On Fri, Mar 28, 2008 at 01:21:55PM +1100, Rod Whitworth wrote: > On Fri, 28 Mar 2008 02:51:33 +0100, chefren wrote: > >On 3/28/08 1:20 AM, Rod Whitworth wrote: > > > >> The CF wearout meme needs to die. > > > >Specs, it's all about specs, it seems a fact to me that "standard" CF > >cards, as used in camera's, often without any technical specification > >other than "size", cannot be written as often as ordinary harddisks. > [snip brand examples]
> I have lost cout of failed HDDs around here and never lost a byte on > CF. There are nearly as many CFs here as HDDs now and if you have a > look at new laptops you'll see more and more SSHD and hybrids every > time a new model comes out. > > Practically speaking if you buy a decent brand of CF or spend the extra > on an "industrial" model you can expect years of service out of it. I'm > sure that Bamboo Charlie makes cheapies in CF as well as mobos and > other junk, don't buy from him.... I have my old IBM ValuePoint 486 that has a bios that really only likes drives under 512 MB. It has worked with one 8 GB drive, but not another seemingly identical WD 8 GB drive, yet alone a new-off-the-shelf 80 GB PATA drive. The IBM bios has no adjustability (as does the Award bios), but instead just displays the size of the hard drive found. If it displays a size, it will boot from it, if not, it declares a hardware error and won't boot from anything. I wonder if a 512 MB CF card in a PATA-CF adapter would be a solution in this case. The box would likely do remote-logging anyway. Does a CF card in a PATA-CF adapter look just like a HD, bootable and all, to old BIOS? Doug.
