On 23 Sep 2008 at 23:50, der Mouse wrote:
For example, if my "8G" microdrive were 8G
of CF instead, and had (say)
a write cycle count of 250K writes, that would mean I shouldn't expect
it to wear out until after I've written approximately 250K * 8G, which
is roughly 2PB. I don't know what microdrive throughput is like (never
measured it on my z50), but at the approximately 7M/s I'm seeing right
now to a "real" disk I'm doing the write phase of a write-read-compare
test over, it takes over 9.7 years to transfer 2PB - and that means
7M/s sustained for the whole 9.7+ years.
My understanding is the cycle count relates to writing to a given
block. For use as a swap device or other heavy rewrite-in-place
device, the 250K writes could be used up in a matter of weeks.
Anecdotal evidence I've run into on the web seems to bear this out.
I've toyed with the idea of setting up a Linux box with a decent-size
(512M) hunk of RAM,turning off swap and using it as a network
mailserver with CF instead of IDE disk to conserve power. I'm not
sure how long the CF would last. Assuming, say, 1000 emails
(including spam) a day worst-case, I might see one fail in less than
a year, depending upon where the writes landed. Leveling would help,
of course, but do CF cards auto-level, or does that responsibility
fall upon the system using them?
Does CF as working storage even approach the reliability of a floppy?
I can recall running 8" floppy read-write tests for many days at a
stretch.
Cheers,
Chuck