Anybody tried this?

[Rhys]

I was just looking at SSHDs and CF-IDE converters as well as large capacity CF cards. Obviously the CF cards work out cheaper. I don't know about reliability though. On the other hand with the continually falling prices of CF cards, it might be economical if the card lasts a year.

As an example of falling CF card prices, in June 2005 I paid $115 for a 1GB CF card. Today (June 2008) Newegg has a 32gb CF card for $115.

At the moment my wife's laptop has given up the ghost with alternating 7a and ed errors before finally giving a blue screen every time. I'm pretty sure I can rescue the data and that the drive will be OK reformatted. I am, however, considering plan B.

Plan B revolves around replacing the internal HDD with a CF card and CF-IDE adaptor.

Simulteneously with whatever plan I'm also considering networked raid backup with my wife's laptop set to backup automatically every day at 8pm.

But my main question - has anybody actually done the CF card as a laptop main drive?

For those that don't know, here are some links:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...8 1053107923&bop=And&Order=PRICE&Pagesize=100
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...3240636 1421330854&bop=And&Order=PRICE&Page=2
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...actory=8344&SubCategory=353&SpeTabStoreType=1

 

[Dweller]

I would be concerned about the performance, but I am curious to see how it will work out.

For backup consider Windows Home Server. It does a software RAID of sorts (essentially mirroring any data you wish to multiple drives) and will do a single-instance backup of all the clients on the network.

 

[Garbz]

Doesn't nearly every motherboard support native RAID out of the box these days?

The issue with CF IDE drives is the reliability. There is a reason why the SSHD cost so much. They are full of electronics that implement all sorts of ware levelling, monitoring and mapping of bad segments, and other nifties to get around the fact that flash technology has a limited re-write cycle. From what I have heard SSHDs are quite reliable. CF-IDE alternatives are not. It may sound fun to tinker with until you need to replace the drive and reinstall everything that was lost.

Give it a year though. SSHD is the future and won't stay that expensive for long.

 

[Rhys]

As far as raid backup is concerned, I was thinking of implementing a networked raid solution purely on the basis that 8 months has passed since my wife last did a backup to one of the portable pocket hard drives. It thus has to be an automated thing at least once a week via the wifi network. I'm not going to pack another drive into the printer-server as that's so slow now (with all the XP updates) that it's debatable as to whether it can continue as a printer server. Actually that's tied with my printer issue - I was mis-sold a crappy Epson 9400 Fax which will not network as told by the little **** at Best Buy. My plan is to sell that damned thing and to replace it with a real network printer purchased from some online retailer at well below Best Buy's prices.

Essentially, the home network is going to be all laptops aside from my stepson's PC which is not internet accessible for obvious reasons.