system on CF card

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vladis · #1 Post by **vladis** » Mon Apr 20, 2009 10:59 am

Hi,

I want to put CF card to CF card slot and have system (xp pro ) installed on that CF and data on my HDD drive.
I expect from this " tuning " better battery life and also faster system performance.

Is this possible ? can x31 boot from that CF card and will this update extend battery life ?
What type, parameters of CF card may I look for ?

I have got X31: pentium m 1,4 GHz, 512 Mb ram

thanks for all help, finally I bought this guy, and I want apply some " EEE pc " technology here.

ps: sorry my english

galactus · #2 Post by **galactus** » Mon Apr 20, 2009 12:17 pm

Hello, you can not boot from cf-card slot, if i we´re you i would do it with inside usb sdshc-card. Of course you have to solder few wires, but believe me it´s worth of doing it that way!

Sorry english also

vladis · #3 Post by **vladis** » Mon Apr 20, 2009 4:04 pm

Can you post here some link on that method with usb sdhc card ?

Did you applay it on your X31 ? because I tryed to boot linux from my USB stick and nothing happens. It can only boot from external USB cd-rom ( for what I am glad too ).

btw: SDHC card is faster than 7200 rpm hdd and how many times slower than SSD disk ?

galactus · #4 Post by **galactus** » Tue Apr 21, 2009 2:15 pm

vladis wrote:Can you post here some link on that method with usb sdhc card ?

Did you applay it on your X31 ? because I tryed to boot linux from my USB stick and nothing happens. It can only boot from external USB cd-rom ( for what I am glad too ).

btw: SDHC card is faster than 7200 rpm hdd and how many times slower than SSD disk ?

Sorry no pics available

I don´t know for sure but it suits for me before going for ssd...You can solder the wires from the lefthand side upper corner usb and buit it in the pcmcia-slot. Just cut the usb-cable for a right lenght.

btw. if you can´t boot from usb, try hewlett packard software, you can find it with google.

#5 Post by **tomh009** » Tue Apr 21, 2009 7:43 pm

The USB method (galactus seems to have a fairly simple yet clever hack) is probably your best option. The CF card reader on the X31 is glacially slow, and would be way slower than even a 4200 rpm disk.

Maccess · #6 Post by **Maccess** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 9:47 am

I came across this Microsoft Technote recently. Apparently UDMA66 isn't enabled by default on Intel Chipset motherboards, you need to enable it manually in the registry.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/247951

I have an X22 with a CF slot. The fastest I've been getting is 1.3MBps and the IDE driver runs only on PIO mode. I'm hoping that with the hack above it will run at full UDMA speed with a UDMA CF card (that's a special type of CF card made by Lexar, it says UDMA in big letters on the card).

Do let me know how this turns out.

A UDMA CF card + a UDMA Cardbus adaptor reportedly runs at up to 40MBps on the T23s cardbus slot.

janko_wodnik · #7 Post by **janko_wodnik** » Mon May 11, 2009 1:41 pm

Maccess wrote:I have an X22 with a CF slot. The fastest I've been getting is 1.3MBps and the IDE driver runs only on PIO mode. I'm hoping that with the hack above it will run at full UDMA speed with a UDMA CF card (that's a special type of CF card made by Lexar, it says UDMA in big letters on the card).

I am afraid, that internal CF reader in X2x and X3x is connected as PCMCIA (not CardBus). So 1,3MB/s is max, no matter what kind of software hacks You will do.
I also found, that someone sad, that SDHC via USB is faster than 7200rpm. Well, it is, but only for random reads. But for sequential read and write, and – especially for random writes – it is unbelievable slow. You may try standard 2GB SD card for installation Win XP (if You manage to install it on removable device).

And about Lexar CF UDMA – there is no longer need for expensive SLC UDMA card to run Windows XP without lags. Try much cheaper UDMA MLC cards with cluster-aligned file system and Win XP with

FlashPoint SSD Accelerator.

How to set cluster-aligned file system on flash media (SSD, CF, SD(HC), USB thumb drives)? Well, it is to hard to me to simply explain it in English, but I am going to write blog with all necessary instructions for this operation.

Here are some results for cluster-aligned cheap CF card with FlashPoint under Windows XP:

Code: Select all

--------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 2.1 (C) 2007-2008 hiyohiyo
      Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
--------------------------------------------------

   Sequential Read :   45.916 MB/s
  Sequential Write :   29.567 MB/s
 Random Read 512KB :   45.642 MB/s
Random Write 512KB :   10.432 MB/s
   Random Read 4KB :   17.163 MB/s
  Random Write 4KB :    6.267 MB/s

         Test Size : 100 MB
              Date : 2009/05/11 15:02:13

But the same card with no FlashPoint and cluster aligned file system is very poor:

Code: Select all

--------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 2.1 (C) 2007-2008 hiyohiyo
      Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
--------------------------------------------------

   Sequential Read :   46.700 MB/s
  Sequential Write :   14.423 MB/s
 Random Read 512KB :   46.596 MB/s
Random Write 512KB :    1.880 MB/s
   Random Read 4KB :   14.964 MB/s
  Random Write 4KB :    0.015 MB/s

         Test Size : 50 MB
              Date : 2008/07/27 12:38:04

Please note, that most "prone-to-stuttering" parameter is "Random Write 4KB". And believe
me, if it is under 0,150MB/s, You will be very upset with disk performance.

Well, FlashPoint is now beta, but it is getting more reliable.

JW

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