Best Use for a 1gig flash drive

[marchold]

I was hoping someone could suggest the best way to make sagetv faster and quieter with a 1gig flash drive. I was hoping to achieve 2 things:
1) put small frequently accessed files on the flash so a hard drive does not need to start spinning if it was sleeping.
It seems like the wiz.bin file is updated as recordings are made. So maybe by installing sage to a flash drive I can prevent c:\ from being activated when it is recording to another drive.

2) To make the computer cooler and quieter by less frequent disk access

Should I put the swap file on the flash drive so VM access is fast, or should IO install sage and move a few files to the flash, or maybe I can get some caching software that will do it all.

Any opinions, ideas?

Thanks

[davephan]

It would cost more than a flash drive, but if you used a solid state drive, you could put the whole operating system and SageTV program on the solid state drive. You would not be able to record much on the solid state drive, so the recordings would still have to go to the conventional spinning drives, which could be done by moving the files after the recordings are completed.

http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCateg...0state%20drive

[wayner]

If you suspend your hard drives with elastic then they can be made to be almost silent, although they still give off some heat. My case, an Antec Solo, has these elastics built in, but you can add them yourself. If you haven't already found it check out www.silentpcreview.com as a resource on these types of issues.

And I wouldn't just use a 1Gig flash - you can get 8gig flash for very cheap nowadays.

[GKusnick]

Files that are updated frequently are probably not a good choice, since flash write times are not especially fast (particularly for less expensive drives) and have a limited number of write cycles before they fail.

Ramdisk would probably be a better choice for writeable temp files and frequently accessed read-only files.

My suggestion for the flash drive would be to install Placeshifter on it and carry it in your pocket when you're away from home.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by wayner

If you suspend your hard drives with elastic then they can be made to be almost silent, although they still give off some heat.

Not to hijack the thread, but I've heard mixed reports on this practice. Hard drives are meant to be cooled by metal-to-metal conduction, so they'll tend to run hotter (and die sooner) suspended. Similarly, the seek logic is calibrated assuming a rigidly mounted drive, so seek times and error rates can theoretically be affected if the drive is free to recoil when the head moves.

[CollinR]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

Files that are updated frequently are probably not a good choice, since flash write times are not especially fast (particularly for less expensive drives) and have a limited number of write cycles before they fail.

Ramdisk would probably be a better choice for writeable temp files and frequently accessed read-only files.

My suggestion for the flash drive would be to install Placeshifter on it and carry it in your pocket when you're away from home.

x2

I do however have client installed on compact flash with write protection. It takes quite a bit of work to get good results but you can get XP Pro and SageTV server on a 2GB CF.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

Not to hijack the thread, but I've heard mixed reports on this practice. Hard drives are meant to be cooled by metal-to-metal conduction, so they'll tend to run hotter (and die sooner) suspended. Similarly, the seek logic is calibrated assuming a rigidly mounted drive, so seek times and error rates can theoretically be affected if the drive is free to recoil when the head moves.

Many, many cases that I have worked on do not have metal-to-mteal contact with hard drives. I am not sure about their current case but for several years Dell had you mount the hard drives to green plastic rails that slid into a slot in the case - therefore no metal to metal conduction - many other cases are similar. Other cases have rubber or silicone grommets on the screw that connects the hard drive to the drive sled. And even if that were an issue you can always mount a fan to provide airflow over the drives. And even where the hard drive is mounted rigidly to the case the metal contact is negligibe - maybe a 1mm ring around each of the 4 screws.

I can't say that I have tested seek times with rigid vs. non-rigid drive mounts so I can't comment there.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by CollinR

It takes quite a bit of work to get good results but you can get XP Pro and SageTV server on a 2GB CF.

I am sure this was a few years ago since it couldn't be worth the effort today when you can buy 4GB or 8GB drives for $10 and $20 respectively - as long as they don't have to be FAT16.

[CollinR]

Nope this is recent, it's far more complicated to boot XP from the USB bus then it is CF which adhears to IDE. Windows doesn't know my CF isn't an IDE HDD.

I have internal USB sticks however I haven't yet gotten XP to boot from it, when XP loads the USB drivers the HDD dissapears. You can go through the whole bartPE hoops but a 2gb UltraII CF isn't that much more$ and the mount is hell of more stable.

[wammer23]

Originally Posted by CollinR

x2

I do however have client installed on compact flash with write protection. It takes quite a bit of work to get good results but you can get XP Pro and SageTV server on a 2GB CF.

How much faster (or slower) is having the OS on a flash drive versus say a 7200 rpm drive? Ballpark terms of course, and I know it all depends on the brand and model of the flash drive and HD.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by CollinR

Nope this is recent, it's far more complicated to boot XP from the USB bus then it is CF which adhears to IDE. Windows doesn't know my CF isn't an IDE HDD.

So how do you connect the CF card to the PC? Can you get a CF to IDE adapter? Is there any reason why you can't use a larger CF card?

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by wayner

So how do you connect the CF card to the PC? Can you get a CF to IDE adapter? Is there any reason why you can't use a larger CF card?

Yep. Just about any online computer retailer sells them. Just do a search....Newegg has them for as cheap as 7 dollars.

[CollinR]

Originally Posted by wammer23

How much faster (or slower) is having the OS on a flash drive versus say a 7200 rpm drive? Ballpark terms of course, and I know it all depends on the brand and model of the flash drive and HD.

Speed isn't really a factor when considering this, stability and reliablity are much moreso. Flash is quite a bit slower to write to and reading from depends greatly on your hardware. As I said speed isn't a motivating factor.

CF is cool as you can build solid state systems, very low power and NO moving parts. No moving parts means your system is not prone to vibration and generally is more simple and less failure prone.

Having the disk write protected means you cannot have wiz.bin/sage.properties stored there. It also means a reboot will fix anything but hardware issues.

Originally Posted by wayner

So how do you connect the CF card to the PC? Can you get a CF to IDE adapter? Is there any reason why you can't use a larger CF card?

You can also use direct insert flash aka DOM or Disk on Module.



I did this to make a micro DVR for use in police cars.

[malbec]

How about 16 GB for $20?

newegg.com

[stevech]

Originally Posted by wammer23

How much faster (or slower) is having the OS on a flash drive versus say a 7200 rpm drive? Ballpark terms of course, and I know it all depends on the brand and model of the flash drive and HD.

Electronic Design (trade journal) in the last issue or two, had a article by an engineer to tested with great rigor solid state disk drives versus 6 or so magnetic head disks. Not cheap USB flash thumb drive, but a $$$ solid state disk with a SATA interface.

I recall that the conclusion was that for reading big sequential files, there's a great advantage. But writing wasn't of course better, as the slow flash write offset the lack of head movement time.

Me, I don't get how a solid state disk can have enough endurance (life) even with clever wear balancing algorithms.

[CollinR]

You never write to it, they have basically unlimited reads.

[stevech]

Originally Posted by CollinR

You never write to it, they have basically unlimited reads.

Hmm, "never" is not too useful! Does that mean it's a software publishing media?

Rarely write to it? I see Microsoft pushing the idea of SSDs (solid state disks) to speed up Vista and I read a paper by them showing how they or the drive maker has a clever wear-evening algorithm since the drive was used for OS operations including virtual memory cacheing, and so on. Made no sense to me.