Compact Flash as Hard Drive?

geon106

geon106

geon106

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Not sure if this is the right place for this question but stick with me,

One of my computers has its hard drive partitioned between XP Home and Linux, well I only made the linux partition about 6GB and its full up. Now what I was thinking of doing was using my spare 16GB Compact Flash card as a SSD drive of sorts.

Is that possible or would I be best to just boot Linux from a USB drive instead?
 
It's probably only a single NAND chip (unlike an SSD which has multiple chips working together in a form of internal raid) and so will only do transfer speeds not greatly different from an HDD, though presumably with much faster seek times.

Still, if that isn't important to you, it is certainly possible to boot Linux from a USB stick, so a compact flash card might conceivably work. The only problem I anticipate is that bioses incorporate USB support to permit booting and I have no idea whether there are any which do this from compact flash cards.

USB is the sure fire option. That said, you can pick up a much higher capacity hdd for c.£30 which would do the job happily.
 
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suitheist said:
It's probably only a single NAND chip (unlike an SSD which has multiple chips working together in a form of internal raid) and so will only do transfer speeds not greatly different from an HDD, though presumably with much faster seek times.

Still, if that isn't important to you, it is certainly possible to boot Linux from a USB stick, so a compact flash card might conceivably work. The only problem I anticipate is that bioses incorporate USB support to permit booting and I have no idea whether there are any which do this from compact flash cards.

USB is the sure fire option. That said, you can pick up a much higher capacity hdd for c.£30 which would do the job happily.
Click to expand...

Hmm, i'm thinking of maybe getting a PCI USB controller card with an internal USB slot, and plugging in a 16GB pen drive, the controller card probs cost less than £10 and the pen drive about £15. So for £25 i've got a 16GB drive for linux. Sadly the machine has no further slots of any SATA/IDE drives

Thanks for your help :)
 
Np

That's probably best if you're using storage on your other drive. Is there any reason you need it inside the case?

If you'd like more space, you could also do the same with a 2.5" external drive on USB and get much larger capacity. Just stuff it into the cable management space or something. Or keep it or the usb pen drive outside the case.
 
suitheist said:
Np

That's probably best if you're using storage on your other drive. Is there any reason you need it inside the case?

If you'd like more space, you could also do the same with a 2.5" external drive on USB and get much larger capacity. Just stuff it into the cable management space or something. Or keep it or the usb pen drive outside the case.
Click to expand...

Mostly just makes it a bit neater. But could plug into a USB socket. I've got a 40GB 2.5" drive from my old PS3 that I could use now you mention it. May get an enclosure for it
 
I used to have a CF to IDE convertor which was bootable and ran an OS very well. Just plugged into the 40 pin IDE. If you do not have an IDE, you can get a PCI card to CF to do the same thing. For £30 you can get a card which can raid up to 4 CF on one card
google 'pci to cf'
 
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