Thinkpads Forum

I was looking at 4GB and 8GB Compact Flash cards that say UDMA 300X.

1. Is that the fastest they come?

2. Will this work for Readyboost in a CF to PCMCIA adaptor?

3. What is the largest practical size that would work for Readyboost with 2GB of RAM?

4. Will an oversized card actually impede performance?

I plan to leave it in the PCMCIA card slot, and forget about it.

Why can you get an 8GB high speed CF card for $150, but the 16GB solid state HD costs 4 times that?

Is it possible to partition a CF card? If yes, is there any benefit to using one of the CF partitions for the windows paging file?

Yes, the access time is much shorter. BUT: Flash memory can withstand only a certain amount of write cycles. And windows writes often into the paging file. So your CF card won't life long and if the card is damaged you could lose data.

You'll need a fast reader too, that supports UDMA. Most PCMCIA/Cardbus readers don't, and so max out around 10MB/s. The only one I know of is made by Delkin (Cardbus 32 UDMA).

AFAIK, ReadyBoost is limited to 4GB, so the 8GB card is useless.

While a CF card can be partitioned, using the CF card isn't optimal for a paging file because of the limited number of write cycles of the card. Since the pagefile is constantly being written to, the lifetime of the card won't be too long. Part of the difference with SSD HDs is that they must be able to sustain many more write cycles to achieve a comparable MTBF (mean-time-between-failures) to standard hard drives.

Certainly before worrying about ReadyBoost, maxing out the RAM and adding the fastest possible HD (7200RPM 200GB one right now) would be a more effective way to boost speed.

proaudioguy wrote:I was looking at 4GB and 8GB Compact Flash cards that say UDMA 300X.
1. Is that the fastest they come?

Ignore the advertised speeds and look at real CF benchmarks in Rob Galbraith's database:
http://www.robgalbraith.com/

proaudioguy wrote:2. Will this work for Readyboost in a CF to PCMCIA adaptor?

Yes, but as mfbernstein said, you will need a fast adapter like the Delkin.

proaudioguy wrote:Is it possible to partition a CF card? If yes, is there any benefit to using one of the CF partitions for the windows paging file?

Windows won't let you put a page file on a removable drive.

first of all, don't be concerned about the cf card wearing out if its a brand new one. Some tests show that even writing 100gb/day that it would take 13 years for a flash card to wear out.

I emailed the guy who runs this site about booting off a pcmcia>cf adapter (so I could possibly have an 8gb solid state hard drive):
http://www.hjreggel.net/

He said he only had a Ricoh R5C chipset to test cardbus adapters and that performance was slow - 13.6MB/s read and 8.4MB/s. This could not max the fastest Transcend 266x SD card he had - which had something like 39mb/sec reads and writes - much faster than my notebook hard drives.

I'm going to see if I can boot off the SD card, but I only have a 4 year old 256mb card, 64mb microsd card, and a 1gb microsd card. but an SD card might be a better option

politicorific wrote:first of all, don't be concerned about the cf card wearing out if its a brand new one. Some tests show that even writing 100gb/day that it would take 13 years for a flash card to wear out.

I emailed the guy who runs this site about booting off a pcmcia>cf adapter (so I could possibly have an 8gb solid state hard drive):
http://www.hjreggel.net/

He said he only had a Ricoh R5C chipset to test cardbus adapters and that performance was slow - 13.6MB/s read and 8.4MB/s. This could not max the fastest Transcend 266x SD card he had - which had something like 39mb/sec reads and writes - much faster than my notebook hard drives.

I'm going to see if I can boot off the SD card, but I only have a 4 year old 256mb card, 64mb microsd card, and a 1gb microsd card. but an SD card might be a better option

*edit* no luck, I cannot boot off the SD controller and HDtach won't benchmark the internal secure digital reader so I don't know how well it'll work for readyboost

politicorific wrote:

politicorific wrote: *edit* no luck, I cannot boot off the SD controller and HDtach won't benchmark the internal secure digital reader so I don't know how well it'll work for readyboost

It's been said here many times that the SD card reader built in is really flawed (slow), which is why I was looking at the CF option. Ideally I'd like to have a full fledged PCMCIA flash card (old school), but with the latest speed technology.

Edit

This is prohibitively expensive, but would something like this be faster than a 7200RPM hard drive?

http://www.memoryx.net/pcmciataflas.html

http://www.simpletech.com/estore/?page= ... =STI-ATAFL

chances are that those PCMCIA cards are very old and more importantly I'd bet that the Cardbus controller maxes out at similar transfer rates - I'd assume lenovo is using similar cardbus controllers across all their products, the Ricoh R/RL/RCL476 which I can't imagine is that great of a chip, now TI on the other hand would probably do much better. This also has greater implications on any cardbus device one wishes to use. Since there's a bandwidth ceiling the slot appears mostly useless for any high bandwidth requirement.

My main aim was to see about increasing battery life and getting higher performance as a bonus. Solid state drives not using nand type memory that compare to current capacities and prices are probably 2-3 years off. If speed and battery life are more important than storage, it is possible to swap out the SATA drive with an SATA to CF converter. That along with a stripped down OS install could provide a decent amount of storage, along with a cheap high capacity SD card and PCMCIA cf adapter providing 40GB of space for around $300. With memory manufacturers gearing up for DDR3 and retooling for flash memory, along with the introduction of SSDs will drop this considerably.

Of course, for your purposes - readyboost - there's considerable debate as to whether readyboost actually offers any performance increase if the base memory installed is already at 2gb

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:ReadyBoost#Disputed

This might be a solution (I don't have any experience with it): http://www.transcendusa.com/Products/Mo ... ?ModNo=162
It should be made for a lot read/write cycles.

EDIT: Is it possible to boot from these modules with an x61? Then it could be used as system disk and the internal HDD to save user data.

EDIT2: http://www.delock.de/produkte/gruppen/E ... anguage=EN
Does this work in a X61? Is the X61 compatible to express card with PCIe? (This card only uses USB).

ExpressCard on the X61 is implemented using a CardBus adapter, so you will at best get CardBus performance with an ExpressCard device.

d3 wrote: EDIT2: http://www.delock.de/produkte/gruppen/E ... anguage=EN
Does this work in a X61? Is the X61 compatible to express card with PCIe? (This card only uses USB).

Theoretically it should work it if uses USB. However, X60/61 are _NOT_ compatible with PCIe ExpressCards.

Incidentally, where exactly can one get the Cardbus-ExpressCard adapter?

mfbernstein wrote:Incidentally, where exactly can one get the Cardbus-ExpressCard adapter?

I think it's supposed to be included with the X61 ... but mine has not arrived yet so I cannot verify.

mfbernstein wrote: Theoretically it should work it if uses USB. However, X60/61 are _NOT_ compatible with PCIe ExpressCards.

What a shame. X61 has PCIe on board, but not in the express card slot?

tomh009 wrote:ExpressCard on the X61 is implemented using a CardBus adapter, so you will at best get CardBus performance with an ExpressCard device.

Cardbus/PCMCIA and Expresscard are two completely different standards and form factors. The X61 does not have an expresscard slot. Even if it was compatible the controller chip would still be a huge bottleneck.

If one wants to use readyboost then use the intel turbo memory or a USB 2 device. That pc card slot is mostly useless for devices demanding lots of bandwidth - I'd even bet USB 2.0 expansion cards are far slower off the bus compared to the internal chipset.

It's really a CardBus slot, not an ExpressCard slot.

politicorific wrote:

tomh009 wrote:ExpressCard on the X61 is implemented using a CardBus adapter, so you will at best get CardBus performance with an ExpressCard device.

Cardbus/PCMCIA and Expresscard are two completely different standards and form factors. The X61 does not have an expresscard slot. Even if it was compatible the controller chip would still be a huge bottleneck.

If one wants to use readyboost then use the intel turbo memory or a USB 2 device. That pc card slot is mostly useless for devices demanding lots of bandwidth - I'd even bet USB 2.0 expansion cards are far slower off the bus compared to the internal chipset.

How am I supposed to use Turbo memory if I'm on an X60T?
That's the whole point of this thread.

Is there a flash memory that can be used in the slot next to the WIFI card? Would that be fast enough?

politicorific wrote:Cardbus/PCMCIA and Expresscard are two completely different standards and form factors. The X61 does not have an expresscard slot.

From tabook (for both X60 and X61):
PC Card Slot: One Type I or one Type II, CardBus Plus (34mm ExpressCard via adapter)

politicorific wrote:If one wants to use readyboost then use the intel turbo memory or a USB 2 device. That pc card slot is mostly useless for devices demanding lots of bandwidth - I'd even bet USB 2.0 expansion cards are far slower off the bus compared to the internal chipset.

My Sandisk Ultra II 2 GB CF card provides roughly the same (about 11 MB/s) performance through either a Delkin CardBus adapter or a Sandisk external USB2 CF reader. That's also about the same as the best performance figures for that card on the robgalbraith.com CF card performance database. And that's all on an X31 yet.

So, no, the CardBus isn't quite as slow as you say ... even in byte mode, the CardBus spec goes to 33 MB/s (though the implementation may restrict that).

those charts are nearly a year old, your card is old and slow. You can get cards with 3x the performance and the ricoh pc controller has a bandwidth ceiling right around where your card maxes out. Faster cards need faster controllers, adding an expresscard adapter to a cardbus plus slot is not going to change this. I had to explain this to someone who wanted to get an sata expresscard and run it through his cardbus slot. It will not work well and this is all besides the point:

Do you want something like this:
http://www.pcsuperstore.com/products/K8 ... l/froogle/

sticking out of your laptop?

If you actually read the posts in this thread, you will see that I did not suggest using the ExpressCard adapter.

The card is not the latest, agree on that. But has it maxed out the CardBus interface on the X31? I don't see any evidence of that. On the the hjreggel.net tests, the CardBus readers were close to 14 MB/s, within 20% of the fastest readers with the Sandisk Extreme IV.

I did get to use an extreme II 512K SD card in my X61 tablet. I saw no increase in CPU load and the images loaded very quickly. I had no time to do any real benchmarks, but the X61 tablet doesn't seem to be showing any of the slow down reported on the X60.

BTW, Microsoft has just admitted that there is a problem with ReadyBoost. It was discussed on Gottabemobile last week. It happens after resuming from sleep or hibernation and makes it useless for now to even consider using it. I don't know if it affects Turboboost, which I think uses ReadyDrive technology instead. How related they are, I don't know.

Not so quick ... one Microsoft engineer blogged about it (and gottabemobile.com picked up on it) -- but he subsequently changed his opinion on this. You can read the original here:
http://blogs.technet.com/robert_hensing ... hness.aspx

Thanks for the clarification. At this moment, because of all the bad-press, I've not seen fit to buy my own SD card or USB key to try it out. Meantime, I'll reserve judgment until there are more stable facts.