Service image that uses EWF on CF (some persistent data required)

[Guest]

I have a couple related questions, and am new to news groups, so I'm not sure
if I should post more than one question per post. Please inform me if this is
not good practice.

We are designing an XPe image for ~400 computers that will be used in mobile
equipment in a very harsh environment. Thus, we are using CF disks and would
like to use some method, maybe EWF, to protect the write-limitied CF media.

However, we do require some degree of persistent data, and feel that an
ideal solution for us would be some mechanism that doesn't write protect the
partition, but rather evenly distributes writes to the CF disk. Is there such
a mechanism for XPe?

Also, we are trying to design a servicing strategy, and have seen that when
using DUA you can script the disabling, committing and reenabling of EWF. Can
SMS be used in a similar manner, or with EWF at all (other than manually
disabling EWF to perform an update)?

 

[Adora Belle Dearheart]

I have a couple related questions, and am new to news groups, so I'm not sure
if I should post more than one question per post. Please inform me if this is
not good practice.

We are designing an XPe image for ~400 computers that will be used in mobile
equipment in a very harsh environment. Thus, we are using CF disks and would
like to use some method, maybe EWF, to protect the write-limitied CF media.

However, we do require some degree of persistent data, and feel that an
ideal solution for us would be some mechanism that doesn't write protect the
partition, but rather evenly distributes writes to the CF disk. Is there such
a mechanism for XPe?

Not in XPe, but some manufacturers produce disks which have
wear-levelling built in. One of the first devices I produced needed to
have persistent data and to be protected - we got around this by keeping
the persistent data on a second partition.

Also, we are trying to design a servicing strategy, and have seen that when
using DUA you can script the disabling, committing and reenabling of EWF. Can
SMS be used in a similar manner, or with EWF at all (other than manually
disabling EWF to perform an update)?

Ah now SMS I know nothing about. Actually I don't know a lot about DUA
either, as we're currently using a third-party content management system
and no EWF.

 

[Sean Liming \(eMVP\)]

Companies like M-Systems and WinSystems have wearleveling built into their
flash devices. You could split a drive in two EWF protects OS partition and
an unprotected data partition.

I have used SMS, but I haven't found a simple method to disable EWF. You may
have to download and run a custom package that has an isntallation
applciaiton that disables EWF, installs the patch, and then re-enables EWF.

Regards,

Sean Liming
www.sjjmicro.com / www.seanliming.com
XP Embedded Book Author - XP Embedded Advanced, XP Embedded Supplemental
Toolkit