From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Jun 10 10:58:17 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mail2.wmptl.com (mail2.wmptl.com [216.94.6.26]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B7C9337B407; Mon, 10 Jun 2002 10:58:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from transcon ([10.0.0.168]) by mail2.wmptl.com (8.11.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id g5AKtu056854; Mon, 10 Jun 2002 16:55:56 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from ITStaff@wmptl.com) Message-ID: <001401c210a7$f72b2d20$a800000a@transcon> Reply-To: "Communications Machine" From: "Communications Machine" To: Cc: Subject: Compact Flash vs ATA Disks Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2002 13:55:10 -0400 X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG I need a comparison in terms primarily of performance and reliability between using compact flash to boot vs a standard ATA disk drive on a machine used primarily as a router/firewall. I would assume since there is no mechanical spinup/spindown issues with compact flash, that it would therefore be quicker to startup off of; however one must still wait for the PC bios anyways... so will it really make that much of a difference? Guess it really comes down to transfer rates: which is generally speaking faster (bear in mind only in terms of reading, as writting to disk will be extremely infrequent). In terms of reliability, what is the life expentancy of compact flash vs a standard ATA disk drive? Again, I believe the mechanical issues involved with a disk drive may be overcome with compact flash disks, but I don't honestly know enough about compact flash. The goal being to have a standard PC boot up off of compact flash, in the hopes of an extremely quick, efficient, and reliable boot. Preferable even to use a read-only compact flash device so-as to bypass the need for checking the disk (fsck and such) at startup. Any suggestions/comment/questions/shared experiences welcomed and appreciated; but please CC my email address directly. Thanks -- Nathan Vidican itstaff@wmptl.com Windsor Match Plate & Tool Ltd. http://home.wmptl.com/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message