eventually I was planning on putting one in a notebook
but it's power usage is still primarily the board, CPU and
screen, I don't expect that much better runtime from it
instead of higher reliability in mobile uses.

Then at this juncture, based on your comments, the best application
for my purposes is to use flash disks to make a backup disk and
archive disks. That means I only need one hard disk - the boot disk.

I permanently use one flash disk for the backup (eg. D and plug in
flash disks as I need them for cloning the hard disk and the backup
disk for archive-disaster recovery.

Anyone know what 16GB and 32GB flash disks are going for these days?


--

"First and last, it's a question of money. Those men who own the
earth make the laws to protect what they have. They fix up a sort
of fence or pen around what they have, and they fix the law so the
fellow on the outside cannot get in. The laws are really organized
for the protection of the men who rule the world. They were never
organized or enforced to do justice. We have no system for doing
justice, not the slightest in the world."
--Clarence Darrow

 

[kony]

Then at this juncture, based on your comments, the best application
for my purposes is to use flash disks to make a backup disk and
archive disks. That means I only need one hard disk - the boot disk.

I permanently use one flash disk for the backup (eg. D and plug in
flash disks as I need them for cloning the hard disk and the backup
disk for archive-disaster recovery.

Anyone know what 16GB and 32GB flash disks are going for these days?

Currently the price for flash climbs steeply beyond 4-8GB
per *card*. If you need that much space you will be paying
a lot, it could still make sense to use redundant hard
drives until the flash $/GB drops further.

 

[Bob]

Currently the price for flash climbs steeply beyond 4-8GB
per *card*. If you need that much space you will be paying
a lot, it could still make sense to use redundant hard
drives until the flash $/GB drops further.

Any guess when that might happen? At the current rate of price drop,
helped substantially by the hefty demand in the camera memory market,
it would seem like we are getting a couple factors of 2 each year at
the same price as before.

If 4-8GB is the price break now, it may be that 16-32GB will be the
price break in a year or so. That will probably be when I will want to
retire my boot disk set anyway.

The good news of all this discussion is that I do not need, nor
actually want, a flash disk for my boot device. That means I can use
my current mainboard if I want.


--

"First and last, it's a question of money. Those men who own the
earth make the laws to protect what they have. They fix up a sort
of fence or pen around what they have, and they fix the law so the
fellow on the outside cannot get in. The laws are really organized
for the protection of the men who rule the world. They were never
organized or enforced to do justice. We have no system for doing
justice, not the slightest in the world."
--Clarence Darrow

 

[kony]

Any guess when that might happen? At the current rate of price drop,
helped substantially by the hefty demand in the camera memory market,
it would seem like we are getting a couple factors of 2 each year at
the same price as before.

If 4-8GB is the price break now, it may be that 16-32GB will be the
price break in a year or so. That will probably be when I will want to
retire my boot disk set anyway.

Maybe, I would hope but not depend on it... at some point
they may hit barriers they can't overcome in the same
timeframe.

The good news of all this discussion is that I do not need, nor
actually want, a flash disk for my boot device. That means I can use
my current mainboard if I want.

How is that good? UDMA Compact Flash as an IDE device is
the preferred solution and works on all boards (that support
UDMA, so "all" means the last dozen years or so). What you
should not want is to cripple any drive with a poor
interface- USB2. For occasional file copies it's not so
bad, but pretty much anyone can notice the difference
running a modern HDD vs one old enough to be no faster than
a flash drive on USB2. Possibly your uses are different
than others and the HDD performance doesn't matter? For
many common uses it is the largest bottleneck.

 

[Bob]

How is that good? UDMA Compact Flash as an IDE device is
the preferred solution and works on all boards (that support
UDMA, so "all" means the last dozen years or so). What you
should not want is to cripple any drive with a poor
interface- USB2. For occasional file copies it's not so
bad, but pretty much anyone can notice the difference
running a modern HDD vs one old enough to be no faster than
a flash drive on USB2. Possibly your uses are different
than others and the HDD performance doesn't matter? For
many common uses it is the largest bottleneck.

At this moment I am focusing solely on a way to improve my
backup/archive scheme. I install a lot of software and many times it
is easier to clone my boot disk, install the s/w, and if I don't want
it I can just use the clone backup. That way I do not collect a lot of
residual crap in the Registry. IOW, that is the cleanest uninstall
there is.

So I envision, based on your comments, having a hard disk for my boot
device, and an IDE-based UDMA Card Reader as backup and archive disks.
The backup disk is online and the archive disks are offline. When it
comes time to make the clone, I remove the backup card and put in an
archive card and run the clone s/w. Now I have a way to recover from a
bad install. I make another clone of the hard drive and put it in a
safe place for disaster recovery. When I am done cloning I put the
backup card in.

To pull that off I would want 3 cards minimum, so they have to be
reasonably priced. The smallest hard disk nowadays is 80GB which is
overkill for my purposes. I only use 15GB at most and keep the rest
for Windows. Windows grinds to a near halt if is doesn't have at least
20% of the hard drive to bloat all over.


--

"First and last, it's a question of money. Those men who own the
earth make the laws to protect what they have. They fix up a sort
of fence or pen around what they have, and they fix the law so the
fellow on the outside cannot get in. The laws are really organized
for the protection of the men who rule the world. They were never
organized or enforced to do justice. We have no system for doing
justice, not the slightest in the world."
--Clarence Darrow